What's your local teams ownership like?

[Vern Gagne 0]

Twins-Pohlad. Considered a penny pincher, but give credit where credits due. Signed Radke, Nathan, Rincon, and Santana to long term extensions. Besides Ortiz, they haven't really been hurt by anyone leaving.

 

Wild-Sperling. They sellout every game, and are still kind of in a honeymoon phase, where they don't have to spend alot of money. With the moeny the Wild makes, he should be spending more of it.

 

Vikings-McCombs. Once he sells the team, I won't hate the Vikings anymore.

 

T'Wolves-The Good. He opened up the checkbook, and tried to bring a championship to MN. The bad he allowed the Joe Smith debacle to occur. Losing 5 draft picks, as come back to hurt this team, faster than expected.

 

Fucking shit. Forgot to add like at the end of the topic.

Edited March 5, 2005 by Vern Gagne

[the max 0]

None in the area, but I'll do the surrounding areas.

 

Marlins: Well, I don't really need to go into detail about this one.

D-Rays: The type of owner that seemingly wakes up during the offseason and decides to bring in overpriced veteran talent. Thankfully, it's been stopped after the Greg Vaughn debacle. Seems committed to making a winning team, unfortunately for him his team plays in the same division as the Red Sox and the Yankees.

Panthers: I don't even know who owns them, quite honestly.

Bolts: Good owner, I guess.

[ISportsFan 0]

Cubs - Tribune. They recently decided to spend money after years and years of being content with Wrigley Field selling out for a poor product.

 

White Sox - Reinsdorf. Has a tight budget. One of the main reasons for the 1994 strike even though the White Sox had a chance at the World Series that year.

 

Bulls - Reinsdorf. Since there's a salary cap he doesn't have to compete as hard in basketball financially. Baseball gets hit because there's no salary cap.

 

Blackhawks - Wirtz. Worst owner in professional sports. He doesn't allow home games to be televised, keeps all his friends in the inner circle (like Pulford, he's had about five stints at GM), refuses to open his pocketbook, has traded off for little value or let contracts expire on every main (and popular) player he's ever had before their value had expired (Chelios, Roenick, Amonte, Belfour, and so on). Easily the worst owner in professional sports (not including MLB for the Expos) because he took a team that was selling out Chicago Stadium and made them into (last year) a team that had trouble filling half the United Center through constant ineptitude.

 

Jason

[The Czech Republic 0]

Unless they've been recently sold, Huizenga owns the Panthers.

 

Chicago Cubs - Chicago Tribune: It's only very recently that they've allowed MacPhail and Hendry any serious funds to build a championship contender. They were bad for a while but right now they're easily the best. They have a weird hang-up with messing with Wrigley Field, though.

 

Chicago Blackhawks - Bill Wirtz: Has been known to address the team and tell them not to get their hopes up for a Stanley Cup. He puts absolutely nothing into the team. The team has been in the Wirtz family for years, and he does not intend to sell it. I think he enjoyed the lockout.

 

Chicago Bulls, White Sox - Jerry Reinsdorf: He really treated Michael Jordan like shit for a while. He hasn't spent money on the Bulls since '98 (and even now, I can't imagine our rookie-laden squad is testing the limits of the salary cap) but at least he did for a while. Still if you remember The Jerrys from the dynasty years, you know he's not a great guy. He tried to move the White Sox to St. Petersburg in 1989 and came really close had it not been for eleventh-hour negotiations to build New Comiskey, so to hell with him for doing that.

 

Chicago Bears - McCaskey family: George Halas's descendants can't run the team for shit. Of the five Chicago teams, probably the biggest offender when it comes to "we can suck it up and nobody will care because Chicago loves its teams" now that the Trib is committed to winning. This is evident by the terrible front office, stupid signings and trades, the fucking up of Soldier Field, "Chicago Bears Football Presented By Bank One," and of course, the numerous losing seasons.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Man! ISportsFan JUST beat me to the Chicago teams! AGH!

[DerangedHermit 0]

Yankees: George Steinbrenner - Don't need to explain, he's done it for me.

Grade: It changes with his mood.

 

Mets: Fred Wilpon - Used to be kind of stingy (if it wasn't for Doubleday, the Mets wouldn't have Piazza), and his son, Jeff is in the front office. Can be a little clueless at times.

Grade: B-

 

Rangers/Knicks: the Dolans (Cablevision) - Inept pieces of shit who care about mudslinging at Michael Bloomberg over the proposed West Side Stadium than their own business ventures (they killed NOBODY BEATS THE WIZ, dammit!) They own MSG and even though they bitch and whine about the proposed public funding for the West Side Stadium, they get a gov't subsidy for MSG in the range of $100M. Damn cocksuckers.

Grade: Big fat fucking F---------

 

Islanders: Charles Wang (of Computer Associates) - Revived the Islander franchise back to respectability (they've had a few Bridgeport Sound Tiger games at the Coliseum during the lockout) and is one of the backbones of Long Island's economy. A building at my university is named after him (heh heh, the Wang Center)

Grade: B+

 

Jets: Woody Johnson (of Johnson & Johnson) - pretty good, has more of a background role in the West Side Stadium battle.

Grade: B

 

Giants: the Mara family - Wellington is pure class.

Grade: A-

[Precious Roy 0]

I just want to say FUCK JAMES DOLAN! Treating a team like it's a corporate asset is a surefire way to field a loser and piss off fans. The last straw was when he let MARV F'N ALBERT go because Marv wouldn't sugarcoat the Knicks' performance. Knicks announcers aren't allowed to praise the opponent's play OR bash the Knicks in any form, per instruction of the almighty Dolan

[MillenniumMan831 0]

Indians --- Larry Dolan - Notorious penny pincher who purged damn near every link to their glory days in the late 1990s. Not very popular.

 

Browns --- Randy Learner (MBNA) - Inherited when his father passed away in 2002. Not much football knowledge but means well and seems to be willing to pay any price for a winner which is proven by buying out Butch Davis's contract and bringing in Phil Savage to run the Browns along w/ Romeo Crenell to coach the squad.

 

Cavs --- USHER and friends - I'm blankin on the name of the guy who headed up the organization that bought the Cavs from Gordon Gund but Usher is a minority owner (pardon the pun) of the team. Kinda hard to get a read on them after a few days of owning the club.

[Lightning Flik 0]

Edmonton Oilers - Ownership Group of 20 some odd people: Since I've got no idea who all is in the ownership, I'll just talk about some of the things they've done since being the head of my team.

 

1 - Got rid of Glen Sather. This was a key move since the guy's been pretty inept before he got out of Edmonton.

 

2 - Hiring Lowe for GM. Now, considering all that Lowe gets to work with (might I also add that its pretty much nothing) he's made sweet deals (Dvorak comes to mind), and done many things to keep our club in the hunt for the playoffs. The only bad thing so far from Lowe, was the Comrie deal but no one knows enough to comment on that. Although, I disagreed with it. One could say that Lowe has been borrowing the Canucks system of winning.

 

3 - Managing to keep old favorites and get new stars. Considering how often we've had to let our budding players go, right now we seem to have been able to keep players whom are fan favorites (Smith, Brewer, Smyth) and also getting new stars (Pisani, Rita, Hemsky) all while having to deal with having to play with the big boys.

 

Downside to my ownership:

 

1 - Goaltending. It is our achilles heel. We've never had a goaltender that was going to be a star, or was someone we could depend on. Sadly, I don't see it in any of our current goaltenders and unless we get someone dependable in net, I can't see us going farther than a playoff berth. Worse, to go out and get someone good, we'd have to give up to much to do so.

 

2 - Comrie. This nearly made us Oiler fans want to ask for Lowe's resignation and our ownership's collective heads as we lost a guy whom many thought we'd build the franchise around. I don't thnk anyone's happy about it still (I know I'm not), but we've moved on thankfully.

 

3 - 13000+ season ticket holders. While this might seem awesome that we do this every year, its kinda sad that my team has to beg fans to get 13000+ season ticket holders every year to make sure that we end up making a profit. If we were to ever fall under that amount, we'd lose a lot of money a season (although, apparently we might've been losing money).

Edited March 5, 2005 by Lightning Flik

[DerangedHermit 0]

Indians --- Larry Dolan - Notorious penny pincher who purged damn near every link to their glory days in the late 1990s. Not very popular.

The Dolans are a pox on sports (Larry is the brother of Charles, chairman of Cablevision and the owner of MSG/Knicks/Rangers)

[Youth N Asia 0]

Mike Illitch...throws mountains of money at the Red Wings and the players seem to love him for it, I've never heard a Wing say anything bad about the Illitch family...but he poo poos on the Tigers, they're like his middle children. Hopefully with his golden boys on the sidelines for who knows how long, he'll do something for his baseball team.

 

Bill Davis...Pistons owner. Team seems to love him. Last year at the championship ralley he said something like "All the experts said we would be lucky to win 2 or 3 games. Bullshit, they were lucky to win 1 game!" Dropped 2 or 3 bullshit bombs on live tv. Won the NBA title and Stanley Cup both last season (owns the Lightning)

 

Ford...Lions owner, has his head too far up his own ass to do the team any good.

[ISportsFan 0]

Man! ISportsFan JUST beat me to the Chicago teams! AGH!

That's ok, I was in a rush and couldn't get to the idiot McCaskeys, so you were not in vein.

 

Jason

[therealworldschampion 0]

Flyers & Sixers - Ed Snider. Good owner I assume. Tends to hire bad GMs(Clarke and Billy King) and stay loyal to them, Clarke especially, but is supportive and wants to see the teams win.

 

Eagles - Jeffrey Lurie. Has had some ups and downs since he bought the team, probably would classify 1997-1999 as the real bad period where he was cheap, but since 2001 has tended to stay out of the limelight and let Reid and Joe Banner run the team. Despite his bad points, he's much better than Norman Braman.

 

Phillies - several owners, including Bill Giles, David Montgomery and company. Bad, bad ownership. Pretty much sucked the life out of baseball in Philadelphia from 1984-2002, especially with Giles' "small market team" comments. Will never fire Ed Wade since he's their puppet. Hopefully Comcast steps in and buys the team soon.

[Sass 0]

Jerry Richardson, a former player with the Baltimore Colts in the 50's, owns the Carolina Panthers. He knows a thing or two about football.

[The Czech Republic 0]

1. Does Merlin Olsen own a team too?

 

2. Why not?

[teke184 0]

Saints- Tom Benson is a penny-pinching asshole who expects the state to foot all the bills for his team while he gets all of the profits.

 

Hornets- George Shinn's only rep is for conning the city of New Orleans into taking his team out of Charlotte. He hasn't really been around here long enough to get a reputation for free-agent spending or draft stupidity. I'm sure his name is mud in Charlotte about now, though.

[razazteca 0]

Saints- Tom Benson is a penny-pinching asshole who expects the state to foot all the bills for his team while he gets all of the profits.

Vikings-McCombs. Once he sells the team, I won't hate the Vikings anymore.

What do you expect from used car salesmen?

[nl5xsk1 0]

Boston ...

 

Bruins: Jerry Jacobs is the owner, and only looks good when compared to Wirtz. Last year was one of the first years that the team has been able to make any additions at the deadline; of course, it got us nowhere, but that's a different thread altogether. The team was the first to walk away from an arbitration hearing and let the player go ... and the second. Would rather sign a shit player for $1-million than a great player for $3-million. Grade: D+

 

Celtics: Relatively new owners, it's just a consortium of people rather than one person or a company. Seems to be getting the team heading in the right direction, and seem to really be fans of the team, so they're off to a good start. Grade: B- (but likely to improve)

 

Red Sox: Again, relatively new consortium of owners. The whole "winning the World Series" thing made them into deity figures in this town. Plus, revamping Fenway rather then building a new park (which would make them more money) is a good way to stay in good graces here. Grade: A

 

Patriots: The Krafts are the best owners in sports. Turned a team that was in shambles and thisclose to moving to St Louis into a model franchise. Hired well (Pete Carroll not-included) and made great decisions from top to bottom. Even their new stadium rocks. Grade: A+

[The Tino Standard 0]

Indians --- Larry Dolan - Notorious penny pincher who purged damn near every link to their glory days in the late 1990s. Not very popular.

 

Browns --- Randy Learner (MBNA) - Inherited when his father passed away in 2002. Not much football knowledge but means well and seems to be willing to pay any price for a winner which is proven by buying out Butch Davis's contract and bringing in Phil Savage to run the Browns along w/ Romeo Crenell to coach the squad.

 

Cavs --- USHER and friends - I'm blankin on the name of the guy who headed up the organization that bought the Cavs from Gordon Gund but Usher is a minority owner (pardon the pun) of the team. Kinda hard to get a read on them after a few days of owning the club.

The new majority owner of the Cavs is Dan Gilbert, who, from everything I've seen so far, is going to be a fantastic owner. I got to cover his introductory press conference last week (there's a picture of me sitting next to LeBron on Cleveland.com right now ), and Gilbert just came across as a total first-class, do-business-the-right-way owner. Other than changing the name of Gund Arena this summer, I'm totally on board with everything he's proposing.

 

On the other hand, it is just so Cleveland that with the three sports teams in town, we've got free-spending guys owning teams in the leagues with salary caps (Gilbert with the Cavs, Lerner with the Browns), while the Indians are owned by a penny-pinching tightwad.

[Darthtiki 0]

At least on my favorite teams:

 

Packers: Owned by the people, can't bitch about that.

 

Kings: After about 15 years of horrid owners, the Maloofs have made this team from the redheadded stepchildren to a eventual championship team. However, they need a new building, but some assholes can't pony up the land because they decided to get greedy and could force the team to move.

 

Angels: Aside from the asinine name change, Arte Moreno gets it. He may let fan favorites go (Glaus and Eckstein) but he will bring back some value. Hell first thing he did was lower beer prices, can't go wrong with that.

 

Dodgers: My beloved boys in Blue...FRANK MCCOURT IS A FUCKING DOUCHEBAG! The Boston parking lot attendant, who after purchasing the team from News Corp, (who by the way kept ticket prices down as well as finally put together a solid roster) said he was committed to winning managed to go in one season from a playoff team for the first time in almost a decade to dismantling into a cellar dweller save for Gagne who is now the franchise. In closing I can sum it up in one phrase: FUCK YOU FRANK MCCOURT, TAKE YOUR BROKE ASS AND YOUR FLYING MONKEY DEPODESTA BACK TO BOSTON.

 

I'm done now

[The Czech Republic 0]

However, they need a new building

That's debatable.

[Vasarian_Brandy 0]

Indians --- Larry Dolan - Notorious penny pincher who purged damn near every link to their glory days in the late 1990s.  Not very popular.

Well, this is the year that Dolan and Shapiro said the Tribe would be back to playoff strength when they claimed ownership / GM status of the team from Hart / et. al... Considering the run the Tribe made last year and the fact we're getting a few more key pieces like Millwood and Gonzalez... Dolan did tell the people of Cleveland that he would open the purses a bit more when he saw need. We were close last year. And I'm sure Millwood and Juan-Gone didn't call cheap.

 

I'm not calling Dolan a great owner... I'm just reserving my judgement for the end of the season.

[A Happy Medium 0]

Dallas...

 

Bob Hicks Stars/Rangers..He loves his money...sold away the naming rights to the Ballpark in Arlington to become shitty ass Ameriquest Field. Overspends on the Stars, but they make good money. By overspending, he brings in NHL All Stars to play second fiddle to Modano. The Rangers...eh, he figured it out and realized baseball isnt a one man sport. He got rid of A-Rod, and the team did better. He is blessed by two great stadiums.

 

Jerry Jones - Meh, everyone knows about this guy. Doesn't build for the future like he should.

 

Mark Cuban - Mavericks...the games are fun to go to. Puts a good team on the floor every year, yet cant get over the hump. He needs to stop making trades, and lay in the bed he makes. the 2003 offseason was ridiculous. The Mavs were only a couple of games away from the finals. And...he makes two stupid trades, getting Jamison and Walker...two forwards for a forward stacked team. Of course, he did get rid of Raef LaFrentz.

[MillenniumMan831 0]

Indians --- Larry Dolan - Notorious penny pincher who purged damn near every link to their glory days in the late 1990s.  Not very popular.

Well, this is the year that Dolan and Shapiro said the Tribe would be back to playoff strength when they claimed ownership / GM status of the team from Hart / et. al... Considering the run the Tribe made last year and the fact we're getting a few more key pieces like Millwood and Gonzalez... Dolan did tell the people of Cleveland that he would open the purses a bit more when he saw need. We were close last year. And I'm sure Millwood and Juan-Gone didn't call cheap.

 

I'm not calling Dolan a great owner... I'm just reserving my judgement for the end of the season.

Fair enough. I just don't trust the guy though.

 

Plus, he did say he'd pump some money into the team at the middle of the year last year IF they were in contention. Well, they were in contention and he didn't do much, if anything to back up his word.