FANS TIRED OF AWFUL SPORTS OWNERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO RUN AWAY FAST
For all the money and emotion in a community, it’s hard to believe 10 of 32 NFL teams might need new head coaches while folks in Chicago — worst of the worst — should wonder why they keep watching
From the top of your jersey to its fringe, there is no enduring tether from the sports fan to an owner. You are free to leave his anatomy, even if your grandfather took you to games and your season tickets once were heirlooms. For the life of me, I loathe folks who defend owners at their worst. I have upended these men throughout my career, and oddly, people get mad at me for doing hard work.
That happens in Chicago, where owners of the three teams that matter the most — Bears, Cubs, White Sox — have won three championships in 279 years of trying. And a fourth, the Blackhawks, keep framing their roster with creeps. And a fifth, once the most successful basketball epic ever, has died another day the last 26 years since an owner wrecking-balled it to form his own “dynasty.”
The fans are serfs. The media are cretins. The teams make billions.
“It’s obviously … been very tough,” said Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson, who choked up Tuesday, cutting veteran Corey Perry for workplace misconduct after inheriting a team overburdened with horrific stories of sexual assault and management cover-ups. Of the rumors spread online about Perry’s wrongdoing, Davidson said, “What’s gone on has been very disturbing, and I feel like I’m wearing it. I’m carrying that.”
I write this on a day when bosses who build business triumphs, in other walks of life, are struggling publicly like never before. In a league of almost superhuman popularity, the NFL might have 10 of 32 franchises dismissing head coaches and looking for new ones. Imagine functioning in a craft where almost one-third of your operative skillmakers are found wanting. Sportswriting is my blood, and at this point, I can’t compile enough names to fill gigs in the biggest of all American sports alliances. It’s the recent part-and-parcel of enterprises that pursue new owners based entirely on the depth of financial portfolios — such as those of baseball’s Steven Cohen — and settle for the likes of David Tepper, a bustling hedge-fund manager who has created chaos in Carolina thanks to football’s second-richest ownership.
Why is Tepper owning the Panthers? He has a net worth of $20.6 billion. And he spent nine years as minority owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who’ve made their name by having only three head coaches in 54 seasons. Since purchasing the team for $2.2 billion in 2018, Tepper has been the antithesis of his background, firing three coaches in mid-season — Frank Reich became the latest, after losing 10 of 11 games in his only campaign — and hiring an unfathomable sixth coach at the position. He fired Ron Rivera. He hired and fired Matt Rhule. He hired Steve Wilks as an interim last season, watched him finally bring success at 6-6, then dumped him and hired Reich before firing him months later. Tepper is what Donald Trump would be as an NFL owner, not grasping that the Panthers went to a Super Bowl with a league-best 15-1 record in 2016.
Patience is disregarded in the toilet. He hires, agrees to a big buyout, and fires. All because commissioner Roger Goodell and the owners liked his bank account, knowing they could take advantage of him on the field. What he knows behind the computer of a high-risk partnership has nothing to do with his lack of institutional football knowledge. He is 30-63, second-worst in the league in that period.
“I would like to have somebody here for 20 or 30 years,” Tepper moped in his latest firing press conference. “I would like to have somebody that would say the eulogy at my funeral in 30 years. OK, maybe it's 40 years, I hope.”
The poor folks, stuck in one of the league’s smaller markets, sincerely hope he fades away from Charlotte tomorrow. Forget it. He has a national jackpot, one of 32 who own teams in a league with $120 billion in media income. Tepper is no fool. He’s just another warped owner, in a village of them. “Listen, once upon a time, I was just a fan, a poor kid in Pittsburgh. That's what I was,” he said. “So, I know what it's like to be a fan. Every week I sit in that box, we live and die with every play. So, I understand how the fans feel and the frustration. And I appreciate that. I will say this: We will make it better.”
How? When he lets a coach, a general manager and scouts pick Bryce Young with the overall No. 1 choice — trading two first-round picks and star receiver DJ Moore for the top pick — and watches Young struggle? While the No. 2 pick, C.J. Stroud, looks like one of the best rookie quarterbacks ever in Houston? Explained Tepper: “Originally, we thought we were going to the No. 2 pick, and we thought we'd get C.J. We thought the Texans were going to take Bryce. And listen, we preferred Bryce. He was our No. 1 choice. We had a lot of conviction. Now, look, everything that's right here, everything that's wrong here, ultimately it's my fault. I’ve got the final say. But as far as those decisions, whether it's Frank Reich or it's Bryce Young, the decisions were made. And in the case of Bryce it was almost ... I believe it was a unanimous decision from the coaches and scouts. And very strong opinions at the time.”
Did Tepper like the Young pick? Was he behind it at the time? “I was totally confident in agreeing with that pick,” he said.
So, he is completely to blame for firing the wrong interim in Wilks, picking the wrong full-time coach in Reich and approving the selection of Young. Why would anyone think he’d hire a better coach — and that any coach worth his while would go anywhere near him? Last year, Tepper wanted Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, who decided to stay in Detroit. Now, Johnson will be a top selection in the sequences about to happen. Depending on Jim Harbaugh’s quirky preferences, Johnson could have the lead position with the Los Angeles Chargers, who have powerhouse QB Justin Herbert to unleash. Maybe the Buffalo Bills will fire Sean McDermott and give the Josh Allen experience to a young guy. Perhaps the Bears — who may have lucked out with the Carolina trade, but don’t hold your breath — fire Matt Eberflus and draft Caleb Williams with the top pick.
Think Johnson would go? Why would anyone join forces with Tepper? “You guys, upon your own reflection looking into what happened in the season, can understand that. Again, I'm not going to get into the particulars, but I do have patience,” the owner claimed. “My reputation away from this game is one of extreme patience. Now that patience comes with good performance and things you want to see, progress you want to see in different aspects.”
For the third time in three seasons, Tepper has given the NFL an uncomfortable timespan: making sure a coach doesn’t make it through his first year, with Reich joining Nathaniel Hackett and Urban Meyer. This is nothing fresh. In the last 12 years, a dozen coaches have lost jobs after one season ot less. If so much time is devoted to probing coaches, why dump them so quickly? I thought I worked for dunderheads in the media business. The people who run teams are askew in the brainstream, brought down by egomania. When Fox Sports analyst Greg Olsen says he’s intrigued by the Panthers’ job, it might sound funnier than the commercials where he’s ridiculing Terry Bradshaw. He might be the one, though he only has coached his son’s Pop Warner team.
You might wonder why Bill Belichick, devoid of spirit and success, would want to return to head coaching at 72. But the shortfall of serious candidates might lead him to a serviceable team, the Washington Commanders, run by a private-equity firm investor named Josh Harris. Hoodie is history in New England, where the Krafts pay him $25 million this season to finish 2-15 and 27-34 since Tom Brady left. If he wants to run one more show, he could have a shot on name alone. “I don’t worry about what everybody else is saying,” Belichick said. “I’ve heard good, I’ve heard bad. I don’t really care.”
But the coaches that work in the league now are younger, loaded with fire, in a line that started with Sean McVay and continues with Kyle Shanahan, Nick Sirianni and Mike McDaniel. They don’t come from college ball, as Tepper knows. They don’t come from failed NFL circumstances, as Tepper knows.
Pop Warner, I say.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.