Worst Owners in Sports (past and present)

Ask someone in Denver......Bowlen gets the emphatic nod.

 

Aston Villa fans would disagree with Lerner.

 

Harold Ballard.

 

For the Yinzers: Howard Baldwin

 

Not so much a "racist hosebag" as a spoiled brat who inherited a lot of money at age 25 and really didn't know a thing about running a baseball team. (Also, Jackie Robinson worked out for the Red Sox a year before he signed with the Dodgers.)

That said, he and co-partner Eddie Collins brought that franchise completely out of the doldrums in the early 1930s, renovated Fenway Park (which has helped keep it viable long after his death), and earned his Hall of Fame status in the process.

Doesn't belong on this list.

 

As a longtime Saints fan, let me add John Mecom and Tom Benson to the conversation.

Mecom was a very hands-on owner who didn't know jack about football, and Benson has spent most of his tenure (at least right up to Aug. 29, 2005) trying to extort a new stadium deal out of the city and state, and threatening to move the team to San Antonio when his efforts failed.

 

Wasn't Kenneth Behring the guy who wanted to move the Seahawks to SoCal because Seattle had too many earthquakes? By the way, if you go to the Smithsonian Museum of American History, you enter a building with his name plastered on it. One that can handle seismic activity.

Other bad owners: Sam Nassi, who was as awful and absentee with the Pacers as the Simons are great and present (well, except Mel, as of a few months ago). Man, the NBA was thick with shit owners in the early 80s.

 

The McCaskeys [/GeorgeHalas]

 

Katrina didn't change Benson's game, just how he does it. While he's shaking your right hand, he's got his left hand in your back pocket stealing your wallet.

 

Probably not the worst ever, but certainly "worthy" of "honorable" mention. His cronyism as well as his racist ways set the Sox back decades. The Sox were so bad for so long that they weren't drawing flies before the miracle '67 season. Who knows what happens if that season never occurs? Fenway Park is probably a parking lot, for one thing.

 

That would be cool.

 

Gotta be Ted Stepien of the Cleveland Cavs.
• 1981-82 season: Hired four head coaches, fired three.
• League actually had to make a rule, commonly known as the "Stepien Rule," that teams cannot trade its first-round draft pick in consecutive years.
• Attendance dropped sharply each year during his reign.
• Fired longtime fan-fave radio guy Joe Tait because he dared question some of Stepien's idiotic moves. Largest turnout of the three-year Stepien era was for Tait's final game. Fans showed up en amsse with pro-Tait, anti-Stepien signs.
• Talked about changing the team name to the Ohio Cavaliers, playing home games in Cincinnati (Ohio), Pittsburgh (NOT Ohio) and Toronto (DEFINITELY NOT Ohio), and then talked about moving the team to Toronto lock, stock and barrel.
• Team went 66-180 during his three years, lost $15 milion (that's early-80's dollars, folks).