Worst Owner in Sports History?

My vote for a new name before the Renegades and now remains the Beavers.

 

Lew Wolff should be on the list.

 

Maybe a bit of a wild card here, because he was an owner for just a short time, but Len Barrie should almost be in the running, not just for his incompetence and part of the gong show that was the Koules and the Gang ownership group that ran (sort of) the Tamp Bay Lightning for a couple of years -- I say ran, but really the bickering between Len and Orin got so bad that Bettman had to separate them -- but he also allegedly has swindled a number of ex-NHLers out of millions of dollars in his Bear Mountain development as well as running the Victoria Grizzlies of the BCHL into the ground.

 

“The fans, and I don't blame them, are interested in the won-loss record and I guess that’s the barometer you judge success or failure by if you’re a fan.”

William Clay Ford confirming what Lions fans had always believed - he had no interest in winning.

 

I'm going to cast my vote for Wirtz, however I think Tom Hicks deserves some discussion here. Yes, he won a Stanley Cup with Dallas, but many would say he was one of the key players in skyrocketing salaries in sport during his time as an owner — ARod, Bill Guerin, etc. — and his overextension and financial woes ended up decimating the Texas Rangers, Dallas Stars, and Liverpool FC.

 

You don't know much history, do you?

 

This thread would not be complete without a more thorough discussion of the comical sports ownership career of John Y. Brown--the only man in history to own and destroy three different sports franchises in less than a three year period.

Brown first owned the Kentucky Colonels which was one of the most successful ABA franchises at the time he bought it--and promptly put his wife and a 10 member all-female board (mostly his wife's friends) in charge of running the team.

During the 76 merger talks, Brown made no effort to try get the Colonels included in the merger, but instead asked for a 3 million dollar check to shut down his franchise, to which the league eagerly agreed (by comparison, the owners of the Spirits of St. Louis, a less successful and viable franchise, were given a deal that has paid them hundreds of millions over the years--shrewd negotiating skills there, John).

Brown then promptly bought the Buffalo Braves of the NBA and negotiated one of the most bizarro deals in history where he essentially swapped franchises with Celtics owner Irv Levin, so that Levin could move the team to California, where it was renamed the Clippers.

Brown then had a comically inept (and very short) run atop the Celtics where he turned the NBA's proudest franchise into a laughingstock for a couple years (end of 70s, right before Bird showed up and made everything right again) by making idiotic trades of draft picks and players without Auerbach's consent or approval--leading to Auerbach publically threatening to leave for the Knicks if forced to keep working for Brown.

Brown then sold the Celts after only a couple years of ownership and ran for Governor of Kentucky in 79---and WON.

So, in less than three years, Brown caused one franchise to disappear altogether, another to disappear in name (the Buffalo Braves), and led the sport's proudest franchise to the darkest period in its then history. Not sure what kind of governor he was.

 

Yeah, the Colonels getting left out of the merger was crazy -- they had been one of the most consistently successful ABA franchises.

And the Buffalo Braves had a brief period of contention and reasonable gate success in the early 1970s before Brown took over. Not sure if Buffalo could have supported both an NBA and NHL team but Brown made sure it wouldn't happen.

 

Just to expound on this, the year before Brown bought them (76), the Braves reached the Eastern Conference semifinals where they lost in six to the eventual champ Celtics. A year or so later the Braves no longer existed. And when he bought the Celtics they were about a year removed from being NBA champions--the next two season they dropped to 30-52 and 29-53--and that decline was very much connected to the trades Brown did on his own behind Auerbach's back. The guy truly had the midas touch when it came to franchise-wrecking. I recall after he was elected Governor, Auerbach had a quote along the lines of "I bet he tries to trade the Kentucky Derby."

 

Damn, that was good!

I knew Ballard was not universally beloved, but I had not heard some of those stories before. Thanks for sharing.

 

My favorite Ballard story:

In the mid 1970s when the NHL passed a rule that players last names must be on the back of their jerseys, Ballard refused, citing it as a threat to program sales. After being threatened with a large fine, Ballard "complied" by putting the names in blue letters on the Leafs' blue road jerseys, and in white on their white home jerseys, making them unreadable. After being fined, he backed down and put the names in the opposite colors.

 

Some more Ballard crap ( and I think I should hold off so JR can toss some in)
The firing/hiring/firing of Roger Neilsen in the late 1970s that made even Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner say whoa.

After destroying The Gondola, he then sold numerous chairs with Foster Hewitt's name stenciled on them under the guise that each was Hewitt's personal, favorite chair.

Ripping Darryl "the son I never had" Sittler constantly for his play.

Trading Lanny McDonald for jack squat.

And I may be forgetful, but trashing Borje Salming by saying he could skate into a corner with a dozen eggs in his pocket and not break one.