Can I Make Reading About Bad People Doing Bad Things Fun?

(Note: I was going to run this a few weeks from now because I try to space out the sports-related content as much as possible because I know not all of you are into it, but then the Lakers got bought by former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Jared Kushner’s baby brother Josh, who is shockingly much richer than Jared, and since my topics are so rarely ripped from the headlines it seemed the thing to do.)

One problem with life in the United States these days is every time you entertain the fleeting thought that maybe the story you’re reading is the worst possible example of whatever human behavior is being reported and at least now you can go on safe in the knowledge that you won’t ever again see a more extreme form of that particular pathology, you are almost immediately proven wrong.

It’s like some men think there’s a direct correlation between acting like and having a bigger dick, I have no idea what some women—Karens and tradwives in particular—are thinking but it doesn’t seem good, and it’s worth mentioning that non-binary and trans people are just trying to live their lives while some of the most powerful aforementioned men and women seem bound and determined to make that virtually impossible.

It can’t all be fixed in one essay, so I think the best plan is to focus on a single group sporting a particularly egregious brand of abhorrent behavior in hopes that lessons learned can be extrapolated to curtailing the enshittification of our planet writ large. It was a tough choice, as there are some truly odious clusters of humanity out there at present, what with all seven plus a few more deadly sins currently slithering up unparalleled growth curves. That said, the subject of today’s exploration of the ever-expanding parameters of jaw-droppingly sociopathic behavior is a truly elite entrant in the field: owners of professional sporting franchises.

For the past 30 years or more, pro sports owners have constituted the most narcissistic and profitable socialist collective in human history. All major American sports have some form of revenue sharing, so while there is a financial pecking order, everyone’s nest is lined with the feathers of long-extinct birds bought at Sotheby’s. In this case a rising tide apparently lifts all yachts, as long as the price tag has at least eight figures.

Sports owners have been awful since their earliest days, and unsurprisingly, greed is their most vivid throughline. Arguably the biggest scandal in baseball history, when members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox threw the World Series, was in response to the mind-numbing cheapskateness of team owner Charlie Comisky.

And while greed flows freely in all owners’ suites, it’s not what makes them special. It isn’t even so much their incredible entitlement and self-absorption, though that is special. It’s more their ability to do such amazing things with their cocktail of greed, entitlement, self-absorption and cluelessness that makes them truly worthy of study. I was reminded of this a while back when I read a story about Tom Dundon, owner of the 2026 National Hockey League champion Carolina Hurricanes.

I liked Tom right away when I found out he became a billionaire largely through predatory lending. It’s especially impressive he became the B word despite lending practices he devised leading to his firm paying $550 million to 34 states in a 2020 settlement. And I really liked this: While he was CEO of Santander Consumer USA, a huge subprime auto lender, the company paid $9 million to settle federal allegations of improperly repossessing vehicles from military personnel. Kinda makes the Hurricanes’ every-game tribute to service members seem a bit insincere, but my guess is most fans don’t know about the $9 million thing.

Dundon does love tributes, especially ones to himself and his family. For those of you who don’t know, when you win an NHL title you get your name engraved on the Stanley Cup, and while hockey is still something of a niche sport in the US, even casual fans understand the Cup itself is unique, and produces more emotion and wacky behavior than any other trophy. Having yours be one of the team’s 55 allotted names is the dream of most everyone who’s ever laced up hockey skates. Tradition dictates the team captain’s name goes first, followed by all those who played in at least 41 of 82 regular-season games—in alphabetical order—then coaches, owners, and staff.

But Dundon, who also owns the Portland Trailblazers and whose nickname “El Cheapo” seems totally on the mark, clearly is a trailblazer himself, unbound by tradition. So he put his name first, then his wife and his five kids, none of whom have roles with the team, and one of whom seems to be about 7. The next 22 names are coaches and front-office staff, and then the players start on line nine. For some reason the team only submitted 53 names, and among those left off were the team nutritionist and defenseman Joel Nystrom, who played in 38 games. Most egregious was the omission of one Bob Gorman, head equipment manager who’s been with the club since 1976 when they were the Hartford Whalers. I don’t have room here to explain even the little I know about how critical equipment managers are to an NHL team, just know they’re really important.

All names must be approved by the league, but because as in all major sports the NHL commissioner works for the owners, he doesn’t say no to them often, if ever. NFL owners seem a particularly detestable bunch, so it’s no surprise Donald Trump did everything he could to get in, and I hate them even more for keeping him out because if they hadn’t the world would be a much better place and a lot of people wouldn’t be dead. But hey, how could they have known; they were just getting back at him for suing them when he owned a USFL team. Revenge seems a dish best served in the owner’s box.

This is why I was kind of surprised when everyone in the sporting world seemed so convinced that former Redskins/Commanders owner Danny Snyder was such a cancer he had to be banished lest his predisposition toward sexual harassment, financial mismanagement and fostering a toxic workplace culture give the rest of the boys any ideas. But if that’s the standard, a lot of teams should have for sale signs up. Like the 2026 NBA champion New York Knickerbockers, owned by all-around great guy and Harvey Weinstein’s best buddy, James Dolan. This Dolan had the good fortune to be born to a billionaire, and doesn’t like the people he doesn’t like so much he uses facial recognition software at Madison Square Garden to identify and boot any lawyers involved in litigation against him, or pretty much anyone else who criticizes him.

Keys to owners’ boxes have been held by open racists (to name but a few, LA Clippers’ Donald Sterling, Cincinnati Reds’ Marge Schott, and Houston Texans’ Bob McNair, who reacted at an owners’ meeting to Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players taking a knee during the National Anthem with the pithy, “We can’t have the inmates running the prison,” later apologized, then told the Wall Street Journal he regretted apologizing); convicted felons (SF 49ers Eddie DeBartolo Jr., for failing to report being extorted by and paying the governor of Louisiana $400,000 for a gambling license but was pardoned by Trump; NY Yankees George Steinbrenner, for smuggling $100,000 in 1974 cash to Richard Nixon’s re-election funds—the classics never get old, do they; and best of all, John Spano, who convinced banks he was worth $230 million when in fact he was only worth $5 million so they loaned him $80 million to help him buy the NY Islanders for $165 million. He did 10 years for 16 counts of forgery, adding that he had a harder time getting $12,000 in financing for his first car than $80 million for a hockey team); and because it’s a boys club, sex offenders (NE Patriots Robert Kraft, arrested on two counts of happy endings received in 2019 while in Florida for his team’s 37-31 win in the AFC Championship Game; NY Giants’ co-owner Steve Tisch, whose name appears in the Epstein Files 440 times, some for “scouting reports” on women Epstein would provide him; and so you know it’s not just an American thing, Harrod’s department store and Fulham Football Club owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, whose reign of sexual terror at Harrod’s featured allegations of sexual abuse, trafficking and/or rape from more than 400 women.)

Okay, that got kind of dark, and I’m sorry. I’m as guilty as anyone of spending too much money and time on the glittering toys of this band of megalomaniacs. We deserve better, the athletes deserve better, and the sports themselves really deserve better. It makes me crazy that as the play and players continue to get better, the people who run sports get so much worse. For instance, it’s arguable I haven’t even mentioned the two most historically corrupt sports acronyms: NCAA and FIFA.

I suppose no one should be surprised that pro sports C-suites are filled with people you wouldn’t want to…well, anything having to do with your life really, except maybe get you season tickets. And there are seemingly fine folks who own teams, take care of their players and fans and even give hundreds of millions away to good causes (Miami Dolphins Steven Ross, Atlanta Falcons Art Blank, KC Royals John Sherman, to name but a few).

But if sports fans know anything, it’s statistics and probability, and while there have never been many malevolence-free paths to a billion bucks, I’m not sure any are left, so expecting future owners to be better people would be like expecting the Astros and Patriots to stop cheating.