William Clay Ford ranks among the most futile NFL owners of all time AP Photo/Paul Sancya
No American sports league has a bigger collection of rich, ego maniacal personalities leading the helm of sports teams than the NFL. For all the claims that these 32 men stand together against all foes seems to get thrown out of the window as owners see each other and the NFL itself.
Let us remember this is a league featuring ownership groups who have tried to secretly move their clubs to a new city in the middle of the night, have moved their teams up and down the west coast at will, and who cling desperately to a Thanksgiving Day game to give their team any sort of relevance.
While they are a few good football owners, by and large these men count among the worst owners in sports. SI.com recently listed these five men among the worst NFL owners of the current generation.
• Al Davis- Oakland Raiders
• William Clay Ford- Detroit Lions
• Daniel Snyder- Washington Redskins
• Mike Brown- Cincinnati Bengals
• Denise Debartolo York- San Francisco 49ers
Besides being terrible football owners three of these teams have something in common, the Raiders, Redskins, and Bengals all do not employ a General Manager. We could also argue that the Lions, in recent year also did not have a GM.
This is by far the best list of worst owners SI.com has complied in recent memory. However I think The Lions owner should be on top of that list and topping the list of worst sports owners of all time. At the very least AL Davis has a few Super Bowl Rings to his credit, and at one time he was an innovator of American football.
Ford, on the other hand has never been able to even see his team play in a super bowl, and is the one of a few sports owners to see his team achieve a perfect season in reverse. On top of that the lowly Lions squandered away one of the best talents of the modern NFL era in one Barry Sanders.
Ford has owed this team for more than forty years not a one of them achieving any sort of success, beyond the 1991 version of the Lions. To the ultra rich Ford his Lions are nothing more that a hobby, a distraction from how bad is other business, Ford Motor Company, is performing.
Snyder on the other hand runs his organization like it is a fantasy sports league on Yahoo!. He spends big money on talent, some of which is several years past their prime and cannot figure out why he cannot win. Not even Joe Gibbs could bail this clown out and provide some legacy of success.
As for Mike Brown, if he were running a team in the Ohio Prison League he may be counted among the best owners, but his players behave so badly that the NFL had to establish new rules of player conduct. What a joke. His latest move adding troubled OL Andre Smith to the mix is a ticking time bomb that could land his entire roster and coaching staff in the joint.
As for the 49ers Denise came to power when her brother Eddie became mired in apolitical scandal and several lawsuits ruined what was once the premier team in the NFL. This team has never recovered from that shake up in 2000 and Denise along with her husband John York have proved themselves inept in running a NFL franchise. Drafting Alex Smith number one overall a few years ago has further set this club behind. Hopefully one day the 49ers can return themselves to the greatness of the 1980’s.
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