ON TODAY'S SCORECARD
4 Worst Owners in Sports History
There is bad. And then there is bad.
There are a few reasons why an owner can become a “bad” owner. Some are outright terrible and embarrass you to be a fan, making it near impossible to wear your favorite team’s gear out in public.
Others are so unbelievably cheap that there’s no reason to buy your favorite player’s jersey. The second he or she needs a contract, they will be jettisoned to another franchise. Then, there is the owner who just meddles in everything and usually messes it up.
However, a bad owner can be forever. Bad owners are the one issue that can truly chase a fanbase away, sometimes forever.
Here are the worst 4 per Fansided:
4. Ted Stepien: Cleveland Cavaliers
In the 1980s, Ted Stepien continued to buy more and more of the Cleveland Cavaliers until he held a controlling interest (eventually up to 82 percent). He made a few disastrous decisions, and he even considered playing some of the team’s home games in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Toronto. At one point, with dwindling fan interest due to Stepien's mistakes, he threatened to take the team to Toronto for good.
Stepien was known to do interviews where he’d make racist or inflammatory remarks about the makeup of the league. He took over the team’s broadcasting rights, and that caused longtime play-by-play announcer Joe Tait to lose his job. On the last game of the 1980-81 season, the fans came to the arena to honor Tait, and that’s it. It was the best attendance for a game in four years. In the 1981-82 season, Stepien fired three different coaches.
Stepien’s lasting legacy was trading away first-round picks. He was so bad with draft assets that the league banned him from trading picks away. The NBA even considered banning teams from trading consecutive picks across the board, and they eventually opened up trading for the Cavs, but all trades needed league approval. When Stepien eventually sold the franchise to the Gund family, the league allowed them to pay a hefty sum to get the first-round picks back.
3. Marge Schott: Cincinnati Reds
At just 39 years old, Marge Schott became a widow when her husband Charles passed away from a heart attack. She gained all his assets, which came from his wealth in the city of Cincinnati. Over a decade later, Schott had a chance to purchase a controlling interest in her favorite team, the Reds.
She quickly gained a reputation for being cheap and generally horrible. She criticized players for taking paychecks while they were on the injured list. The Reds had one of the smallest staffs in baseball because Schott didn’t want to pay more people. She would even turn the lights down and turn down the heat in the winter to save on bills. Many even said she was upset the Reds won the World Series in a sweep in 1990, saying she lost a lot of revenue due to the series not going seven games. Feels like we’re focusing on the wrong thing here.
The worst of the worst came with the racist views many claim she held. There were allegations that there were bans on hiring certain people in the front office based on the color of their skin. She threatened the radio broadcast team that they would be fired because they put Macho Man Randy Savage on the air for entertainment purposes. There’s more, but this feels like enough to showcase the issues.
2. Daniel Snyder: Washington Commanders
Snyder’s controversies piled up over years of incompetence. He was a bad owner in terms of the on-field product, but he was an even worse owner with how he treated his employees. It’s a laundry list of complaints, one more disgusting than the next. His treatment of Washington’s cheerleaders, if the reports are remotely true, was awful at best. He sued a reporter because he didn’t like how he was portrayed in an article. It was so bad to work for Snyder that his team was investigated by the House of Representatives, in which he testified before the Oversight and Reform Committee.
Of course, he would double down on the name “Redskins” despite calls from across the spectrum saying it was a racist name. He refused to meet with Native American leaders, despite one being depicted on the helmet of the team. He was on record saying he would “never” change the name, but after decades of public pressure and as a last-ditch effort to keep his team, he ushered in the change to “Washington Football Team,” and eventually “Commanders.” When he did sell the team to Josh Harris and his group of investors, fans celebrated like we’ve never seen.
1. Donald Sterling: Los Angeles Clippers
Most would agree that Donald Sterling is the worst person to own a team in North American sports. He was a joke for most of his time owning the second team in Los Angeles, and he was the main reason the Clippers never came close to the Los Angeles Lakers’ popularity. The Clippers were moved from San Diego, where they were the only NBA team at the time, and used Al Davis’ precedent to keep them there. Despite sharing an arena with a way more popular team, Sterling refused to sell the team or relocate despite multiple opportunities to do so.
Sterling hits all the big notes of a terrible owner. He was sued several times for both sexual harassment and discrimination. He got way too involved in operations, including the firing of several head coaches. When Sterling owed fired coaches money on their guaranteed contracts, he forced them to take him to court. He would even heckle his own players. He did this in full public view on the court during games.
The most impactful controversy was when he was caught on tape making racist remarks to his mistress. The recording blew up, gaining national headlines and forcing the NBA to react. It got so bad that Clippers players considered a boycott of an important playoff game, but they chose to instead block all Clippers logos during warmups. LeBron James said there was “no room in the NBA for Donald Sterling.” NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced that Sterling had been banned from the league for life and fined $2.5 million, essentially ending his terrible tenure as owner and forcing him to move on from sports ownership forever.
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