Commentary
Limbaugh as an NFL owner might not be so bad
Published: October 11, 2009, 12:30 am
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This is slumming week in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns visiting the Bills. The Bills were so inept in Miami last Sunday that the best they could do all week was pledge allegiance to their coach, as if that helped. Eric Mangini has been such a flop in his first four games as the Browns’ new coach that a Sports Illustrated football writer called it “the worst hire in the last 25 years.”
Nothing short of a new GM, new coaching staff and some new scouts will help the Bills.
Meanwhile, the Cleveland team, under the stewardship of Randy Lerner, doesn’t even deserve the storied name “Browns,” but instead soils the memories of Otto Graham, Marion Motley, Jim Brown, Dante Lavelli, Paul Warfield, Ozzie Newsome, Leroy Kelly and a platoon of other stars who distinguished themselves from 1946 until 1995 when the original Browns became the Baltimore Ravens.
Then there is news of another shipwreck, the St. Louis Rams: That Rush Limbaugh may be part of a group which wants to buy the team. To many people who do not lean to the starboard side of politics, that news may be a signal that the end of jock civilization is at hand. But hold on. The idea of Limbaugh as an NFL owner may not be such a bad idea.
I’m aware we live in a divided nation and he bears no small responsibility for that. Limbaugh scored a chair in the studio on ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown, then quickly talked himself out of the seat when he claimed that Donovan McNabb of the Eagles enjoyed a reputation as a good quarterback only because he was black. Since the overwhelming majority of football people and fans understood that McNabb enjoys that reputation because he is a good quarterback, Limbaugh was sacked.
Rush as an owner is another matter. All manner of buffoons and martinets have owned major league sports franchises. Limbaugh has experience dealing with sports people since he once worked in the business. In the ’80s, before he was best known for ranting on the Democrats, he was employed by the Kansas City Royals when they actually were part of baseball’s royalty. He worked in group sales and Limbaugh being Limbaugh poked his nose in a number of departments. He became a chum of George Brett, the star of those Royals teams, and also found his way to the Kansas City Chiefs offices since the football and baseball stadiums are cheek by jowl. Presumably the association with the Royals taught him that the proper way to run a franchise is to hire competent sports people and allow them to do their jobs, a lesson too often lost on some NFL owners.
The Rams have been for sale for at least two years without another buyer in sight so Limbaugh has something else going for him as a potential owner. He is a Missouri native, having grown up in Cape Girardeau, a pleasant bluff above the Mississippi River near where it flows south past Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. Limbaugh’s ancestors were judges, lawyers and civic leaders so a team a short trip north in St. Louis would be somewhat natural for him.
An argument could be made that Limbaugh is too controversial, too divisive for the NFL, but sports is one thing, politics another.
Take the case of Tom DeLay, the former and disgraced Republican majority leader of the House of Representatives who was a contestant on the most recent “Dancing with the Stars” TV series. The expectation was that his appearance would be a stunt, a goofy one at that. He was no Fred Astaire but it turned out differently. As Leonard Pitts, the common-sense columnist whose work appears on The Buffalo News’ op-ed page wrote, he expected terrible but DeLay’s performances were definitely ”un-terrible.”
Even I ended up pulling for DeLay, especially after he tried to ignore painful stress fractures in the toes of both feet but tried to dance on. It turns out that “The Hammer” is a gamer.
Larry Felser, former News columnist, appears in Sunday’s editions.
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