Think MLSE is bad? A look at 10 of the worst team owners in Canadian sports history
Sean Fitz-Gerald National Post February 6, 2015
On Friday, the Toronto Raptors host the Los Angeles Clippers, a team with an obscenely wealthy new owner, Steve Ballmer, who replaced an owner who was merely obscene. It has been six months since the retired Microsoft chief executive finalized a US$2-billion deal to buy the NBA team. The team’s former owner, Donald Sterling, was banned from the league for life last spring after a series of racist remarks were made public. And long before that, he was viewed as one of the worst owners in American sports. Now that the Clippers are breathing fresh air, and to mark their Canadian visit, National Post reporter Sean Fitz-Gerald examines 10 owners who have been less than successful in Canada:
10. Michael Feterik
Team: Calgary Stampeders (CFL, 2001-2005)
After stepping away from plans to buy a team in Ottawa, the California-based corrugated cardboard box magnate officially took control of the Stampeders in November 2001, just a few weeks before they won the Grey Cup. For the next three seasons, the team finished last in its division, getting progressively worse each year, to the point where, in 2004, the Stampeders managed only four wins. Feterik wanted to make his son, Kevin, the starting quarterback. He forced legendary coach Wally Buono out of Calgary. Matt Dunigan, the former quarterback, became coach and general manager, even though he had never held even one of those job titles. (He suggested he could perform his general manager’s roles “in a couple hours at the end of the day.”) The team’s kicker retired to become president.
Postscript: Since Feterik sold the team, in 2005, the Stampeders have made three trips to the Grey Cup, winning twice, including this past year.
9. Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment
Team: Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL, 1996-present), Toronto Raptors (NBA, 1998-present), Toronto FC (MLS, 2007-present)
Its incredibly profitable NHL team has not won the Stanley Cup since 1967, its basketball team has won precisely one playoff series in 20 years of trying, and its soccer team is still waiting to make its playoff debut almost a decade after launching. No ownership group in Canada can match MLSE in size — it also has real estate holdings in downtown Toronto, as well as owning an American Hockey League team, restaurants and television channels — and none can match the agony it has inflicted on its fan base. On-field results are only part of what it takes to make this list, though, which is why MLSE is not ranked higher.
Postscript: Yet to be written.
8. Horn Chen
Team: Ottawa Rough Riders (CFL, 1995-1996)
Originally hailed as a saviour for buying the troubled franchise in March 1995, Chen, a Chicago-based businessman specializing in minor-league sports, quickly became known for his reclusive behaviour. He rarely visited Ottawa. Famously, he never once even saw his own team play in person. And that is probably for the best, because the Rough Riders went 3-15 in his first year, and they posted the same record in his second year. Chen was the owner when, during a dispersal draft in 1995, the team drafted a player who had died four months earlier. By the end of 1996, Chen was gone. “My first major mistake was buying the team,” he told the Ottawa Citizen in a rare interview that November. “If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have gotten involved.”
Postscript: Ottawa returned to the CFL in 2002, only to die again in 2005. It is back, now as the RedBlacks, who missed the playoffs in their debut season last year.
7. Daryl Katz
Team: Edmonton Oilers (NHL, 2008-present)
In six seasons under his ownership, the Oilers have never made the playoffs. They are on their way to a seventh season without having to print post-season tickets and, worse, they seem to be at risk of allowing their cache of acquired young talent to spoil. The Oilers are averaging a coaching change a year under Katz, having circled back to the coach who was in charge the year he took control (current GM Craig MacTavish), before placing Todd Nelson behind the bench in December. The owner has also toyed with local emotions outside the arena, having made a public trip to Seattle during a tense period in arena negotiations with the city of Edmonton. A recent report in The Globe and Mail suggests he had also been angling for leverage with an arena lease in Hamilton.
Postscript: Yet to be written.
6. Bruce McNall
Team: Toronto Argonauts (1991-1994)
In 1991, they arrived with bright lights and loud noises, the Hollywood-inspired group of McNall, Wayne Gretzky and actor John Candy. They bought the Argos and they signed a bona fide star prospect for an unprecedented sum, a four-year contract worth $18-million to Notre Dame standout Raghib (The Rocket) Ismail. The Argos won the Grey Cup that year, but interest and attendance waned. In 1994, McNall pleaded guilty to fraud — the total of which exceeded US$230-million — in a U.S. court. The team was left in another uncertain position.
Postscript: Candy, the Toronto native, died of a heart attack that same year. “John was — I know for a fact because I had the conversation with him — he was looking at buying the Argos just before he died,” former Argos lineman Don Moen has said. “Whether he was going to be able to do it, I don’t know. But he loved it.”
5. Sherwood Schwarz
Team: Toronto Argonauts (CFL, 1999-2003)
An insurance executive from New York, Schwarz oversaw some of the most outrageous storylines in recent CFL history, which is saying something. One of his executives tried to stage a pre-game wet T-shirt contest featuring exotic dancers, an idea shot down with both speed and anger from the league’s head office. He hired a prickly general manager who hired a coach (John Huard) who wanted players to eat popsicles after practice as a means of physical therapy. Schwarz, who reportedly bought the team for only $100,000, stopped paying the bills in 2003, and the Argos descended into bankruptcy. Some players lost bonus money. Deep layoffs were made in the front office. There was some question whether the Argos might not end up folding. “I’m sorry I failed the fans,” he said.
Postscript: They won the Grey Cup in their first year after he left, and added another one in 2012, but the Argos are still on shaky ground, facing homelessness when their lease at Rogers Centre expires in 2017.
4. Peter Pocklington
Team: Edmonton Oilers (NHL, 1976-1998)
On Aug. 9, 1988, he sold Canada’s most precious resource: Wayne Gretzky. Pocklington sold perhaps the greatest hockey player in history to Los Angeles for players and US$15-million in cash. Pocklington had broken up a dynasty, and was cast as a villain. “I really don’t give a damn what some of the unwashed have to say,” he told reporters in October. “Some day they’ll grow up. And I don’t really care if they do or not.
Postscript: In October, during a reunion of the 1984 Oilers Stanley Cup team, fans gave Pocklington an ovation. “I wasn’t sure what was going to happen,” he said. “As you can imagine.”
3. Bernie Glieberman
Team: Ottawa Rough Riders (CFL: 1991-1994), Ottawa Renegades (CFL, 2005)
A businessman from Michigan, Bernie installed his son, Lonie, with the team. In the first go-round, that led to the signing of defensive lineman Dexter Manley, who was in exile from the NFL for substance abuse. He was not the star he once was, in Ottawa. As they began their second attempt, in 2005, Lonie was the subject of a Q&A in the Ottawa Sun, an interview in which he was asked of his biggest personal regret. “When I lived here, there was this chick I liked for a long time … we always kinda flirted and talked,” he told the paper. “This one time, she put her hands in my pockets and I didn’t pursue it. I regretted it the very next day, and I still do.” The next question: What is wrong with the owner or president of a team dating its cheerleaders? “I don’t know,” he answered. “What is wrong with that?”
Postscript: There are still football fans in Ottawa, remarkably.
2. Jeffrey Loria
Team: Montreal Expos (1999-2002)
They were not marketed very well, nor were they easy to find on television and radio for English-speaking fans. The Expos withered on the vine under Loria, who became one of the most unpopular figures in the history of Montreal sports. The Expos — or what was left of them — moved to Washington in 2005, and many blame Loria, who got into the team as a minority stakeholder, but quickly increased his hold. “I was fooled,” former co-owner Mark Routtenberg told a reporter four years ago. “He said all the right things, how Montreal was close to New York for him, how he speaks French because of his art dealings in France, how he loved the game of baseball. I really thought he had the intention of making baseball work in Montreal.”
Postscript: There is hope baseball might return, but hope is all there is, for now.
1. Harold Ballard
Team: Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL, 1972-1990)
In 1972, an Ontario judge found Ballard guilty of fraud following a case that showed how he had used $82,000 from Maple Leaf Gardens to renovate his home. “Actually, I don’t feel guilty,” he told the CBC that year. Feelings or no, Ballard still went to jail. When he got out, he resumed a reign of terror that turned the franchise into a punch line. He was a bully who chased away good players. He refused to allow female reporters into the home team’s dressing room, in contravention of league rules. “Women will be allowed to go in the locker room if they undress first,” he said, according to The Los Angeles Times. He removed a portrait of the Queen from the Gardens because, he said, she “never paid any taxes for me.” He had feuds, both public and private. His team shriveled on the ice. “He sees himself as the great promoter, which is a lot of bull,” Toronto Star columnist Frank Orr told the Times. “He couldn’t promote the second coming with the original cast.”
Postscript: They still make money, but the Leafs still lose on the ice.
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