At the turn of the century, neither the Boston Red Sox nor the New England Patriots had experienced
Super Bowl victory.
The Boston Bruins, who are almost 30 years old, and the Boston Celtics, who dominated the NBA and won 16 championships in the first 30 seasons of the league, had each won just
one title in the previous 14 years.
On February 3, 2002, the Patriots won their first championship, ending a 15+ year championship
drought for Boston. Over the following 17 years, the Patriots would add five more victories, the Boston
Red Sox would add six more, and the Bruins and Celtics would each score one victory.
Based on their financial moves of late, one could question if these 4 ownership groups have even close to
the same passion for winning championships as they once did. The Celtics spent a lot to win during the
KG era, but in each season since 2008 that ended in the NBA Finals or Eastern Conference Finals,
they’ve always seemed to be one player short. Yes injuries have played a part, but every team deals with
injuries. The Golden State Warriors luxury tax bills dwarf the Celtics’ in the past decade and that’s had
an effect.
The Red Sox went from the perennial 2nd largest payroll in Major League Baseball to running their team
like they can’t afford to compete anymore. There was no excuse to let homegrown young stars Mookie
Betts and Xander Bogarts go. Principal owner John Henry seems to have checked out and moved on to
other financial endeavors.
John Henry is in his mid 70’s and Kraft and Jacobs are both in their 80’s. Wyc Grousbeck is the youngest
of the quartet now at 62. At the start of this century, none of these owners had ever won a championship
and all were younger than 60. Winning was a priority. You could say, you can’t blame someone further
up in age for prioritizing other things more and you’d be right, but they could also sell their teams right?
One thing that’s for sure is when each of these owners cash out they will make a windfall due to the
extraordinary increase of value of each franchise since they were purchased. Each owner could lead their
respective leagues in payroll for the next ten years and still make out like bandits when they sell.
But they say the only thing rich businessmen like more than money is more money, so it’s always
important to keep that in mind. Making money will always be a priority. Ideally you’d have some filthy
rich billionaire like Balmer or Cuban owning your team, but even the latter has tightened the purse
strings some of late. I’d argue that Cuban as he’s aged and after winning a title is no longer as passionate
about the Mavs as he once was.
I think all 4 ownership groups still want to win, but the passion isn’t there for anyone as it was two
decades ago, especially. not with the Red Sox. What might bring that passion back is having an owner
who has never won a championship. To get that would necessitate a sale though and none of these
groups are looking to offload their cash cows yet.
While we definitely could have worse owners, it’s still on us as fans to push these men to field as
competitive teams as they can. They’ll use salary caps, luxury taxes, tax aprons, and financial flexibility
as their keywords for why they don’t pay a player. No need for us as fans to carry their (expensive) water
and defend them like I’ve see in recent years when they cheap out.
They can surely defend themselves. Just like they can all pay to have championship contenders if they so
desire.
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