There’s an proprietor drawback throughout all skilled sports activities. In the event you suppose the habits of Carolina Panthers’ proprietor David Tepper was abhorrent, and it was, and must be eradicated from the sport, and it ought to, wait quarter-hour till the subsequent entitled billionaire will get fussy.
In case you missed it, which cellphone cameras by no means do, Tepper was caught tossing the backwash of his cocktail out of his suite and onto a crowd of peasants dressed as Jaguar followers through the Panthers’ shutout loss in Jacksonville on Sunday.
It continued the NFL’s pattern of large child homeowners appearing like damaging youngsters. Michael Bidwell, Daniel Snyder, Robert Kraft, Jerry Jones, Stan Kroenke, Woody Johnson, and so forth and so forth are the identical ass clowns; they simply go by totally different names. For Tepper, who’s solely splash since becoming a member of the world’s costliest boys membership has been an inordinate sum of money on failed coaches, this solidifies what followers assumed about him.
He’s one other billionaire, pissed about not being extra well-known for being a billionaire, going via a midlife disaster and opted for an NFL franchise as a substitute of a Lamborghini. I’m sorry, Dave, however there’s no loophole to take advantage of, and you’ll’t merely purchase the opposition. There’s nothing extra telling about hedge-fund managers than watching them attempt to repair a sports activities franchise.
Or in Tepper’s case, aggressively run it into the dust.
The Panthers, who traded as much as first to take Bryce Younger within the 2023 NFL Draft, are the worst workforce in soccer and are transport the No. 1 total choice to Chicago after a 12 months that noticed them rent and hearth head coach Frank Reich in an 11-month span. Cultivating Younger was the important thing to drafting him. If the plan was for an undersized QB to carry a directionless group, he was set as much as fail.
Tepper strikes me because the real-life model of Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder, solely considerably much less humorous and twice the a-hole. Put the hostage takers on speaker cellphone and we’ll see how powerful they’re after a Tepper Tantrum (™).
Neither the league nor Carolina has launched an announcement on the incident, however the habits sends a transparent message to any potential future workers: Hope you want being handled like rubbish, and keep clear if Dave is in a temper and has a beverage in hand.
Aside from a potential out-of-court settlement, there shall be no justice for these Jaguar followers. The folks of Charlotte shouldn’t maintain their breath both. Tepper threw a small spittle of drink. The league isn’t going to remove his franchise for it.
Whereas I might like to maintain piling on the Tepster, for the sake of selection, let’s speak about homeowners basically. There’s nothing anybody can do to alleviate this drawback. Roger Goodell works for Tepper and also you higher consider the 2 are working collectively to determine an amenable punishment that may neither be amenable or a punishment.
On the earth of sports activities fandom, forcing a dickhead, billionaire proprietor to promote their most precious asset for a considerable revenue one way or the other counts as a win. Whereas I don’t suppose David Tepper would get what he shelled out for Carolina — $2.4 billion, in money — ought to it come to that, there’s no scarcity of rich demi-gods prepared to overpay for sports activities groups, so who is aware of?
Take into consideration the worst boss you’ve ever labored for. Now multiply that by a billion. These are the varieties of individuals more and more working the establishments we love. As with Donald Sterling earlier than him, what Tepper received caught doing is probably going low on his listing of lifetime offenses. You don’t casually toss a drink like that if it’s a one off.
There’s solely the faintest of silver linings. David Tepper is now well-known for extra than simply being a wealthy man. He’s now the reply to the query: Hey, who was that proprietor who threw a drink at a bunch of followers?
David Tepper?
Yeah, that’s him. What a dumbass.
