The weeks leading up to the Super Bowl hasn’t been kind to the owners of professional sports franchises.

First there was news of the lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions, and perhaps as much as $1 billion, from the owners of the NY Mets. The suit, brought by the trustee trying to recover assets in the massive Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme, alleges that the the pair knew or should have known that their investment returns resulted from Madoff’s fraud.

Interesting to see that the Madoff proceedings have their own web site, where you can peek at this complaint (nearly 400 pages) as well as all the other documents filed in court.

Then the Center for Public Integrity published an investigative report on Quicken Loans and its founder, Dan Gilbert, who also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association. Not a pretty picture. FYI–there are links to some related stories as well.

Finally, there’s the mess in Washington, explained in this email Meda received from her friend, Marty Schwartz, also a well known criminologist.

Marty wrote:

Hi – Many of you teach courses in corporate crime or sociology of sports, or have sections that might include corporate bullying in them. A wonderful case study, with many thousands of source documents available on line, would be the billionaire Dan Snyder’s record with ownership of the Washington Redskins, which has taken one of the most valuable assets in professional sports (like Manchester United or the New York Yankees) but unlike them has created a losing dynasty.

The Washington City Paper, a 30-year-old free alternative paper that provides excellent features and comprehensive arts coverage, did a feature story on the 10 losing years of Dan Snyder’s ownership – a history of mistakes, pratfalls, missteps, and of free agents who are overpaid beyond belief and then fail. This year’s highlight was a $100 million free agent who refused to talk to the coach or play. The article is by their lead columnist, who has written for the WCP for 25 years.

What makes the story interesting is that Snyder, through the Washington Redskins, yesterday filed a $2 million lawsuit for defamation of character. His attorneys insist that the story contains numerous errors, although despite numerous requests from the newspaper they have been unable to specify a single one.

Most interesting of all is the threats made by the Washington Redskins. They demand that the reporter be immediately fired, and that the entire story be retracted. Failing that, and certainly knowing that it is impossible to actually win such a lawsuit (in the U.S. truth is a defense against libel) the Washington Redskins specifically, spelling it out in clear English, threaten to bankrupt the newspaper by using their owner’s billions to run up litigation costs.

Specifically, David Donovan, the Redskin’s General Counsel, wrote to the holding company that owns the newspaper: ““Mr. Snyder has more than sufficient means to protect his reputation…. We presume that defending such litigation would not be a rational strategy for an investment fund such as yours. Indeed, the cost of litigation would presumably quickly outstrip the asset value of the Washington City Paper.” In other words, the point of the litigation is not to win, but to harass and bankrupt those who come out in print disagreeing with us.

It might be interesting to see if the Washington Post is the next object of a lawsuit, as they published a column of support for Snyder from their columnist Gene Weingarten, who reports that as a New York Giants fan the dismantling of the Redskins, and the change of the storied team into a laughing stock, provides two wins a year for the Giants, which he sees as a good deal. In this column, Weingarten points out that he can fully understand Snyder’s problem:

“I understand why you were upset by this article. By unkindly focusing only on the negative aspect of your ownership, the author, Dave McKenna, is suggesting that you are an avaricious, imperious, conscienceless plutocrat with callous contempt for the fans; a man whose Napoleonic, pouter-pigeon swagger conceals a doofus-like understanding of the game and whose pernicious, autocratic meddling has consigned the team to perpetual mediocrity and its players and coaches to a perennial state of harrowing anxiety, all of this starting virtually from the moment you arrived and continuing to this very minute.”

There is a serious issue here, however, with a billionaire who is a major public figure with enormous PR resources specifically threatening a local free newspaper with high enough litigation costs to put it out of business unless it fires a specific highly renowned reporter. I think that this issue of corporate bullying would make an excellent class example. Our federal government, mainly under President Bush, invested many millions of dollars into fighting bullying in schools. How does this compare? Is the problem of school bullies that they don’t have enough money to fight financially?

Marty

I’ve got to say that the Weingarten column is probably the best I’ve read in quite a while!

If you’re interested, here’s the published response from the publisher of the Washington City Paper.