The billionaires who run the league are hard to warm to. But in Green Bay it is those who truly love their team that call the shots
Let’s review some recent NFL highlights, not on the field, but by billionaire owners: Washington’s Dan Snyder – who has overseen years of losing records and high coaching turnover, while fighting to keep the team’s racist name – faces mounting pressure to sell in the wake of sexual harassment revelations. He has responded by suing the whistleblower, just as he has sued critical journalists and recession-stricken ticket-holders in the past. The New England Patriots’ Robert Kraft is in hot water over a visit to a massage parlor in 2019. Sometime Jets owner Woody Johnson – a Trump supporter-turned inexperienced diplomat – asked the State Department to hide its investigation of workplace harassment claims against him, while attempting to use his government post to steer business to the president’s companies. The reports of malfeasance come on the heels of his history of tax avoidance. Yet improbably, I have something in common with these men: we are all NFL owners.
The Green Bay Packers are the only publicly owned team in US professional sports. From its early years a century ago, the team has belonged not to a tycoon but to the people of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and their descendants as a non-profit corporation. Like my brother, sister, father, aunt, uncles and cousins, I inherited shares in the Green Bay Packers from my great-grandfather, Packers Hall of Famer Jerry Atkinson. Our family called him Poppy.
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