Sports
Robert Kraft is the owner of the three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots. Under his watch, the team — a former dregs-of-the-league specimen that had previously received its only national attention as the group of sacrificial lambs that got drubbed by the Shufflin’ Chicago Bears — went from a Bill Parcells reclamation project to what has, in recent years, been recognized as the most intelligent franchise in all of sports. And one minor cheating scandal and one major bullshit season finale withstanding, the team continues to boast the most intriguing non-story story in the NFL — if not the greater sporting world.
‘Course I’m biased. But seriously? In terms of brains, ability, piss, and vinegar, is there really any better currently active sports story out there? Maybe not. But, if we’re talking about the other football — the one that the rest of the world cares about — Kraft might just beat out his coach. That is, if the English Premier League (EPL) would let him.
It goes like this: Back in 2005, when the EPL Club Liverpool was up for sale, the Kraft family showed interest in taking a share of the team’s ownership. “Liverpool is a great brand and it’s something our family respects a lot,” Kraft told the BBC. “We’re always interested in opportunities and growing, so you never know what can happen.” When nothing did — at least not for the Krafts — interested Liverpudlians lost out on a guy who’d taken (if not directly, than with his hiring decisions) the NFL’s most embarrassing franchise and turned it into one of its best.
Fast-forward to June of this year, when in both the Times and the Guardian, Kraft (who, in the case of the former, is pictured with one of the Pats’ Super Bowl trophies in his hand) maintained that he’s still interested in “buy[ing] into British football” — but that he’s reluctant to do so unless the sport’s governing body imposes some form of a salary cap. “I wanted to [take over] Liverpool,” Kraft told the Guardian. “I met with [then chairman] David Moores, who is a fine gentleman, and we came very close to buying it, very close. But in the end my instinct was – without a salary cap, or a stadium … I wasn’t sure how we’d get a stadium built quickly and efficiently. But the more important issue was the salary cap. If the salary cap was there, we would have done it.”
In other words Kraft, whose NFL franchise has been one of the best at winning in the age of that league’s monetary restrictions is waiting for the EPL to institute such restrictions. Indeed, he continued, “[i]f [the salary cap] came here, I would buy a team in a minute because we think we know how to run a sports franchise.”
And, just to remind any English fans who might be hesitant to accept another U.S.-based owner, Kraft does. But whether he’ll be headed to a fancy across-the-pond, look-what-I-just-bought presser anytime soon remains to be seen. The New York Post (that bastion of Footy reporting) seems to think that a salary cap is a good idea. As does at least one Chief of one of the EPL’s more recognizable squads. But the BBC’s Matt Slater argues that what he calls “Kraft’s salary cap cure” won’t work in English Football. “An NFL-style salary cap simply cannot work in the Premier League for at least half a dozen reasons, no matter how much you might like its long-term benefits,” he writes. These include the global nature of the game, EU employment law, and the fact that — given the relegation system — the theoretical parity brought on by a salary cap would force “half a dozen clubs” into “permanent yo-yo status.” It’s a pretty good case.
Which is a shame because the EPL could use an owner like Kraft. As Slater writes, “[h]e has…helped to shape the [NFL's] egalitarian structure and has played a key role in numerous lucrative television deals.” Right there? Those’d be examples of boons for fans and league alike. And as a bonus, they might get themselves the pitch-pacing equivalent of Bill Belichick.
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