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“Your brother can get this done,” Abrams said. “He’s quietly repairing bridges your father burned.”
“Golden Gate?” I asked. “Or Bay?”
Abrams sighed.
“How does my brother plan to come up with the money my father said he couldn’t afford?”
“Ask him.”
“Asking you, Commissioner.”
“Let’s just say he’s more amenable to outside assistance,” Abrams said. “Being transactional, so to speak.”
“It’s still a shakedown.”
“You sound just like him,” Abrams said. I could see him starting to get exasperated, as if he were conditioned to getting his own way. “He stopped negotiating in good faith a while ago, even though he knew better than anybody else how much the Wolves need a new stadium.”
“But at what price?”
He drank some Scotch.
“At whatever price it takes to get the deal done.”
“There has to be another angle here. With all due respect, of course.”
I thought something might have changed in his eyes. But only briefly.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because there’s always another angle with guys like you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I can’t imagine why in the world you would.”
“You need to give this up,” he said. “It will save you the embarrassment of not getting approved by my other owners.”
My other owners.
I wanted to tell the little jerk,You’re the dedicated concierge.
“I don’t have to be approved,” I said. “The team is staying in the family. Nobody had to approve John Mara with the Giants when his father died or Steve Tisch whenhisfather died. We both know the list of children inheriting teams is longer than that.”
He gave me a smug look.
“They told me you think you know everything about everything,” he said. “But your father must have neglected to inform you that we added some language to the bylaws about inherited teams a few years ago. It was after the software guy bought the Saints. Remember that? His idiot son inherited the team, hired all his frat buddies, then thought it would be cute to let fans call plays over the internet.”
The kid in New Orleans ended up selling the team, under what I recalled was rather massive pressure from the league. Keegan something. He’d still made a couple of billion dollars from the sale.
“Now it doesn’t matter whether it’s a son or daughter or widow,” Abrams continued. “If the person inheriting the team hasn’t had any previous role in the football operation, he or she has to be approved the way an outside owner would. By a three-quarters vote.”
He looked so pleased with himself that I felt as if I should give him a treat.
“Maybe your father was drunk the day the ownership committee changed the rules,” Abrams said. “Or was off bad-mouthing me to somebody from ESPN.”
“I’m not quitting.”
“You don’t have to quit. You can keep some kind of title. Just step aside, for the good of the team and the city and the league.”
