The New York Giants co-owner John Mara stormed out of MetLife Stadium Sunday following a 34- 27 loss to the New York Jets that put the Giants record at an atrocious 2-8. Mara didn’t even look up to acknowledge reporters hoping to ask the 14-year owner questions about the game.
It’s been that kind of season for the New York Giants and is frankly becoming a habit.
The Giants have only two winning seasons since Eli Manning led them to a Super Bowl title in the 2011 season. While the Giants have young talent in rookie quarterback Daniel Jones, running back Saquon Barkley, and emerging rookie wide receiver Darius Slayton. They don’t have much else. The Giants are not the only team that looks to be going nowhere. The Redskins sit at 1-8 and recently fired head coach Jay Gruden. The Bengals have yet to win a game and sit at 0-9.
All three of these teams have been shrouded in mediocrity for several years. The people who should be held most responsible for the mediocrity and direction that their franchise is headed are NFL owners.
Not every NFL team’s owner has the same influence, and one team isn’t even owned by an individual. The Green Bay Packers Inc. is a publicly held nonprofit corporation. The Packers are the only publicly owned NFL team with roughly 361,169 stockholders, according to the Packers website. This is a rare case where the owner or owners of an NFL team cannot be held responsible for their team’s success or lack thereof. Other owners, like Detroit Lions owner Martha Ford, simply own the team but do not make decisions that impact the football aspect of the organization.
Then there are owners like Jerry Jones and Mike Brown. Jerry Jones is the owner and general manager (GM) of the Dallas Cowboys, and Mike Brown is the owner and GM of the aforementioned Cincinnati Bengals. Seeing as these two owners also serve as their teams GMs, they would be held more accountable for their team’s success.
But what about the owners who hire or have a say in hiring their teams’ GMs? GMs are the people who hire coaches, draft and sign players. Therefore, if an organization goes through multiple unsuccessful GMs, shouldn’t blame begin to be placed on the owner for consistently hiring unsuccessful people for the job?
Take Dan Snyder, who has owned the Washington Redskins for 20 years. In those 20 years, the Redskins have had 15 losing seasons, 12 different quarterbacks to start the season, six different GMs or presidents (the official titles vary) and nine different coaches. The common denominator? Dan Snyder.
Not only are they unsuccessful on the field, but their nickname is also a topic of controversy. A lot of people believe the Redskins should change their nickname because it is derogatory towards Native Americans. The Dan Snyder era in Washington has been a disaster, so who holds Snyder accountable? The answer is no one. There is nothing that can be done about having a bad owner.
There is no clear solution to this problem. The owner cannot be removed from their position as they bought the franchise with their own money. Everyone else in the franchise is held accountable for their actions. If a quarterback plays bad, he gets benched. If a coach doesn’t win games, he gets fired. If a food vendor consistently shows up late for work, they’ll get let go. Everyone is held accountable for their success or lack thereof, so why shouldn’t owners be?
Maxwell McAuliff is a contributing writer at The Bona Venture.
His email is
mcaulimr18@bonaventure.edu
