The NFL has never had a Black owner. With franchise values skyrocketing, and with NFL rules requiring the controlling owner to hold 30 percent of the equity and to have less than $1 billion in debt associated with the team, it’s difficult to find many people (regardless of race) with the money to purchase majority interest in a team.
Via Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, the league could waive that rule for the purposes of facilitating Black ownership of the Broncos. It would be, as Fischer explains it, a one-time exception that would allow someone like Byron Allen, who apparently lacks the financial standing to secure the winning bid in the traditional way, to purchase a team.
Black ownership of one team would hardly solve the league’s deeper issues in this regard. Yes, it’s necessary. As Al Sharpton explained on Friday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, it’s one of the issues that came up during Thursday’s meeting between Commissioner Roger Goodell, a handful of owners,…