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FTR #304 Illegal Procedure: Organized Crime in the NFL

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This pro­gram is part of a series about “the pol­i­tics of illu­sion.” The real­i­ty of the Nation­al Foot­ball League (like the real­i­ty of film pio­neer Walt Dis­ney) con­trasts sharply with the care­ful­ly con­struct­ed, rig­or­ous­ly mar­ket­ed illu­sion with which it is iden­ti­fied in the minds of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.

1. In the book Inter­fer­ence: How Orga­nized Crime Influ­ences Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ball, author Dan Mold­ea illus­trates the con­trast between the Hol­ly­wood leg­end of foot­ball and the real­i­ty of the game by ana­lyz­ing Ronald Rea­gan’s role as Notre Dame star George Gipp in the movie Knute Rockne: All Amer­i­can. This role pro­vid­ed Rea­gan with his polit­i­cal per­sona of “the Gipp­per.” (This was Gip­p’s nick­name and is the cen­ter­piece of an ongo­ing myth about the play­er and Rockne, a cel­e­brat­ed foot­ball coach at Notre Dame, played by actor Pat O’Brien in the movie.)

2. Gipp, dying of pneu­mo­nia, sup­pos­ed­ly gave Rockne a deathbed request. “His [Gip­p’s] pur­port­ed deathbed request to Rockne, ‘Win just one for the Gip­per,’ was used dur­ing a lock­er room pep talk and helped to inspire Rock­ne’s 1928 team in its upset vic­to­ry against Army. And, as the Gip­per incar­nate, Rea­gan used the line to inspire vot­ers to elect him to the Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor’s man­sion and lat­er the White House. To those who saw the movie and lis­tened to Rea­gan utter those now-famous words, Gipp epit­o­mized the virtues of good char­ac­ter, sports­man­ship, and ‘the right way of liv­ing.’

3. “His­to­ry, how­ev­er, now shows that Gipp, a man of tru­ly ques­tion­able moral val­ues, prob­a­bly nev­er made any such request on or off his deathbed; that Rockne, who was known for grasp­ing at any­thing to incite his play­ers, had fab­ri­cat­ed the inci­dent and that Rea­gan’s movie fur­ther embell­ished the Gipp/Rockne cha­rade. . . . Regard­less of the facts, the Amer­i­can pub­lic con­tin­ues to believe the leg­end of George Gip­p’s deathbed request to Knute Rockne.

4. “The dif­fi­cul­ties in debunk­ing the myth about one col­lege coach and one of his play­ers is an indi­ca­tion of the prob­lems in dis­pelling the leg­ends about an entire insti­tu­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly one as pop­u­lar as foot­ball. Pow­er­ful forces in Amer­i­ca have built empires around these myths; and the preser­va­tion of these empires and the per­son­al wealth of those who own them depend upon the main­te­nance of the leg­ends.

5. “In the Rea­gan movie myth of the lives of Rockne and Gipp, there is one scene in which Rockne chas­es away a gam­bler who is look­ing for an edge. Rockne, played by actor Pat O’Brien, tells him, ‘We haven’t got any use for gam­blers around here. You’ve done your best to ruin base­ball and horse rac­ing. This is one game that’s clean and it’s going to stay clean.’ Con­sid­er­ing that Gipp, with the knowl­edge of Rockne, was a noto­ri­ous sports gam­bler, the O’Brien quote per­haps best illus­trates my point.

6. “To a large degree, the Nation­al Foot­ball League (the NFL) has become the embod­i­ment of the Gipp/Rockne myth. It has wrapped itself around the Amer­i­can flag and strut­ted into Amer­i­ca’s homes to the thrilling stir of brass and per­cus­sion music as the chore­og­ra­phy of bone-crush­ing tack­les in dra­mat­ic slow motion flash­es across the nation’s tele­vi­sion screens. Based upon the illu­sion, the coun­try’s love affair with pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball has giv­en sports fans con­fi­dence that the NFL is an insti­tu­tion unen­cum­bered by cor­rup­tion.” (Inter­fer­ence: How Orga­nized Crime Influ­ences Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ball; Dan Mold­ea; copy­right 1989 by William Mor­row and Com­pa­ny [HC]; ISBN 0–688-08303‑X; pp.19–20.)

7. Mold­ea lat­er points out that, when being chas­tised by Rockne for being unmo­ti­vat­ed, Gipp explained that he had $500.00 bet on the game and was, as a result, very moti­vat­ed. (Ibid.; p. 437.)

8. The focus turns to orga­nized crime con­nec­tions of some NFL team own­ers, past and present. Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is on NFL own­ers con­nect­ed to the orga­nized crime forces involved with the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Also high­light­ed are the con­nec­tions of this milieu to that of Richard Nixon and the Water­gate scan­dal.

9. The dis­cus­sion sets forth the involve­ment of Clint Murchi­son, Jr. (own­er of the Dal­las Cow­boys) with orga­nized crime fig­ures such as Car­los Mar­cel­lo, a focal point of the JFK assas­si­na­tion inves­ti­ga­tion. (Ibid.; pp. 104–105.)

10. Mar­cel­lo asso­ciate Joe Camp­isi, a fix­ture around the Dal­las Cow­boys, vis­it­ed Jack Ruby by request (in jail) five days after Ruby killed Oswald. (Ibid.; p. 447.)

11. Murchi­son was very close to Nixon. (Ibid.; p. 103.)

12. Murchi­son was also close to Mar­cel­lo asso­ciate I. Irv­ing David­son. (Ibid.; p. 295.)

13. David­son was rep­re­sent­ed by Pla­to Cacheris dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of a scheme involv­ing the Team­sters’ Cen­tral States Pen­sion Fund. (Ibid.; p. 295.)

14. Cacheris has also rep­re­sent­ed peo­ple involved in the Iran-Con­tra affair and Mon­i­ca Lewin­sky. He was also the law part­ner of for­mer NFL secu­ri­ty chief Bill Hund­ley. (Idem.)

15. Next, the pro­gram exam­ines Hugh Cul­ver­house, the for­mer own­er of the Tam­pa Bay Buc­ca­neers. Cul­ver­house was alleged to have deal­ings with San­tos Traf­fi­cante, anoth­er orga­nized crime fig­ure with con­nec­tions to the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Cul­ver­house rep­re­sent­ed Nixon inti­mate Bebe Rebo­zo dur­ing the Water­gate hear­ings and his son (Hugh Cul­ver­house, Jr.) rep­re­sent­ed Nixon Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Mitchell, along with the afore­men­tioned Bill Hund­ley. (Ibid.; pp. 285–286.)

16. Cul­ver­house was also deeply involved with asso­ciates of syn­di­cate boss Mey­er Lan­sky in a real estate project called Major Real­ty. (Ibid.; 286.)

17. Hugh Cul­ver­house was pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved with the De Bar­to­lo fam­i­ly, long-believed to have orga­nized crime con­nec­tions. (Eddie De Bar­to­lo, Jr. was the own­er of the San Fran­cis­co 49ers. His sis­ter owns the team now.) Cul­ver­house was the attor­ney for the sale of the team to De Bar­to­lo. (Ibid.; p. 289.)

18. Oak­land Raiders own­er Al Davis, him­self con­nect­ed to orga­nized crime, helped bro­ker the sale of the 49ers to De Bar­to­lo. (Idem.)

19. A 1982 Cus­toms Depart­ment report alleged that the De Bar­to­lo orga­ni­za­tion had suc­ceed­ed Mey­er Lan­sky as the finan­cial wiz­ard or orga­nized crime. (Ibid.; pp. 352–353.)

20. De Bar­to­lo, Jr. was defi­ant about an appar­ent con­flict of inter­est between his own­er­ship of the 49ers and his father’s pro­pri­etor­ship of the Pitts­burgh Maulers of the now-defunct USFL. (Ibid.; 354.)

21. Much of the rest of the pro­gram is devot­ed to an exam­i­na­tion of the busi­ness rela­tion­ship of mob asso­ciate Allen Glick and Raiders’ boss Al Davis. (Ibid.; pp. 274–277.)

22. When Glick­’s deal­ings became the focus of a law­suit by Davis busi­ness con­tact Tama­ra Rand, see was mur­dered in a gang­land-style killing. (Ibid.; pp. 275–276.)

23. The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Las Vegas odds-mak­er Jim­my “The Greek” Sny­der’s par­don by Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford. (Ibid.; p. 460.)

24. Con­vict­ed on gam­bling offens­es, he claims to have met Ford through Robert Maheu, who helped recruit Mafia killers to help kill Fidel Cas­tro. (Idem.)

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #304 Illegal Procedure: Organized Crime in the NFL”

  1. Mafia Takes Over Pub­licly Trad­ed Com­pa­ny

    A Texas-based com­pa­ny and a one-time sub­prime lender that boast­ed for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Dan Quayle as a board mem­ber, and used NFL Hall of Famer Dan Mari­no in its ads, has been charged by the FBI and Depart­ment of Jus­tice with being a Mafia-run (Luc­ch­ese Fam­i­ly) enter­prise, tak­en over by the use of threats and vio­lence. They were able to remove the firm’s entire board of direc­tors and man­agers, replac­ing them with their own.

    Only a tan­gen­tial Mafia-NFL con­nec­tion, but an inter­est­ing one.

    For more on the orga­nized crime “hos­tile takeover” angle, read the full arti­cle here:

    http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/11/01/mafia-takes-over-publicly-traded-company/

    Posted by R. Wilson | November 2, 2011, 8:53 pm
  2. Note: Sto­ry is refer­ring to non‑U.S. “foot­ball” but pre­sum­ably the under­ly­ing dynam­ic is con­nect­ed.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/19/corruption-evil-as-drugs-and-prostitution-interpol/

    [Foot­ball] cor­rup­tion dri­ves drug-traf­fick­ing: Inter­pol

    By Agence France-Presse
    Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 19, 2013

    Glob­al foot­ball cor­rup­tion helps dri­ve the crim­i­nal underworld’s dom­i­na­tion of pros­ti­tu­tion, drug-traf­fick­ing and gun-run­ning, an inter­na­tion­al sym­po­sium into match-fix­ing heard on Fri­day.

    Around 200 del­e­gates attend­ing the FIFA, UEFA and Inter­pol meet­ing into cor­rup­tion in the sport, were told that it was cru­cial the match-fix­ers felt the full force of the law when cas­es are pros­e­cut­ed.

    How­ev­er, it was acknowl­edged that foot­ball needs to con­vince hard-pushed judi­cial bod­ies that ille­gal bet­ting and results-rig­ging should be pur­sued with the same vigour reserved for oth­er high-pro­file crimes.

    “We must con­vince the author­i­ties,” said Inter­pol sec­re­tary-gen­er­al, Ronald Noble.

    “When a pros­e­cu­tor tells me: ‘I have more impor­tant things to do — pros­ti­tu­tion, drugs, gun-run­ning. I can’t just con­cen­trate on a fixed third divi­sion game’, I tell him that this is not just a small invest­ment by organ­ised crime.

    “It is also rein­vest­ed in pros­ti­tu­tion or drugs…”

    Del­e­gates from 50 coun­tries also heard that play­ers, offi­cials as well as lead­ing inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies involved in the game need to work togeth­er to rid the sport of a prob­lem that costs “hun­dreds of bil­lions” of euros.

    The con­fer­ence, titled “Match-fix­ing: The ugly side of the beau­ti­ful game”, also illus­trat­ed the need for thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion tech­niques, like those used to track down dop­ing cheats, as well as vig­i­lance over bet­ting pat­terns.

    UEFA cur­rent­ly mon­i­tors 32,000 match­es a year in Europe while FIFA is work­ing on an ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem to alert author­i­ties into bet­ting anom­alies before and dur­ing games.

    “It is true that it is very dif­fi­cult to inves­ti­gate because you can bet from any­where in the world,” said Noble.

    FIFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Jerome Val­cke under­lined the impor­tance of a “strate­gic alliance with Inter­pol, the author­i­ties and espe­cial­ly the sup­port of mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions”.

    Noble added that organ­ised crim­i­nal gangs also laun­der their prof­its from foot­ball cor­rup­tion.

    “Match-fix­ing is a drag­on with many heads which can only be sev­ered by an inter­na­tion­al effort,” he said.

    Posted by R. Wilson | February 2, 2013, 8:26 pm
  3. Food for thought, or: For those who have eyes to see.

    Dur­ing the 47th Super­bowl, on 2/3/2013, the pow­er out­age pro­duced this image über alles:

    http://tinyurl.com/acayw28

    As a point of ref­er­ence, this is sim­i­lar to a par­al­lel sym­bol­ic image that was seen in the skies over the U.S. on the night of 9/11 (for those who were too young to remem­ber that day, there was lit­er­al­ly a cres­cent-moon-and-star in the sky on the night of 9/11):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_and_crescent

    Of note is the Ger­man­ic com­po­nent, and pos­si­bly the sym­bol­ism of the loca­tion (Hur­ri­cane Katri­na’s Ter­ror­dome).

    Points of cross-ref­er­ence: Oba­ma was 47 years old when elect­ed in 2008, and his vice-pres­i­dent is the 47th; Ger­mans would write July 4 as 4/7 (as they write 9/11 as 11/9).

    I’ll leave it to oth­ers to decide whether there is any sym­bol­ism in the out­come of the game, the ques­tion­able ref­er­ee calls, or whether there were any CHica­go Black Sox play­ing.

    Speak­ing of the 1919 Sox, per­haps those who will not see any cres­cent or star in the first image are also those who will not see this week’s nom­i­nee for CIA being any type of fruit by which ye shall know them. Not pho­tos of meet­ings with Jeb & Pop­py, either. Noth­ing will per­suade those who will Not-zee.

    Posted by R. Wilson | February 7, 2013, 9:29 pm
  4. It’s the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry to end all con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries: Tay­lor Swift, Pen­ta­gon, and the NFL are con­spir­ing to re-elect Joe Biden. Swift’s rela­tion­ship to Kansas City Chief’s tight end Travis Kelce is pure the­atrics. It’s all a set­up intend­ed to give Swift an oppor­tu­ni­ty to endorse Biden dur­ing Sun­day’s Super Bowl.

    Yes, it’s a joke, but not actu­al­ly. Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans appear to be tak­ing these claims seri­ous­ly, thanks in large part to con­ser­v­a­tive media con­tin­u­al­ly pro­mot­ing the sto­ry. This is who we are in 2024.

    So with this Swift NFL con­spir­a­cy nar­ra­tive hav­ing tak­en hold on the Amer­i­can psy­che, it’s worth not­ing some of the bizarre sup­po­si­tions posed by this the­o­ry. Because it’s a the­o­ry pred­i­cat­ed on not just the coor­di­na­tion of Swift, Kelce, the NFL, and the Pen­ta­gon, but also pre­sum­ably the own­ers of the Kansas City Chiefs them­selves. And more gen­er­al­ly, the own­ers of the rest of the NFL teams that would have to had qui­et­ly stood by while the plot unfold­ed and they were all cheat­ed out of their Super Bowl chance.

    Which brings us to the inter­est­ing his­to­ry of own­er­ship of the Kansas City Chiefs: the Hunt fam­i­ly. Specif­i­cal­ly, Clark Hunt, the son of Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt. Lamar, in turn, was the son of H. L. Hunt, a fig­ure long asso­ci­at­ed with a range of dark plots includ­ing the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. That’s who owns and runs the Kansas City Chiefs. HL Hunt’s grand­son.

    Now, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that kids and grand­kids don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly share the pol­i­tics of their elders. Lamar, for exam­ple, was a notable sup­port­er of the Civ­il Rights move­ment. Inter­est­ing, Lamar appears to have actu­al­ly engaged in very real con­spir­a­cy against the NFL. An out in the open con­spir­a­cy. It turns out it was Lamar who helped orga­nize the cre­ation of the AFL in the first place, as a com­peti­tor for the NFL. The motive for the move appears to have been an ini­tial refusal of the NFL to allow him to open a Dal­las fran­chise. Lamar went on to held lead the nego­ti­a­tions to merge the AFL and NFL, and even came up with the term “Super Bowl”, which was appar­ent­ly a joke at first. A joke that stuck some­how, which is kind of the theme here.

    But despite that inter­est­ing his­to­ry around Lamar Hunt, records do show Clark Hunt’s polit­i­cal dona­tions all appear to have gone to Repub­li­cans. So did Repub­li­can own­er Clark Hunt, of the polit­i­cal pow­er­ful Hunt dynasty, engage in a plot to get Joe Biden re-elect­ed? That’s the joke that’s some­how stuck.

    And since we’re talk­ing about inter­est­ing own­er­ship his­to­ries and alle­ga­tions of rigged games, it’s also worth not­ing the oth­er side of this equa­tion: the DeBar­to­lo fam­i­ly who owns the San Fran­cis­co 49ers. As we saw in FTR#304, the De Bar­to­lo fam­i­ly has long been sus­pect­ed of hav­ing orga­nized crime con­nec­tions, includ­ing a 1982 Cus­toms Depart­ment report that alleged the De Bar­to­lo orga­ni­za­tion had suc­ceed Mey­er Lan­sky as the finan­cial wiz­ard for orga­nized crime. So if there is a grand NFL con­spir­a­cy, De Bar­to­lo is per­haps among the own­ers most will­ing to ‘play ball’. But would the De Bar­tolo’s ‘play ball’ against Trump? This is a good time to note that Don­ald Trump actu­al­ly par­doned Eddie DeBar­to­lo Jr. in Feb­ru­ary of 2020 for a 1998 bribery con­vic­tion over not report­ing a $400k bribe he was asked to pay to secure a river­boat casi­no license.

    So as we can see, the own­er­ship of the teams that made it into this year’s Super Bowl do indeed have inter­est­ing fam­i­ly his­to­ries. The pow­er­ful con­ser­v­a­tive dynasty that is no stranger to polit­i­cal pow­er plays, and a fam­i­ly sus­pect­ed of sup­plant­i­ng the Lan­sky empire whose scion was par­doned by Trump in 2020. It’s quite an odd cou­ple pair­ing for an anti-Trump con­spir­a­cy:

    Forbes

    Meet The Bil­lion­aire Own­ers Fac­ing Off In Super Bowl LVIII

    The Hunt fam­i­ly, worth $24.8 bil­lion, is look­ing to repeat as Super Bowl cham­pi­ons with the Kansas City Chiefs while the DeBartolo/York clan, worth $9 bil­lion, is vying for a record-tying sixth title with the San Fran­cis­co 49ers.

    By Justin Birn­baum, Forbes Staff
    Feb 9, 2024,06:00am EST

    For Clark Hunt and the Kansas City Chiefs, win­ning cham­pi­onships has become the expec­ta­tion. On Sun­day, when the team faces off against the San Fran­cis­co 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII, it will mark the Chiefs’ fourth trip to pro­fes­sion­al foot­bal­l’s biggest stage in five years. Dur­ing its near-dynas­tic run, Kansas City has amassed four AFC cham­pi­onships and two Super Bowl wins, with a chance for a third this week­end (in addi­tion to the title the Chiefs won back in the 1969 sea­son). Yet it’s not lost on Hunt how fleet­ing suc­cess on this lev­el can be.

    “We have the per­spec­tive of hav­ing gone 50 years between Super Bowl IV and LIV, and that real­ly rein­forces just how hard it is to be here, how spe­cial it is,” the 58-year-old chair­man and CEO of the Chiefs tells Forbes. “We’ve cer­tain­ly had an incred­i­ble run over the last five or six years, so we appre­ci­ate how hard it is, but we’re going to enjoy our time here in Las Vegas this week­end, and hope­ful­ly, the Chiefs will be at their best on Sun­day.”

    Even if they don’t hoist anoth­er Vince Lom­bar­di Tro­phy, Hunt will have plen­ty to cel­e­brate. His fam­i­ly, descen­dants of oil mag­nate H.L. Hunt, is col­lec­tive­ly worth an esti­mat­ed $24.8 bil­lion, mak­ing them the 12th-wealth­i­est fam­i­ly in Amer­i­ca. The Chiefs have appre­ci­at­ed a stag­ger­ing 17,199,900% since Clark Hunt’s father, Lamar, found­ed the team for $25,000 in 1960 and are worth an esti­mat­ed $4.3 bil­lion, the bulk of the family’s $5.8 bil­lion sports port­fo­lio (includ­ing debt). The franchise’s win­ning ways have cement­ed its sta­tus as a pre­mier sports brand, with a bona fide mar­ket­ing sen­sa­tion in 28-year-old quar­ter­back Patrick Mahomes. Adding to the glam­our this sea­son is tight end Travis Kelce’s love sto­ry with Tay­lor Swift, which has con­vert­ed hordes of Swifties into fans of both the Chiefs and the NFL.

    That fran­chise-alter­ing growth is some­thing the 49ers know all too well. San Fran­cis­co dom­i­nat­ed the NFL in the 1980s and 1990s, win­ning a then-record five Super Bowls behind the efforts of stars like Joe Mon­tana, Jer­ry Rice, Ron­nie Lott and, lat­er, Steve Young, along­side leg­endary coach Bill Walsh. It ele­vat­ed the team to new lev­els of pop­u­lar­i­ty and pres­tige, deliv­er­ing out­sized returns to the team’s own­ers.

    Edward DeBar­to­lo Sr., who made his mon­ey in shop­ping malls, bought the 49ers in 1977 for $13 mil­lion. Forbes esti­mates the team is now worth $6 bil­lion, includ­ing debt, the ninth-most-valu­able fran­chise in the NFL. That’s not quite the astro­nom­i­cal return the Hunts have seen, but the 46,054% bump is undoubt­ed­ly a good ROI.

    DeBar­to­lo died in 1994, and today the team is major­i­ty-owned by his daugh­ter, Denise DeBar­to­lo York, and her fam­i­ly, con­sti­tut­ing the bulk of their esti­mat­ed $5.8 bil­lion for­tune. The last time the 49ers claimed Super Bowl glo­ry, how­ev­er, was 29 years ago under her broth­er, Edward Jr., who is no longer involved with the team. Fac­tor in his rough­ly $3.2 bil­lion for­tune, and the extend­ed fam­i­ly is worth at least $9 bil­lion, by Forbes’ esti­mate.

    These ultra-wealthy fam­i­lies will like­ly get even rich­er regard­less of what hap­pens at Alle­giant Sta­di­um in Las Vegas on Sun­day. The aver­age NFL fran­chise is now worth $5.1 bil­lion, a 14% increase from a year ago. With lucra­tive new tele­vi­sion deals and an antic­i­pat­ed increase in the league’s debt lim­it, those marks should only keep ris­ing.

    Kansas City Chiefs

    The Hunts’ $24.8 bil­lion for­tune is spread across more than 100 fam­i­ly mem­bers, dat­ing back near­ly a cen­tu­ry. It began with H.L. Hunt, a Texas oil wild­cat­ter who was said to be the real-life inspi­ra­tion for J.R. Ewing on the megahit TV series Dal­las. Hunt had a rep­u­ta­tion as a math prodi­gy and a gam­bler, using pok­er win­nings to buy untapped oil deposits. He struck black gold in the 1930 East Texas Oil Boom and passed the con­sid­er­able wealth to his 15 heirs upon his death in 1974. “In terms of extra­or­di­nary, inde­pen­dent wealth, there is only one man—H.L. Hunt,” fel­low oil tycoon J. Paul Get­ty once said, accord­ing to the New York Times.

    Eight years lat­er, 11 of Hunt’s heirs land­ed on the inau­gur­al Forbes 400 list of the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans. Sev­er­al fol­lowed their father into the oil and gas busi­ness, like Ray Lee Hunt, worth $7.2 bil­lion today; Nel­son Bunker Hunt (d. 2014); and William Her­bert Hunt, cur­rent­ly sit­ting on a $4.5 bil­lion for­tune. (The lat­ter two fell off the Forbes wealth rank­ings in the late 1980s after going bank­rupt from piles of debt and an unsuc­cess­ful attempt to cor­ner the world’s sil­ver mar­ket.) Some of Hunt’s chil­dren went in oth­er direc­tions entire­ly, such as Car­o­line Rose Hunt, who found­ed and lat­er sold Rose­wood Hotels and Resorts, and Lamar Hunt, who became one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures in pro­fes­sion­al sports.

    As the NFL became a cul­tur­al force in the 1950s, a young Lamar Hunt want­ed in on the bur­geon­ing sport. The league reject­ed his pro­pos­al to grant an expan­sion fran­chise to Dal­las, and his inter­est grew stronger after watch­ing the clas­sic 1958 NFL Cham­pi­onship Game between the New York Giants and the Bal­ti­more Colts. After declin­ing to buy a 20% share in the Chica­go Car­di­nals, Hunt pro­ceed­ed with a bold­er idea—a new league to com­pete with the NFL. He put togeth­er a group of eight own­ers, each con­tribut­ing $25,000 (near­ly $260,000 in today’s dol­lars), and formed the Amer­i­can Foot­ball League in 1960, even after an 11th-hour offer from the NFL to put a team in Dal­las.

    ...

    Hunt’s team, the Dal­las Tex­ans, won its first AFL title in 1962 before mov­ing to Kansas City a year lat­er. But the new league’s exis­tence would be short-lived. In 1966, the NFL and the AFL agreed to merge, with Hunt help­ing dri­ve nego­ti­a­tions. The leagues wouldn’t ful­ly inte­grate oper­a­tions for anoth­er four years, yet they still held their first joint cham­pi­onship game sev­en months after the deal was announced, an event that would become syn­ony­mous with Hunt’s lega­cy. “I have kid­ding­ly called it the ‘Super Bowl,’ which obvi­ous­ly can be improved upon,” he wrote to NFL com­mis­sion­er Pete Rozelle at the time. The inspi­ra­tion came from the Wham‑O Super Ball toy his wife, Nor­ma, bought their chil­dren for Christ­mas in 1965 as well as Hunt’s inter­est in col­lege bowl games. The Chiefs lost to the Green Bay Pack­ers in the inau­gur­al Super Bowl and earned their first vic­to­ry in the Big Game three years lat­er.

    Like a true par­ent, Hunt attend­ed every Super Bowl with Nor­ma until his death in 2006. She con­tin­ued the tra­di­tion until her own death last June. Decades lat­er, his con­tri­bu­tions still loom large over the league. “He’s a founder, in my mind, just as the group of George Halas and the peo­ple that met in Can­ton,” says Dal­las Cow­boys own­er Jer­ry Jones. “What he did to put that AFL thing togeth­er and then have it merge with the NFL, I’ve always viewed Lamar as a founder of pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball as we know it today.” The NFL paid trib­ute to Hunt in 1984, nam­ing the AFC cham­pi­onship tro­phy after him.

    Hunt’s impact didn’t end with foot­ball. He also played a vital role in the cre­ation of Major League Soc­cer as one of that league’s orig­i­nal own­ers, with Jones call­ing him the “father of soc­cer in the Unit­ed States.” In 1999, the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup was ded­i­cat­ed in his hon­or. Today, his heirs own MLS’s FC Dal­las, val­ued at an esti­mat­ed $500 mil­lion, and out­side of soc­cer, the fam­i­ly has a minor­i­ty stake in the NBA’s Chica­go Bulls. The Hunts also own Sub­Trop­o­lis, a 6.5 mil­lion-square-foot under­ground busi­ness com­plex in Kansas City.

    Clark Hunt, Lamar’s son, took over as CEO of the Chiefs in 2005 and has presided over a trans­for­ma­tion­al peri­od for the fran­chise. The Chiefs’ recent on-field suc­cess has ele­vat­ed their promi­nence and unlocked sev­er­al new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Kansas City has the NFL mar­ket­ing rights to Mex­i­co and Ger­many and has cul­ti­vat­ed an inter­na­tion­al fan base. The team played a game in Frank­furt last sea­son against the Mia­mi Dol­phins as part of the NFL’s Inter­na­tion­al Series and will report­ed­ly play in Ger­many again this com­ing sea­son.

    ...

    San Fran­cis­co 49ers

    When Edward DeBar­to­lo Sr. made the first-ever Forbes 400 list in 1982, he was arguably the largest mall builder in the coun­try, hav­ing devel­oped some 60 mil­lion square feet of retail space. The son of Ital­ian immi­grants, he began his entre­pre­neur­ial jour­ney through his stepfather’s paving busi­ness at age 13. In 1944, after grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame and serv­ing in the Army Corps of Engi­neers dur­ing World War II, he found­ed the Edward J. DeBar­to­lo Cor­po­ra­tion to con­struct homes for return­ing vet­er­ans. As the post-war boom came to fruition, it yield­ed a log­i­cal next step. Sub­ur­ban res­i­dents would need retail out­lets to shop in, so he built strip malls and, lat­er, shop­ping malls.

    His busi­ness boomed, and the Youngstown, Ohio, native report­ed­ly had a deep-root­ed affin­i­ty for the Cleve­land Browns, accord­ing to The Repos­i­to­ry, but that fran­chise wasn’t for sale. So DeBar­to­lo took $13 mil­lion (about $65 mil­lion today) and bought the San Fran­cis­co 49ers from the fam­i­ly of team founder Tony Mora­bito. He gave con­trol of the fran­chise to his son, Edward Jr.

    ...

    The Nin­ers weren’t the only cham­pi­onship fran­chise the elder DeBar­to­lo owned. In the late 1970s, he bought the NHL’s Pitts­burgh Pen­guins, and his daugh­ter, Denise DeBar­to­lo York, served as team pres­i­dent. Dur­ing her tenure, the Pen­guins draft­ed stars Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr, host­ed the NHL All-Star Game and won their first Stan­ley Cup in 1991. Days after the vic­to­ry, DeBar­to­lo denied the fran­chise was for sale to the Bal­ti­more Sun, even though he admit­ted that it had lost him $25 mil­lion in 14 years of own­er­ship. That Novem­ber, the NHL approved the pur­chase of the Pen­guins by a group head­ed by Howard Bald­win and Mor­ris Belzberg.

    As the new mil­len­ni­um approached, a pub­lic cor­rup­tion scan­dal plagued the DeBar­to­lo fam­i­ly. In 1998, Edward Jr. plead­ed guilty to not report­ing a $400,000 bribe demand­ed by then-Louisiana gov­er­nor Edwin Edwards to secure a river­boat gam­bling license. He received a $1 mil­lion fine and two years of pro­ba­tion, although in 2020 then-pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump par­doned him.

    In 1999, Edward Jr. hand­ed over con­trol of the 49ers to his sis­ter, and two years lat­er, he divest­ed his stake in the team to her in exchange for oth­er fam­i­ly assets, pri­mar­i­ly in real estate. Today, he is believed to con­trol a sig­nif­i­cant stake in pub­licly trad­ed mall giant Simon Prop­er­ty Group, which merged with the DeBar­to­los’ shop­ping mall empire in 1996, and a Flori­da-based prop­er­ty devel­op­ment and invest­ment firm that owns hotels, apart­ments, indus­tri­al and retail spaces across the U.S.

    Denise DeBar­to­lo York and her fam­i­ly cur­rent­ly own more than 90% of the 49ers, and her son, Jed York, runs the day-to-day oper­a­tions as CEO. While a sixth Super Bowl ring has elud­ed them for 29 years, the Nin­ers remain one of the best mon­ey-mak­ing NFL fran­chis­es. San Fran­cis­co turned an esti­mat­ed $152 mil­lion oper­at­ing prof­it on $622 mil­lion in rev­enue for the 2022 sea­son, the sixth-best mark in the league. The 49ers’ own­er­ship group has also broad­ened the scope of its invest­ments to include sports con­sult­ing firm Ele­vate and Eng­lish soc­cer club Leeds Unit­ed.

    “It’s using the foun­da­tion that you use for both the 49ers and for the ancil­lary busi­ness­es you build off the 49ers,” Gan­is says. “When you feel that you’ve got these foun­da­tions that can help sports teams glob­al­ly, you want to use them.”

    ————

    “Meet The Bil­lion­aire Own­ers Fac­ing Off In Super Bowl LVIII” By Justin Birn­baum; Forbes; 02/09/2024

    Even if they don’t hoist anoth­er Vince Lom­bar­di Tro­phy, Hunt will have plen­ty to cel­e­brate. His fam­i­ly, descen­dants of oil mag­nate H.L. Hunt, is col­lec­tive­ly worth an esti­mat­ed $24.8 bil­lion, mak­ing them the 12th-wealth­i­est fam­i­ly in Amer­i­ca. The Chiefs have appre­ci­at­ed a stag­ger­ing 17,199,900% since Clark Hunt’s father, Lamar, found­ed the team for $25,000 in 1960 and are worth an esti­mat­ed $4.3 bil­lion, the bulk of the family’s $5.8 bil­lion sports port­fo­lio (includ­ing debt). The franchise’s win­ning ways have cement­ed its sta­tus as a pre­mier sports brand, with a bona fide mar­ket­ing sen­sa­tion in 28-year-old quar­ter­back Patrick Mahomes. Adding to the glam­our this sea­son is tight end Travis Kelce’s love sto­ry with Tay­lor Swift, which has con­vert­ed hordes of Swifties into fans of both the Chiefs and the NFL.”

    From a $25k invest­ment by Lamar Hunt into a fran­chise worth near­ly $25 bil­lion. It’s been quite an invest­ment for the already super-wealthy Hunt fam­i­ly. Made all the more amaz­ing by the fact that it start­ed off with the for­ma­tion of the AFL as a rival bid to com­pete with the NFL. The orig­i­nal Hunt fam­i­ly NFL con­spir­a­cy, if you will:

    ...
    As the NFL became a cul­tur­al force in the 1950s, a young Lamar Hunt want­ed in on the bur­geon­ing sport. The league reject­ed his pro­pos­al to grant an expan­sion fran­chise to Dal­las, and his inter­est grew stronger after watch­ing the clas­sic 1958 NFL Cham­pi­onship Game between the New York Giants and the Bal­ti­more Colts. After declin­ing to buy a 20% share in the Chica­go Car­di­nals, Hunt pro­ceed­ed with a bold­er idea—a new league to com­pete with the NFL. He put togeth­er a group of eight own­ers, each con­tribut­ing $25,000 (near­ly $260,000 in today’s dol­lars), and formed the Amer­i­can Foot­ball League in 1960, even after an 11th-hour offer from the NFL to put a team in Dal­las.

    ...

    Hunt’s team, the Dal­las Tex­ans, won its first AFL title in 1962 before mov­ing to Kansas City a year lat­er. But the new league’s exis­tence would be short-lived. In 1966, the NFL and the AFL agreed to merge, with Hunt help­ing dri­ve nego­ti­a­tions. The leagues wouldn’t ful­ly inte­grate oper­a­tions for anoth­er four years, yet they still held their first joint cham­pi­onship game sev­en months after the deal was announced, an event that would become syn­ony­mous with Hunt’s lega­cy. “I have kid­ding­ly called it the ‘Super Bowl,’ which obvi­ous­ly can be improved upon,” he wrote to NFL com­mis­sion­er Pete Rozelle at the time. The inspi­ra­tion came from the Wham‑O Super Ball toy his wife, Nor­ma, bought their chil­dren for Christ­mas in 1965 as well as Hunt’s inter­est in col­lege bowl games. The Chiefs lost to the Green Bay Pack­ers in the inau­gur­al Super Bowl and earned their first vic­to­ry in the Big Game three years lat­er.

    ...

    Clark Hunt, Lamar’s son, took over as CEO of the Chiefs in 2005 and has presided over a trans­for­ma­tion­al peri­od for the fran­chise. The Chiefs’ recent on-field suc­cess has ele­vat­ed their promi­nence and unlocked sev­er­al new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Kansas City has the NFL mar­ket­ing rights to Mex­i­co and Ger­many and has cul­ti­vat­ed an inter­na­tion­al fan base. The team played a game in Frank­furt last sea­son against the Mia­mi Dol­phins as part of the NFL’s Inter­na­tion­al Series and will report­ed­ly play in Ger­many again this com­ing sea­son.
    ...

    And then there’s the De Bar­to­lo fam­i­ly, with roots going back to Youngstown, Ohio. As we’ve seen, the fam­i­ly has long been sus­pect­ed of orga­nized crime ties an is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing sup­plant­ed Mey­er Lan­sky’s orga­ni­za­tion in pro­vid­ing finan­cial ser­vices to the mob. As the arti­cle notes, Don­ald Trump par­doned Edward Jr in 2020 for not report­ed a bribe he was asked to pay to secure a river­boat gam­bling license. Which isn’t exact­ly the kind of thing that lifts sus­pi­cions of orga­nized crime ties:

    ...
    When Edward DeBar­to­lo Sr. made the first-ever Forbes 400 list in 1982, he was arguably the largest mall builder in the coun­try, hav­ing devel­oped some 60 mil­lion square feet of retail space. The son of Ital­ian immi­grants, he began his entre­pre­neur­ial jour­ney through his stepfather’s paving busi­ness at age 13. In 1944, after grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame and serv­ing in the Army Corps of Engi­neers dur­ing World War II, he found­ed the Edward J. DeBar­to­lo Cor­po­ra­tion to con­struct homes for return­ing vet­er­ans. As the post-war boom came to fruition, it yield­ed a log­i­cal next step. Sub­ur­ban res­i­dents would need retail out­lets to shop in, so he built strip malls and, lat­er, shop­ping malls.

    His busi­ness boomed, and the Youngstown, Ohio, native report­ed­ly had a deep-root­ed affin­i­ty for the Cleve­land Browns, accord­ing to The Repos­i­to­ry, but that fran­chise wasn’t for sale. So DeBar­to­lo took $13 mil­lion (about $65 mil­lion today) and bought the San Fran­cis­co 49ers from the fam­i­ly of team founder Tony Mora­bito. He gave con­trol of the fran­chise to his son, Edward Jr.

    ...

    As the new mil­len­ni­um approached, a pub­lic cor­rup­tion scan­dal plagued the DeBar­to­lo fam­i­ly. In 1998, Edward Jr. plead­ed guilty to not report­ing a $400,000 bribe demand­ed by then-Louisiana gov­er­nor Edwin Edwards to secure a river­boat gam­bling license. He received a $1 mil­lion fine and two years of pro­ba­tion, although in 2020 then-pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump par­doned him.

    In 1999, Edward Jr. hand­ed over con­trol of the 49ers to his sis­ter, and two years lat­er, he divest­ed his stake in the team to her in exchange for oth­er fam­i­ly assets, pri­mar­i­ly in real estate. Today, he is believed to con­trol a sig­nif­i­cant stake in pub­licly trad­ed mall giant Simon Prop­er­ty Group, which merged with the DeBar­to­los’ shop­ping mall empire in 1996, and a Flori­da-based prop­er­ty devel­op­ment and invest­ment firm that owns hotels, apart­ments, indus­tri­al and retail spaces across the U.S.

    Denise DeBar­to­lo York and her fam­i­ly cur­rent­ly own more than 90% of the 49ers, and her son, Jed York, runs the day-to-day oper­a­tions as CEO. While a sixth Super Bowl ring has elud­ed them for 29 years, the Nin­ers remain one of the best mon­ey-mak­ing NFL fran­chis­es. San Fran­cis­co turned an esti­mat­ed $152 mil­lion oper­at­ing prof­it on $622 mil­lion in rev­enue for the 2022 sea­son, the sixth-best mark in the league. The 49ers’ own­er­ship group has also broad­ened the scope of its invest­ments to include sports con­sult­ing firm Ele­vate and Eng­lish soc­cer club Leeds Unit­ed.

    ...

    It was four years ago that the DeBar­to­los got a pret­ty big prize from Trump. Are they now involved in a con­spir­a­cy to block a sec­ond Trump term?

    And what about Clay Hunt? What can we say about his polit­i­cal lean­ings? Well, accord­ing to this Octo­ber 2020, Newsweek report, Hunt made near­ly $50k in polit­i­cal dona­tions from 2016–2020. Vir­tu­al­ly all of it went toward get­ting Texas Repub­li­cans reelect­ed to the Sen­ate. Yes, get­ting John Cornyn and Ted Cruz reelect­ed appears to have been Clark Hunt’s focus:

    Newsweek

    Which NFL Own­ers Have Donat­ed to Don­ald Trump and Repub­li­cans?

    By Dan Can­cian
    Pub­lished Oct 29, 2020 at 10:22 AM EDT
    Updat­ed Oct 29, 2020 at 11:03 AM EDT

    Through­out his first term, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has often crit­i­cized ath­letes who speak out on polit­i­cal issues, insist­ing the two top­ics should remain clear­ly defined and inde­pen­dent from each oth­er. The ties between sports and pol­i­tics, how­ev­er, extend far beyond play­ers and coach­es shar­ing their views on social and polit­i­cal events.

    A new report pub­lished by ESPN and FiveThir­tyEight on Wednes­day esti­mat­ed that own­ers of pro­fes­sion­al U.S. sport fran­chis­es have con­tributed an esti­mat­ed $47 mil­lion in dona­tion towards fed­er­al elec­tion can­di­dates over the last five years.

    In the 2020 elec­tion cycle, own­ers have so far direct­ed $10 mil­lion towards Repub­li­can cam­paigns and Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tees (PAC), with $1.9 mil­lion going towards the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. The split is con­sis­tent with his­tor­i­cal data over the 2016 and 2018 fed­er­al elec­tions, when the Repub­li­can cam­paign and Repub­li­can caus­es received $34.2 mil­lion, while the Democ­rats received $10.1 mil­lion.

    The NFL ranks fourth in both over­all con­tri­bu­tion and dona­tions to Repub­li­can caus­es behind the MLB, NBA and NHL. Accord­ing to data from the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, over the last four years NFL own­ers donat­ed $5.9 mil­lion to either the two par­ties or cam­paigns affil­i­at­ed with them. The lion’s share of the mon­ey was poured into Repub­li­cans cof­fers, which received just over $5 mil­lion, com­pared with the $873,500 donat­ed to the Democ­rats.

    ...

    Clark Hunt

    The part own­er, chair­man and CEO of the Kansas City Chiefs has made sev­er­al con­tri­bu­tions to Repub­li­can caus­es over the years. In 2016, he donat­ed a com­bined $26,400, over a third of which went to the Keep The Sen­ate Red com­mit­tee, while two years lat­er he poured $15,800 into Repub­li­can cof­fers, includ­ing $2,700 to the cam­paign back­ing Ted Cruz (R‑TX) race to be reelect­ed to the Sen­ate. So far this year Hunt has donat­ed $5,600 to the Cornyn Major­i­ty Com­mit­tee, back­ing incum­bent sen­a­tor John Cornyn (R‑TX).

    ...

    ———–

    “Which NFL Own­ers Have Donat­ed to Don­ald Trump and Repub­li­cans? By Dan Can­cian; Newsweek; 10/29/2020

    “The part own­er, chair­man and CEO of the Kansas City Chiefs has made sev­er­al con­tri­bu­tions to Repub­li­can caus­es over the years. In 2016, he donat­ed a com­bined $26,400, over a third of which went to the Keep The Sen­ate Red com­mit­tee, while two years lat­er he poured $15,800 into Repub­li­can cof­fers, includ­ing $2,700 to the cam­paign back­ing Ted Cruz (R‑TX) race to be reelect­ed to the Sen­ate. So far this year Hunt has donat­ed $5,600 to the Cornyn Major­i­ty Com­mit­tee, back­ing incum­bent sen­a­tor John Cornyn (R‑TX).

    Tens of thou­sands of dol­lars to get Ted Cruz and John Cornyn reelect­ed to the Sen­ate. That appears to be the bulk of Clark Hunt’s polit­i­cal dona­tions. We aren’t see­ing any Trump dona­tions. But, then again, that’s could be a polit­i­cal­ly dicey move from a pub­lic rela­tions per­spec­tive on the part of an NFL own­er. The politi­ciza­tion of the NFL did­n’t start with Tay­lor Swift, after all.

    Is Clark Hunt a secret nev­er-Trumper Repub­li­can? The kind of Repub­li­can who would pre­fer a sec­ond Biden term of a return of Trump? It’s hard to imag­ine a viable Swift/NFL/Pentagon/Biden con­spir­a­cy that does­n’t have buy in from Clark Hunt.

    So that’s the inter­est­ing his­to­ry behind this year’s bizarre NFL con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. We’ll see what kind of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry’s the next sea­son will bring. And who knows. Should Tay­lor Swift end up endors­ing Job Biden at the Super Bowl and go on to lead Biden to a grand Swifty-fueled his­toric reelec­tion, this could be like an annu­al thing for the NFL. And maybe even if she does­n’t do any of that. This is Amer­i­ca in 2024. Foot­ball and unhinged con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. In part as a fun dis­trac­tion from all the decades of well-hinged and well-doc­u­ment­ed con­spir­a­cies of how pow­er actu­al­ly oper­ates that are clear­ly way too much to han­dle.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 10, 2024, 6:00 pm

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