Ownership on loan from the devil

The ownership of the NFL's St. Louis Rams has let it be known that they might sell the team if the price is right. Several groups have stepped up and made bids to purchase the team. One of those groups is led by, among others, Rush Limbaugh.

On its face, I think this is an incredibly bad idea. Obviously, Limbaugh is a terribly divisive personality, and it's just not smart to have an owner that's going to offend half your fan base.

Of course, if players don't want to play for him either, that's a big problem too.

"All I know is from the last comment I heard, he said in (President) Obama's America, white kids are getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting 'right on,'" [New York Giants defensive end Matthias] Kiwanuka told The Daily News. "I mean, I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants, it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play."

"I am not going to draw a conclusion from a person off of one comment, but when it is time after time after time and there's a consistent pattern of disrespect and just a complete misunderstanding of an entire culture that I am a part of, I can't respect him as a man."

On Friday's edition of ESPN's Pardon The Interruption, co-host Michael Wilbon added, "I don’t know whether Rush Limbaugh is a straight-up bigot, or if he just plays one on TV or the radio. But he is universally reviled by black people in this country, and justifiably so…he’s referred to the NFL as Bloods and Crips without weapons…does he not think that black people had TV’s and radios in the 20th century, when he started saying these things?"

Peer pressure is a powerful thing. And if Kiwanuka and Bart Scott (also mentioned in the embedded article) feel this way, I've got to believe there's many others that do also. And if they believe he's racist, they're probably going to make it known to their cohorts that they should probably consider whether they want to play for such an owner. It wouldn't surprise me if players that sign with the Rams would be treated like someone that crossed a picket line.

For a league that prides itself on parity and competitive balance, the possibility that one of its 32 teams could put itself at such a disadvantage simply because of their owner ought to seriously worry its leadership. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the other team owners need to think long and hard over whether they want to approve this group's bid if Rams ownership accepts it.