(Akiit.com) Michael Jordan’s takeover of the Bobcats makes him the only black majority owner of a major U.S. sports franchise…

Michael Jordan, pro basketball’s greatest player, and a lackluster executive for two franchises, once said in a Nike commercial, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

He got another chance when his bid for the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats was accepted. Although, how much he paid is in dispute. Forbes magazine set the Bobcats’ value at $175 million: a steep plunge from the $300 million Robert L. Johnson paid for the team in 2003.

The NBA won’t provide details, but a spokesman’s e-mail to The Root stated, “we expect the transaction will value the Bobcats at between $275-$290 million and that Michael Jordan is acquiring an 80 percent stake.”

The deal between Johnson, the first black majority owner of a major U.S. pro sports team, and NBA legend Michael Jordan, who earned hundreds of millions highlights why no other blacks own controlling shares in pro basketball, football or baseball teams.

During segregation, when fan interest was high, start-up costs were low, and there was scant competition, blacks started, bought and sold leagues and teams. Today’s pro sports owners–often billionaires–have access to enormous capital, influential associates and can manage the timing of a deal.

Since the 1980s, African Americans have controlled one or two of those ingredients, but the trio needed to be a majority owner eluded everyone except Johnson and Jordan. Blacks are, and have been, pro team limited partners. This is a look at some of those would-be owners, as well as individuals who decided to invest in teams in less expensive pro sports.

Taking and Making Their Shots Against the NBA

The first blacks to become managing general partners of a major pro sports franchise, if briefly, were Bertram Lee and Peter Bynoe. In 1989, the pair, with partners tennis pro Arthur Ashe and then-Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown, signed a deal to buy the Denver Nuggets for $65 million. After the financing became a problem, the duo’s investment partner, Comsat Corp., bought the team.

Between 1999 and 2002, Bob Johnson made three offers for the Bobcats’ predecessor, the Charlotte Hornets and was rebuffed by the owner, George Shinn. In 1999, Shinn also rejected Michael Jordan’s bid for a controlling interest in the Hornets.

In 2000, Jordan paid between $20 million and $30 million for a 10 percent stake in the Washington Wizards and became president of basketball operations. The deal also gave him a share of the National Hockey League Washington Capitals.

But Bob Johnson, the man who sold Black Entertainment Television to Viacom for $3 billion, is persistent. In 2003, after Shinn decamped to New Orleans with the Hornets, Johnson became the majority owner of the expansion NBA Charlotte Bobcats, and later the Charlotte Sting of the WNBA. African-American members of the multi-ethnic investment team included former Boston Celtic, ML Carr, rapper Nelly, as well as two prominent African Americans from the area.

In 2006, Jordan purchased equity in the Bobcats. As the Bobcats’ owner, he may recruit black limited partners.

In the 1980s, Edward Gardner and his wife, Bettian, co-founder of Soft Sheen, the black hair company, became part owners of the Chicago Bulls. Magic Johnson purchased part of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1994, and the next year Isiah Thomas bought 10 percent of the Toronto Raptors. Jay-Z and Bill Cosby have made investments in the New Jersey Nets. David Robinson has a piece of the San Antonio Spurs, and singer Usher owsn part of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Other teams that have had or have black co-owners include the Memphis Grizzlies and the Atlanta Hawks.

Since 2005, Sheila Johnson, the co-founder of BET and ex-wife of Robert Johnson, has owned interests in several teams. She is the team president, managing partner and governor of the WNBA Washington Mystics, and she co-owns the NHL Washington Capitals and the NBA’s Washington Wizards. In 2009, Forbes reported the average value (equity plus debt) of an NBA team to be $367 million.
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(Akiit.com) Diddy (aka, Sean Combs) is in talks to purchase Crystal Palace, a struggling soccer team based in South London. It has been reported that Diddy is offering the equivalent of approximately $550 million to purchase the team, which filed for bankruptcy in January of this year. If the deal is allowed to proceed as expected, it will make Diddy the first U.S. rap star to become owner of a team in the prestigious English soccer league.

From the standpoint of “breaking barriers,” I respect Diddy for attempting to become the first “urban entrepreneur” from the U.S. to become a team owner in this very popular and lucrative soccer market, in addition to being the first black man of American citizenship to do the same.

Although soccer still takes a backseat to other sports in the U.S. like football, basketball and baseball, it is rapidly increasing in popularity among all facets of the population, including urban youth. Diddy could be demonstrating excellent timing in deciding to purchase a team at this time. However, this is no guaranteed moneymaker for Diddy. The previous two owners of Crystal Palace both left the team in bankruptcy after being unable to generate enough money to keep the team profitable. Also, the team has not participated in the Premier League (the highest level of English football) since the 2004-2005 season.
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(Akiit.com) LAS VEGAS (AP) — Oddsmakers didn’t take long to make Tiger Woods the Masters favorite. Even his fellow competitors say they can see him trying on another green jacket.

They’re expecting the Tiger of old at Augusta National. That might be because it’s the only Tiger they know.

I say he’ll be lucky to make the cut.

It’s not just the five months he has gone without hitting a shot for real, though that surely can’t help. Woods will be rusty, and the Masters is not a place to try to fine tune your game.

No, it’s because the Woods saga is a story that has morphed into a lot more than just the tale of a man who pretended to be something he wasn’t. Once one of the most esteemed athletes in the world, he’s now a soap opera-like figure whose last scripted apology clearly showed he has a lot more left to accomplish in his 12-step rehabilitation program.

He’ll go to Augusta still stinging from the pasting he’s taken from the tabloids and the late-night shows since crashing his car Thanksgiving night. He’ll go there vulnerable and, for the first time, unsure what kind of reception he’ll get.

The media will want to ask him questions. The fans will want him to act contrite.

Kind of hard to swagger down the fairway and say you’re sorry at the same time.

Unfortunately for Woods, it’s a new game. He will tee it up on No. 1 the Thursday of the Masters with more questions swirling about him than the first time he played there as an amateur 14 years ago.

At least then we knew the answers. The kid was good and there was something about him that screamed greatness.

The aura grew over the years, as did the collection of green jackets. Now it’s shattered for good.

The Woods we once knew seemed to enjoy sending his opponents broken and trembling to the scrap heap almost as much as he enjoyed picking up the winner’s check.

The Woods we know now — wait! We still don’t know who he is, do we?
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(Akiit.com) In perhaps a sign of these economically stressful times, the National Football League Players Association is clamoring for the restoration of a $123 million per-team, league-wide salary cap as the official start of the free-agent signing period dawns. Meanwhile football owners seem intent on standing idly by while costly concerns twist aimlessly in the wind.

This week officially marks the close of the league’s long-held labor agreement, assuring that for the first time since 1993 all 32 NFL teams will operate without a mandated salary cap. Essentially, that renders more than 200 players — franchise play-makers such as Julius Peppers, Carlos Dansby, Dunta Robinson, Darren Sharper and Darren Sproles, to name a few — free agents of one sort or another, open to procuring the very best deals for themselves offered for their vast and varied services.

On the surface, this would seem to suggest that the teams most willing to reinvest in fielding the very best teams possible are poised to make the most significant gains between this season and last.

But alas, theory and practice are not always joined at the hip. A key factor to remember is that owners opted out of the current collective bargaining agreement in 2008 based on a series of fundamental concerns. For instance, they argued that players’ 60 percent share of revenues was simply too steep for them to continue profitably slicing up all that cheddar.

If that was their stance then what might you expect it to be now, legitimate or not, in the midst of the great recession?
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(Akiit.com) Think Gilbert Arenas may have taken his ‘Agent Zero’ persona just a bit too much to heart?

Certainly these are sobering and soul searching times for the three-time NBA All-Star, who - much like the character from the 1960’s hit song ‘Secret Agent Man’ that bore his alter ego - now faces the very real prospect of having his name taken away and tragically replaced by a number.

Only time, and much more scrutiny, will ultimately reveal what did and didn’t happen in the Washington Wizards’ locker room in the days just before Christmas when Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton are alleged to have squared off, guns-at-the-ready, in a stare down so intensely defiant it would have given Tony Montana cause for pause.

But no matter the outcome, what’s already indisputably known is that Arenas violated every code known to an athlete by turning the team’s should-be sanctuary into a potential crime scene by storing as many as three firearms in his Verizon Center locker stall.

“I used bad judgment,” admitted Arenas, who also took the time to shoot down rumors that the dispute stemmed from a $25,000 gambling debt. “I don’t gamble,” he insisted. “I’m a goofball, that’s what I am. Even with something like this, I’m going to make fun of it. Anything I do is funny, well it’s funny to me.”
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