WAS: What Adults are Saying about the Super Bowl Futility of some NFL Teams
The surprising reason why so many teams never have a shot at the big one.
In the span of roughly two generations the National Football League (NFL) has gone from a seasonal curiosity to one of the most titanic sports franchises on the globe. With the exception of the late heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, in the name of sport, America has never developed and exported something more widely followed or recognizable than the NFL.
When the late commissioner Pete Rozelle took the helm in 1960 the NFL’s collection of twelve teams was a mish-mash of family businesses. Some literally put food on the homestead’s table while for others ownership was a dalliance more interesting than say, thoroughbred breeding. In sport’s cultural pantheon then, the NFL was far behind horse racing, boxing and the country’s first dominant sport until about 1990, baseball.
Rozelle was above all else a visionary. His deft management and youthful ideas married with the growing interest of television, paved the way for an American franchise that presently has no peer. Fans, gamblers, pundits and most others are continually drawn to the sport even as it has confronted troubling issues of institutional racism, public-money for billionaires and player’s severe head and neck injuries. Virtually everybody has a team and every year (just like when baseball had a “hot stove” league) hope for a championship run prevails. In the Super Bowl era (since 1967) one would think that enough years have passed where all have celebrated. That the tumblers of chance worked sufficiently where by now all teams would have a good share of playing in or nearing the pinnacle game uniquely etched with Roman Numerals. But this hasn’t been the case.
The NFL has added no new teams in nearly 30 years and now with a sea-to-sea allotment of 32 squads NFL football dominates fall Sundays—and Mondays—and Thursdays, well you get the idea. The cyclical nature of all things means that not every team is primed for a championship every year. Even the most casual fan would acknowledge such an idea. But what seems even more curious is that each season a number of franchises—no matter what changes they’ve made—never seriously compete for a Super Bowl championship. Occasionally such teams find stars align where they may have a surprising good season, but that is short lived and the franchise’s “window” for glory rapidly closes.
For teams (defined as the General Manager and below) this malady may not even be their own fault. In the modern era there are three things that segregate Super Bowl caliber from other teams. The first is the quality of the offensive line. Football is nothing without blocking and tackling and perhaps because there is no easy way to gamble, or integrate into fantasy football the “offensive line” is routinely overlooked. The second is ROI at quarterback. The more favorable the better the team performance. This signifies either a big dollar QB is exceptional OR a lesser-value player is “strong” (not necessarily brilliant) thereby allowing other players to be lured within “salary-cap” limits. But the third factor is likely the most invisible, pernicious and the least controlled by anyone who plays or curates talent. Namely, somewhere between a quarter and third of teams can never make a serious, sustained Super Bowl run simply because the quality of team ownership is so poor.
The Sicilians taught us long ago the “fish rots from the head” and for these NFL franchises indeed that is their day-to-day existence . Like a hot rod wanting to speed down the highway, team ownership is the emergency brake that never releases. Through a wide combination of shortcomings some of these rich, often silly and largely men, just can’t get it right in leading a multi-billion dollar business. The reasons publicly revealed can be seen by any thoughtful, adult observer. In between corporate speak, network shilling and local reporter boot-licking, careful squinting shows club ownership is devoid of critical skills—most often the myriad “soft” ones any successful executive needs in the 21st century.
At least the following eight teams perennially qualify for what’s described here: New York Jets, Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, Las Vegas Raiders, Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, Arizona Cardinals and Cincinnati Bengals. Each are routinely sabotaged by the ineffectiveness, penury or egomania of the very owners who claim to be “all in” for a Super Bowl run. Let’s take a closer look.
New York Jets
Owner Woody Johnson made his dough in the capital markets and by cheating the IRS (he then settled in 2006). He used this to insulate all the other dough he already had as a fourth-generation descendant of the Johnson and Johnson pharmaceutical fortune. Long active in GOP donor circles he bought his way into the Trump administration and was the US Ambassador to Great Britain from 2017-2021. This suggests like our 45th President he longs for a return to yesteryear. This likely explains how his recent efforts resulted in recruiting the overrated and way past his prime Aaron Rogers. This was simply the latest in a string of decisions revealing this is what an NFL team would look like if owned by a guy like Trump but with a bigger inheritance.
Cleveland Browns
In all fairness husband and wife owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam bought a franchise that is perpetually a mess in part because well, uh, it’s Cleveland! Remember this is not even the original Cleveland Browns of Jim Brown, Otto Graham and Marty Schottenheimer fame—that team having departed for Baltimore as the now Ravens in the mid-1990s. These Browns are the NFL’s most recent expansion team in 1999 and a generation later still play like it.
The Haslam’s partially inherited and partially built fortunes through the Pilot truck stop brand. That business skill has never translated to the gridiron where they’ve had a carousel of head coaches and quarterbacks including their most magnificent failure in current QB DeShaun Watson.
Jacksonville Jaguars
Owner Shahid Khan is a unique NFL owner. He is foreign-born (Pakistan), a practicing Muslim, has a completely self-made fortune (auto parts) and seemingly cares more about exporting his Jaguars and the NFL to Europe than anything else (his team plays two “home” games there yearly). He is one of the few NFL owners with no public scandals, has been married for 46 years to his college sweetheart and is a significant benefactor to the University of Illinois.
But he still doesn’t have the football magic. Uncertainty about where the team will play long-term has always shadowed him and currently he is upside-down on QB ROI with the underwhelming Trevor Lawrence.
Dallas Cowboys
Jerry Jones is the unicorn of all NFL owners. With self made riches he has no peer in building a stadium completely from private funds—thereby giving him the social license to fleece fans with astronomical prices for the “Cowboy experience”.
That team’s clay feet are not found in the poor draft, coaching or contract decisions. Instead it is Jones himself who as owner, commands the stage so that all watch him as though that’s paramount to wins and losses. When black students first went into Little Rock schools in 1957–there sat junior-high Jerry leering from a stepped up perch learning the value of having the talking stick amid klieg lights. It is his addiction.
As such, Jones requires a wide berth to accommodate his ego. Self-made men are sometimes that way. But when the nature of one’s craft is poking mercurial coaches and athletes to perform, one should also leave much stage space for similar egos to flourish. For Jones this is heresy. He is the team owner—and in his view—the only voice who matters. Smothering all others, that view has corrupted at least a half dozen squads who easily were Super Bowl contenders.
Las Vegas Raiders
The original “rogue” and dysfunctional NFL franchise remains that way today—except it can’t win. As long as someone named “Davis” has a controlling interest in this squad, there is no chance for much of anything else. Second generation owner Mark Davis can’t hold a candle to his late old man Al who founded the franchise in 1960. He has little of the guile, pizzazz or cajones his father showed that created both a gangster like team ethos and multiple Super Bowl champions. Raider fans are slowly realizing the franchise has become simply a nostalgia act.
Chicago Bears
In Illinois yesteryear still reigns. Virginia Halas McCaskey—at the ripe age of 101—remains the controlling interest of the team acquired by her Hall of Fame father George in 1925! A melange of succeeding generations have long run the daily operation which in recent years, finally gave way to outside-the-family professionals with some football pedigree and perhaps, decision-making authority.
The Bears will be recalled as a franchise that arguably had the greatest NFL defensive squad ever in the mid-1980s. From those dominant teams, and with an offense anchored by the incredible Walter Payton, it won precisely one Super Bowl and has never gotten close in the 40 years since. The team has consistently failed at luring even serviceable quarterbacks and Head coaches. The latter includes former player Mike Ditka who with his moronic ways, squandered the team’s prodigious 1980s talent.
Arizona Cardinals
No NFL team has such a dubious beginning or limited success as this franchise. Born as the Chicago Cardinals in the 1930s, the team’s birth was facilitated by a loan from rum-runner Art Rooney Sr., the legendary owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers to friend Charles Bidwill. The latter operated the team as the family’s primary income source which remains true to this day under Charles’ grandson, Bill. The team left for St. Louis in 1960 and then to Phoenix in 1988.
The Cardinals has never had quality leadership at any time in its history. It practices on one side of Phoenix’s mammoth metro, plays far across town from its home base and has amassed a grand total of one Super Bowl appearance in 36 desert seasons. The Bidwill family remains fully controlling of daily operations thereby ensuring it will remain to the NFL, what Vanderbilt is to the Southeast Conference in college football.
Cincinnati Bengals
This team was founded in the 1960s when the legendary Paul Brown got into a huff with the original Browns and thought southern Ohio should have pro football. Almost 60 years later Brown’s family has a total of two Super Bowl appearances to its credit.
So penurious is this gang that only a mere two years ago, did it invest in an indoor practice facility—a longtime staple with all other NFL franchises. Owners did get Hamilton County Ohio to offer gobs of public money for a new stadium some time back and enjoyed what is regarded as one of the cushiest stadium funding scenarios for any franchise. The team has historically cycled through good talent levels but has never successfully blended the right coach, talent and franchise attitude.
There you have it. Eight franchises that will dominate the attention of millions of fans and grab billions of dollars with limited leadership talent that drags down all around it. If run as a true corporate structure (only the Green Bay Packers are organized as such) these owners would have been jettisoned a long time ago. Until that happens for whatever reason, long suffering fans are unlikely to get any respite.