I’ve enjoyed following the sale of the Washington Commanders as it slouches toward completion. You’d think it’d be relatively simple to buy a sports team, but no! Turns out it takes more than a couple billion dollars and a handshake to get the deal done. There are a ton of moving parts, many of which involve a whole slew of backroom maneuvering and bargaining before you can even call your new flagrantly expensive plaything your own.

I’ll never own a professional sports team (other than the Packers, naturally) but I can’t help but wonder how I’d handle things if I got a seat in the big chair. What would it be like to be an owner?

So let’s pull on that thread a little bit. How would I go about things if I swooped in out of nowhere and suddenly became a contender to buy an NFL team?

Why the Commanders?

If I had the cash to buy a controlling interest in an NFL team, the Commanders would be one of two teams on my shortlist.

Why? It comes down to history. If I was going to drop multiple billions of dollars on an NFL team, I wouldn’t want it to be on an expansion franchise. I want a franchise with history involved, preferably one that has fallen on hard times. That way I can be the restoring hero who brings the franchise back to its glory days.

Casting that wide net, I see a few teams that broadly meet the criteria there: Washington, Detroit, Buffalo, Miami, Las Vegas, and the Los Angeles Chargers all have had some previous record of success but haven’t been able to climb as high since (especially in the case of the Lions).

Drilling down a little further, I don’t want to take over a team that has relocated. It’s hard to restore your glory days if they took place in a different city, so that wipes the Chargers and Raiders off the list, leaving us with Washington, Detroit, Buffalo, and Miami.

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