The NFL has never had a black owner. With soaring franchise values ​​and NFL rules requiring the majority owner to own 30% equity and have less than $1 billion in debt associated with the team, it’s hard to find a lot of people. (regardless of race) with the money to buy controlling interest in a team.

Via Ben Fischer from Sports Business Journal, the league could waive this rule in an effort to facilitate black ownership of the Broncos. It would be, as Fischer explains, a one-time exception that would allow someone like Byron Allen, who apparently doesn’t have the financial capacity to secure the winning bid in the traditional way, to buy a team.

Black ownership of a team would hardly solve the league’s deeper problems in this regard. Yes, it is necessary. As Al Sharpton explained on Friday morning joe On MSNBC, that’s one of the issues that came up during Thursday’s meeting between commissioner Roger Goodell, a handful of owners, other team representatives and various civil rights leaders. Yet thinking that having a black owner solves the chronic failure of white owners to hire enough black coaches is no different from thinking that racism ended when America elected Barack Obama.

It’s a long-awaited start, with no guarantee that it will lead anywhere other than going from zero black NFL owners to one black NFL owner. However, one is better than zero. And the NFL can’t achieve two (or more) without having one first.

Meanwhile, the single exception may eventually have to swallow the rule. Current procedures rely on ownership solely on financial resources, not on whether the owner will be a good partner or, more importantly, a good person. With so many different ways to skin the financial cat, maybe it’s time to get rid of the idea that anyone who wants to buy the team has to be able to show up with a bag full of money in the amount of 30% of the purchase price. . Chances are that as the bar gets higher and higher, the only people with the money to buy a team will be people no one really wants to do business with – and no one who should be the steward. of a sports organization in which so many fans are financially and emotionally invested.