Written by Ty Schalter at The Comeback
Ownership is the only thing NFL fans have zero control over.
We can vote with our voices and dollars on players, coaches, even executives. But in the end, we’re all captives of our favorite NFL team’s owner—and if they want to move the team, sell the team or run it into the ground, too bad. It’s their plaything.
So which fanbases are blessed with the most likeable owners, and which have been most grievously cursed?
We didn’t want to simply say “everyone hates Jerry Jones, let’s put him last. There’s empirical data to consider. There’s history to consider as well.
First, every NFL owner was ranked by number of seasons owned (including family predecessors, if inherited). Then they were ranked by regular-season win percentage, percentage of seasons that ended in a playoff berth, and percentage of seasons that ended in a league championship (including AFL playoffs and titles, as appropriate).
Then I ranked them by net worth, as well as calculated franchise growth rate (2015 franchise value minus purchase price, divided by seasons owned), and an “investment factor” (non-NFL wealth times growth rate). Though independent wealth and financial success don’t have a one-to-one relationship with fan happiness, owners who can afford to invest in their teams are better than those reliant on teams to make them wealthy—and invested-in teams result in better fan experiences.
These numbers are primarily sourced from Forbes’ financial valuations, and Forbes’ billionaire profiles. Some numbers were harder to source, and some are tricky to define thanks to quirky ownership structures or family collectives. These have been noted.
With ordinal ranks in three on-field categories and three financial categories, I added a completely subjective “gut check”: Simply, my ordinal ranking of which owners I deemed most awesome (for a variety of reasons). The average of all seven rankings is our Likeability Index; the owners have been presented is in worst-to-best LI order.
And now, the definitive list:
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