Was Donald Trump the worst owner in Sports History?

It seems pretty funny to me that Donald Trump gets such a free pass. No other guy in America could go on TV and call Rosie O’Donnell a fat pig and have virtually no one question that act. Worst than that many sports fans give The Donal a free pass when he played a large role in the demise of the old USFL.

Since there are rumors that the USFL is making a 2010 comeback with many original team names and owners one has to hope that Trump will not be among them. It was Trump who encouraged his fellow owners to sue the NFL, it was Trump that convinced these people that the NFL would settle and merge with the league much the way they had with the old AFL. It was Trump that convinced the USFL owners that they could turn their minimal investment in the USFL into highly profitable NFL franchises. In this respect Trump could not have been more wrong.

In the end he though that the NFL had an illegal monopoly of American Football on TV, in the end the Jury agreed with him. However Trump, and his fellow USFL owner forgot that Millionaire owners do not get a lot of sympathy from juries. In the end they were awarded 1 dollar in damages. Trump tried to get something for nothing and in the end got 1 dollar to split with his fellow owners.

Of course that is only one side of the story, the other is the USFL was a league that was terribly mismanaged. It had a weak central management system that allowed teams to violate salary cap rules, had owners that spent themselves out of revenue, and a few owner far to eager to fight the NFL in Court. Hopefully the new league will have learned its lesson from the old one.