How many of the teams are used by the owner as their sole source of income?
Isn't that basically the case with Al Davis and the Raiders?
I thought King George was the same way... all his money came from the Yankees.
No owner, none that I can think of, makes money entirely from the team. Old-timers like Connie Mack and Clark Griffith had no asset other than their team, but Calvin Griffith might have been the last family-owner.
Steinbrenner came to NY with money from the ship-building company. Now that's not big business, at least not when compared to, say, co-founding Microsoft (Seahawks), but it was enough for Von Steingrabber to plunk down $10 million to buy the Yankees.
It used to be argued that Washington would always have bad teams because DC is a town of government workers. No local multi-millionaires. George Preston Marshall owned a laundry business. Almost every member of the old Senators organization was named Robertson (Mrs. Clark G.'s family).
Otherwise, I'm not sure what the salry num,bers mean, except that the Yankees play in and invest in a very big market; the Muts wander in circles (though it was worse when the aristocratic Whitney/Paysons owned the team); Can Minneapolis support that spending; Chicago and LA teams manage $120 - 140 million payrolls...and the Nats?
