The man who once warned the NFL that “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered” could be looking for a spot at the trough.
Via Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News, former Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he’s “open to” buying a piece of the Cowboys. And Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says he’s “open to” selling one to Cuban.
“That’s exactly why if you’re me, you would be open to that is because of the man,” Jones told Watkins. “I have all the respect in the world for him and I know what he did for the Mavericks and what he’s done for basketball. He’s in additional to financial boatstreams of your team, you want to associate with the highest quality of [a person] who loves the game and then also at the same time wants to do something about it. Mark leads the way in that.”
“I’m sure our Harbinger fund would be open to it,” Cuban told Watkins on the possibility of buying an interest in the Cowboys.
The Harbinger fund, however, isn’t one of the private-equity funds approved to buy slices of NFL teams. Besides, Jones may want Cuban as a partner, not Cuban’s private-equity fund.
The conversation apparently arises from recent comments from Cowboys executive Stephen Jones regarding the possibility of selling a minority stake in the team. But being “open to” the possibility and turning it into a done deal are two different things. Jones may want much more than Cuban would pay, for example.
Cuban made his prediction that the NFL was 10 years away from implosion in 2014. Since then, franchise values have exploded. And there’s no end in sight.
Earlier this year, Jones provided the best response possible to Cuban’s pigs/hogs line: “When the ducks quack, feed ‘em.”
The simple reality is that the ducks keep quacking, as loud as ever. And the pigs turned hogs will eventually grow into a new species that’s bigger than any other porcine creature that ever walked the earth. And Cuban apparently had realized, as to the NFL, that if you can’t beat ‘em, feed ‘em.
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