Toppy Vann wrote: ↑Sun Nov 18, 2018 11:47 am
KnowItAll wrote: ↑Fri Nov 16, 2018 7:14 pm
Blitz wrote: ↑Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:43 pm
For Braley, it was always about money making.
I don't think so. Plenty of ways to get much better return than investing in the CFL.
Braley's desire to keep the CFL whole and working is what motivated him.
KIA is right. Better ways to make $$$ than a football team.
I respectfully disagree.
I view Braley as a businessman and making loans to CFL franchises was one of his business choices to make money off those loans, which were secretly done.
I also view Braley as a businessman who also chose to purchase two CFL franchises at low prices with the goal of making money from them in the longer run. Braley bought low with the goal of selling high. It did not and has not worked out for him, I don't believe, as much as he hoped.
Most professional sports franchises have been lucrative for owners. Some have lost money on operating costs but recouped those losses (which could also be written off in a variety of ways) and made huge gains when they sold the franchise.
Successful businessmen also gain much notoriety when they own a sports franchise. For some they are a toy and for others, they create a much greater public profile.
I'm not taking away the positive's that Braley's investments meant at the time he purchased the Lions and the Argos. But I don't view him as a magnaminous individual who got involved to save the CFL. In terms of his ownership of the Lions, he was mostly an absentee, hands off owner who had no previous involvements or interests in British Columbia.
I view Braley's interests in the CFL as mainly business decisions and an opportunity to create a much greater public profile for himself. Nothing wrong with that but I also don't view him as a hero for doing so, based on that concept.
I will look for an article on Braley's first secret loans. Here is an article from 2009 that covered some of this topic.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
On David Braley, the Argonauts, the CFL and the NHL
[Photo: B.C. Lions owner David Braley (left) with the Grey Cup, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, former CFL commissioner Tom Wright and 2005 Grey Cup Committee Chair Dennis Skulsky in 2004. From gov.bc.ca].
Quite the story in this morning's Globe and Mail from David Naylor and Matthew Sekeres. According to the Globe, B.C. Lions owner David Braley "secretly put up half of the $2-million franchise fee when David Cynamon and Howard Sokolowski purchased the Toronto Argonauts out of bankruptcy in the fall of 2003, and continued to lend money to the CFL club".
The story says the deal was made without informing then-CFL commissioner Tom Wright (who I spoke with not that long ago about the Coyotes-to-Hamilton situation) and has continued to the present day without the knowledge of current CFL commissioner Mark Cohon.
No sources are named and all sides appear to be denying the story, but in very carefully worded terms. For example, consider these comments from Sokolowski:
"When asked yesterday if Braley had an ownership interest in the Argos, Sokolowski vehemently denied it.
'Absolutely not, David Cynamon and myself are the owners,' he said. 'There are no formal financial records whatsoever in terms of him being an owner.'
When asked whether there were any financial arrangements between the Argos and Braley, Sokolowski replied: '[Braley] is not an owner. He has never been an owner. It’s a private company. That’s it.'
That's quite the non-denial denial; Braley doesn't have an "ownership interest", but there's no denial of financial arrangements between the parties.
Later in the story, Braley says he's loaned money to various CFL owners from time to time, including the Sherwood Schwarz group that sold the Argos to Cynamon and Sokolowski in 2003. That would support claims of his involvement in the franchise transfer. Like the one offered by Sokolowski, Braley's denial of ownership interests is also very limited:
'I don’t have any ownership interest at all with the Toronto Argonauts and I never have. … There is no paperwork and there’s nothing to be able to prove that.'
Those comments certainly doesn't prove the Globe story, but there is enough there to give it some credence. The full truth of the matter certainly is still up in the air for the time being, though. The bigger question is what it means if these allegations are true, and that's one Globe columnist Stephen Brunt tries to address with this piece.
Brunt makes some good points about how Braley may have become involved and how his involvement may have preserved the Argonauts (and by extension, the league; without a Toronto franchise, say goodbye to national sponsorship and television deals). I'm not sure if I agree with the last part of his piece, though:
"In stepped Braley with a solution – one that he could certainly afford, but one that would be controversial in most leagues. He offered Cynamon and Sokolowski some financial assistance – and no one would have to know. ...
Almost all good – except that, on an absolutely fundamental level, you can’t do that in professional sports. Not even if it’s just a “loan” between businessmen. Not even if you’ve done it before for other owners in the past. Not even if there’s no paper trail, no formal partnership agreement."
Furthermore, consider the people involved. David Braley is not Jerry Jones or Al Davis, looking to make himself the team's de facto general manager. The portrait of him that emerges in Bob Ackles' excellent book The Waterboy is a limited one of a reclusive owner who hires good people on the business and football side and lets them run the show.
That certainly happened in B.C. under Braley's tenure with Ackles and coach/general manager Wally Buono. If the story of massive loans to the Argonauts' owners is true, it isn't difficult to imagine Braley being even less assertive on the football side when he's only partly involved (and well-known as the owner of another team). It would be very hard to see him as some sort of tyrant that marched down and started telling the football guys how to run things.
The deal's image is still problematic and it's certainly not a good idea in general to have an owner involved in multiple franchises if it can be avoided, but this is perhaps the exception that proves the rule. For one thing, the CFL absolutely needs a strong, successful Toronto franchise.
With the Argonauts doing well, it's a national league; without them, it's much more of a regional one. There's zero question of relocating the franchise, but it was certainly difficult to find a buyer for it in 2003 thanks to the disastrous Schwarz era. Thus, something had to be done to sweeten the deal. Moreover, if you have to have an owner involved in multiple franchises, a guy like Braley who's largely hands-off on the football side would be the purrfect candidate.
What's concerning is the secrecy surrounding the deal and the (apparent) lack of information on it received by two separate commissioners. Presume for a moment that the allegations reported in the Globe are completely accurate as to Braley's involvement.
If that information was known by everyone in the league and released at the time of the sale, would it really be a big problem? Imagine a press conference where Wright explains the situation and says that Braley has generously offered to step forward with the necessary cash as a loan to allow Cynamon and Sokolowski to purchase the team and keep it local.
The CFL could say that it's not ideal, but given the importance of the Argonauts and Braley's reputation, it makes sense. Tweak the deal slightly so Braley's only putting up 49.998 per cent of the money (and thus Cynamon and Sokolowski have a majority interest), make it clear that he can't make any decisions for the franchise without their approval, and you don't have much of a problem.
Sure, it reduces Cynamon and Sokolowski's status in the Toronto pecking order somewhat (which may have been why this was kept so secret), but you don't have competitive concerns, you have the league and the fans aware of exactly what's going on and you have a strong Argonauts franchise. That seems like a good solution from this corner.
Keeping the league and the fans in the dark is a substantial problem. There has been far too much infighting and jockeying for position in the CFL over the years, with individual owners often doing what's best for themselves and ignoring what's best for the league.
Often, the commissioner and the league office have been undermined, an all-too-frequent situation that former league president Jeff Giles described very well in his book Bigger Balls: The CFL And Overcoming the Canadian Inferiority Complex. (By the way, Giles is now the athletic director at McMaster University, where Braley is one of the most influential alumni and has an athletic centre named after him).
The owners need to step back and do more to support commissioner Mark Cohon, and that means keeping him in the loop on these sort of deals. The CFL needs a strong, united front more than ever at the moment, given the rising threat from the NFL and the Buffalo Bills' potential relocation.
Secret deals between owners that undermine the commissioner's role do not help with that.
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
