[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Not a clue off of the top of my head, but the League has a whole bunch of bylaws. For example, you think that Oakland would have wanted to just buy the Raiders and end the Davises moving them like a chesspiece? Nope, there's a Rule against that.

Rule 3.2(a) prohibits teams from being owned by non-profit corporations, or the public at large. (The Packers were grandfathered in.). You can't sell stock in a team any more.

In the AFL days, the Patriots were publicly owned, but Billy Sullivan bought up all the stock in the early 1970s. 20 years on, Billy wanted to sell 49% of the stock to raise some $$$m but NFL said that just because there was an exception for the original owners, once you took it private you can't undo it. (Sullivan sued, saying this violated anti-trust law, but he lost. Thus Victor Kiam and soon Kraft.)

So the NFL could reverse itself to allow foreign ownership, but it would have to be individual Saudis buying teams and not the Public Investment Fund. And for the League, which is very much a White Dudes Club (see the whole coaching issue…Bienemy still can't get a HC slot…grr) and very "We ARE America!" right-wing politically, to get a 24/32 majority to even change the rule, much less let 17 individual Saudis buy up enough franchises to have controlling interest seems a very long shot, thankfully.

(Shahid Khan, of the Jaguars, is Pakistani-American and has been here since 1967. He's not selling to the Saudis any more than he'd sell Fulham to them. And his boy Tony hasn't shown any interest in following in the WWE's footsteps and taking his wrestling shows to the Kingdom, either.)

And you don't get the point. The owners made a rule, so they can end the rule. Get enough of them to vote on it & they can add to their bylaws entities like the PIF can buy in or buy outright the shield. And the Saudis have enough $ to tell greedy owners "name your price" to accomplish just that.

Never say never.