Rough Trade

part of an NFL team—I worried whether a lifetime spent in his father’s shadow had adequately prepared him to stand up to him now.
    “Do you want to know what I’ve been thinking about the whole way down here?” asked Jeff, morosely rocking back and forth in his desk chair. “I’ve been thinking my father must have a death wish.”
    “Why is that?”
    “It’s the only explanation. What he’s doing makes just about as much sense as dousing himself with gasoline and striking a match. I mean, what does he think is going to happen in ten days?”
    “Do you think there’s a chance he’s already figured a way out and he’s just not telling anybody?” I asked, being well acquainted with Beau’s reputation for secretiveness.
    “I have absolutely no doubt he thinks he has,” replied Jeff. “He’s been running around town for weeks holding hush-hush meetings and dropping hints to the press, but believe me, he’s just deluding himself.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because I’ve been talking to people, too. Dad’s living in the past, when a handful of guys with cigars got things done with a handshake. Everything’s bigger now, things have moved past him. Baseball, basketball, even fucking soccer is cutting into football’s appeal. Football isn’t even just a game you sell tickets to anymore, it’s a gigantic entertainment industry encompassing everything from television to athletic shoes. Player salaries are stratospheric, and stadiums cost more to build than skyscrapers. Dad thinks that just because he’s the owner of the Milwaukee Monarchs he’s not going to get hammered, but he’s wrong.”
    “So why not just sell the team?” I asked. “Isn’t the going rate for an NFL franchise something like $300 million?”
    “We could probably get a little more. Unfortunately, by the time we retired our debt and paid capital gains taxes, there’d still be nothing left.”
    “I had no idea your level of debt was that high.”
    “We’ve borrowed against everything but our socks, and that’s only because nobody will give us anything for them.”
    “Then what about selling part of it, taking on a minority partner?”
    “We already have two.”
    “You’re kidding. Who?”
    Harald Feiss and Coach Bennato each have a minority interest in the team.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “Nobody does. Dad got them to agree to take the shares in lieu of salary. That’s how tight things are.”
    “What if you sold a thirty or forty percent ownership in the team? There’ve got to be plenty of sports-crazed tycoons out there who’d be willing to spend $100 million to own a piece of a franchise like the Monarchs.”
    “Sure. Provided my dad didn’t own the other sixty percent. The guys you’re talking about didn’t get where they are by being stupid. Nobody’s going to pony up that much dough without being absolutely certain that Dad isn’t going to just piss it away again. They’re going to want to make damn sure that they have a say in how the team is going to be run.”
    “Surely there are worse things.”
    “Not to my Dad. I guarantee you he’d lose the team before he agreed to that.”
    “Well, then what’s he thinking? He can’t just be waiting for the bank to take the team away from him.”
    “Oh, I guarantee he and Feiss have been trying to cook something up.”
    “With whom?”
    “I know they’ve been meeting with a group of suburban developers who want to build a new stadium out in Wauwatosa. They want to use it as an anchor for a big shopping and entertainment complex....”
    “And?”
    “And it’s a terrible idea. Nobody wants to drive out into the cornfields to see a football game. Monarchs fans don’t want to shop for shoes and catch a movie after the game. Besides, everywhere they’ve already tried the suburban stadium idea it’s failed miserably. They’re shutting down the Pontiac Silverdome, and last I heard, they’re turning the Richfield Coliseum into a prison. People want downtown stadiums.”
    “So what are the chances of the team cutting a deal with the city?”
    “And having a check for $18 million to take to the bank in ten days? After Dad publicly backed the mayor’s opponent in the last election? I’d say they’re the same as our winning the Super Bowl this season—somewhere between zero and none.”
    “Even if the city realizes that the alternative is losing their football team?”
    “You heard what my father said. He’s not moving the