1) Stuart Sternberg
Stuart Sternberg is the principal owner of the Tampa Bay Rays. But instead of sitting at home, too depressed to turn on the TV and watch the postseason take place without his team for the second year in a row, he’s ecstatic. Because Sternberg’s true team – the one he roots for the most – is the N.L. East champion New York Mets.
The former Goldman Sachs partner grew up in Brooklyn as a diehard Mets fan. He even remembers watching Sandy Koufax pitch against the Mets at Shea Stadium when he was six years old. But at the age of 46, when he had amassed enough of a fortune to purchase part of his own baseball team in 2005, the Rays were available and his beloved Mets were not. So he added the Rays to his investment portfolio but continued to live in Westchester County, New York, and run the team from 1,100 miles away (and only a short drive from Queens).
Sternberg doesn’t try to hide his loyalties either. Just last week he addressed the crowd at a sports conference at Citi Field: “As a Met fan growing up and all, it’s wonderful to be here in September when things really do matter, and it’s a very exciting time to be a Met fan. And I am still, as well, even though I’ve got the Tampa Bay Rays.”
That’s about as clear as it gets. Suppose Rays fans should feel fortunate their owner didn’t ship Chris Archer and Evan Longoria to the Mets at the trade deadline.
2) Jimmy Haslam
Sternberg isn’t the only owner in sports with divided loyalties. Jimmy Haslam, the Cleveland Browns majority owner since 2012, once described himself as “1,000%” a Steelers fan. That’s a lot of percent! Of course, the Steelers are the Browns hated rivals – assuming you can be a “rival” to a team you only beat two or three times a decade. Either way, a Steelers fan owning the Browns is scandalous. As big a scandal as defrauding people out of promised rebates? No. But scandalous nonetheless.
Upon purchasing the Browns, Haslam didn’t win any more support in Cleveland by saying he wanted to model the team after the Steelers, a franchise he said was run with “character and intelligence” – or the exact opposite terms Browns fans have used for the Steelers for decades. Haslam’s tenure as Browns primary owner came after a stint as a minority owner with the Steelers. That’s where he developed his 1,000% of fandom, but before that he claimed to be a supporter of both the Cowboys and Colts. So that’s positive news for Browns fans: their owner isn’t a Steelers supporter so much as he is a bandwagon/fair-weather fan. Although that makes it even less likely he’ll ever really root for Cleveland, huh?
3) Archie and Olivia Manning
The good part of having two superstar professional athletes as sons: never having to worry that your kids will hit you up for money. The bad part of having two superstar professional athletes as sons: not knowing who to root for when they play.
Peyton and Eli Manning have faced each other three times in their careers and Peyton has gone 3-0 in those match-ups. But like all good parents, Mr and Mrs Manning claim – at least publicly – that they have no favorite child. (You’re lucky, Cooper!)
“You can’t go in there pulling for one of them to win because it’s almost like pulling for the other one to lose,” Archie said, stating the obvious before Manning Bowl II in 2010. “We’re going to show up, we’re going to be there, we’re going to support the offense and make sure neither gets hurt and be proud and move on.”
Yeah! Go offense!
Despite Peyton’s 3-0 record against his little brother, Eli can boast the 2-1 edge in Super Bowl wins – so neither quarterback son has to feel ashamed at Thanksgiving at the Manning house.
4) Joanne Minardi, Rick Pitino’s wife
Rick Pitino has been one of the top coaches in college basketball for the past 30 years, minus a couple of quick stops in the NBA. But since 2013, his son – and former assistant – Richard Pitino has been the head coach at Minnesota. Rick and Richard are both heading up power conference teams, both going after the same four- and five-star recruits, both hoping to cut down the nets at the end of the season.
Who is Joanne Minardi, Rick’s wife and Richard’s mother, to root for in this scenario?
For Rick, the answer is clear: he doesn’t want to have to make the decision at all. After Louisville beat Minnesota in the season opener in Hawaii last year, Rick said: “It was a nice event, but I really didn’t want to play this game. I hate the fact that we won. We don’t want to open up 0-1, but I didn’t want my son to open up 0-1. I rather have not played it, because my son lost.” And on the prospect of playing his son again in the future, he says it will be the “only time in my life that if we lose, I will smile inside.”
The elder Pitino has said that his wife very much has a rooting interest, however: it’s her son Richard, “because he’s [her] blood.” That makes sense. Mrs Pitino is just lucky she doesn’t have two sons to choose from like Olivia Manning.
5) Vic Wild
Born in White Salmon, Washington, Vic Wild is an Olympic gold medal-winning Russian snowboarder. Wild competed for the United States until 2010, after which the US team dropped its alpine snowboarding program. So Wild had a choice to make: stay in his home nation and find a new career, or find citizenship in a country that supported alpine snowboarding.
He became Russian. (So Russian he even got a picture with Putin!)
“Russia is a country that made it possible for me to win,” he said after winning two golds at the 2014 Sochi Games in his “homeland.” “Had I stayed in the US, I’d probably be still sitting at home,” Wild said then, “doing some ordinary job, doing something banal, and not interesting.”
Instead, he’s very interesting. Like almost Edward Snowden on a snowboard interesting.
Wild earned his Russian citizenship in 2011 after marrying Russian snowboarder Alena Zavarzina. What a love story. Between Wild and alpine snowboarding. But also hopefully between him and Zavarzina, too.
6) God
God is said to be all-powerful and all-knowing. And if athletes are right, he’s all-conflicted, too. One week He’s pulling for Russell Wilson, the next it’s Aaron Rodgers. One year Tim Tebow is going deep into the playoffs, the next year Tebow can’t land a starting job. Notre Dame supposedly gets all the breaks because God is on their side, or maybe God is really a Penn State fan because the sky is blue and white. Or maybe God doesn’t care about sports at all. It’s all very confusing. As though God doesn’t have enough on his plate already, right?
Maybe we just need to give God some time to make up His mind. It has to be pretty distracting to have athletes pointing at you every time they score.
