Itâs Super Bowl week, so letâs start with a Patrick Mahomes anecdote, even though it only tangentially fits the theme of what weâre talking about. Over to you Clark Hunt, CEO of the Kansas City Chiefs. âEvery year I take my son to Chiefs training camp,â Hunt told me last week, via telephone. âHeâs a good soccer player, and we always get together with the punter and kickers and see how many times we can all juggle a soccer ball. âWhen he was a rookie, Patrick joined in and he was really good. I donât remember the exact number but it got up close to 100. I donât think thereâs anything Patrick Mahomes couldnât be really successful at.â So there you go, further proof, if any was needed, that Mahomes has a sickening level of athletic talent. Remember, he also played college baseball at Texas Tech (more on that later this week) and was a basketball standout in high school.  As for the soccer links to the biggest game in American football? Well, they run far deeper than a casual kickaround back in 2017. âIt is pretty interesting when the NFL owners all get together at owners meetings,â Hunt, whose son Knobel is now a verbal commit to SMU, where Clark himself was a captain on the soccer team and two-time academic All-American, added. âA lot of the time the topic turns pretty quickly to soccer. There is so much crossover now.â Many NFL owners tend to cast their sporting properties far and wide, especially into the soccer realm. Each of the past five Super Bowls have featured an owner that also owns a team in Major League Soccer, yet this yearâs Super Bowl combatants – the Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – arguably have the tightest bonds of the bunch. Clarkâs father, Lamar Hunt, fell in love with soccer after watching the 1966 World Cup on television. He founded the North American Soccer League in 1967, played a key role in helping the United States win World Cup hosting rights in 1994 and became a key initial investor in MLS. At MLS commissioner Don Garberâs National Soccer Hall of Fame induction in 2018, Garber (who Hunt had recruited to soccer from his role as head of NFL International) said the accolade gave him âan opportunity to honor the memory of Lamar, and to make a strong statement on how indebted ⌠MLS is to the Hunt family.â âQuite simply, if you didnât have pioneers like the Hunt family, who not just believed in soccer but doubled down on it when times were tough, soccer in the U.S. looks nothing like how it looks today,â former U.S. captain and FOX Sports soccer analyst Alexi Lalas told me. âAs important as the Hunts have been to the NFL, the impact on soccer is even greater â because soccer truly needed them.â  Clark Hunt remembers a time when there were only 10 teams in Major League Soccer. Six of them were owned by Phil Anschutz, who still operates the Los Angeles Galaxy, three (in Kansas City, Dallas and Columbus) came under the auspices of the Hunts, while the Kraft family of New England Patriots lore took charge (and still do) of the New England Revolution. Things are drastically different now, with the league due to expand to 30 teams by 2023, all with different ownership groups and valuations of up to $500 million. The Hunts still control FC Dallas. MLS tried to get the Glazer family that spearheads the Buccaneers interested in buying the ill-fated Tampa Bay Mutiny in the early 2000s. The Mutiny shared Raymond James Stadium with the Bucs, but when no sale could be arranged, the team folded in 2002. The Glazers, led by patriarch Malcolm Glazer (who died in 2014) went global instead, engineering a bid to take over English Premier League behemoth Manchester United. At the time, English soccer was not yet accustomed to widespread foreign ownership, and there was some initial suspicion. Even now, as is often the case in European soccer, owners shoulder part of the blame when things do not go as planned on the field. However, United are currently second in the EPL table and contending for their first league title since 2013. In 2018, the club was ranked as the most valuable soccer club in the world by Forbes.  âThe Glazers brought a different approach when they came in and were trailblazers for the new type of big foreign investment to a large extent,â BBC journalist Peter Shuttleworth told me via telephone. âThey brought a level of corporate professionalism but they havenât held back from spending when it was needed.â United invested a world record $116 million to sign Paul Pogba in 2016, and the $92 million acquisition of Portugalâs Bruno Fernandes last year is seen by many as being the catalyst for the most recent revival in fortunes under head coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Nowadays, nine of the 20 EPL teams have Americans as significant investors, with Boston Red Sox owner John Henry having enjoyed particular recent success with reigning champions Liverpool. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, MLS continues to make major strides, both in terms of the standard of play and commercial values.  âIt has been fun to watch MLS develop to the point where it is one of the most dynamic leagues in the world and can now hold itself up against the established international leagues,â Clark Hunt added. âConversely, the NFL is making strides internationally, which I have loved being part of.â Lamar Huntâs interest in soccer was piqued when he saw European stadiums packed with screaming fans and envisioned something similar in the U.S. It has been a long process. Back in 2007, when I followed David Beckhamâs first season with the Los Angeles Galaxy, there was still significant antipathy towards soccer from many NFL fans. Over time, the relationship has morphed into a comfortable co-existence. Soccer in America is here to stay, not as a direct competitor to the NFL but as a complementary part of the sports landscape. Some of the millions watching American footballâs biggest game on Sunday will be from the soccer community â and theyâll have plenty of round ball connections to enjoy.  Hereâs what others have said … Daniel Kaplan, The Athletic: âNot only do this yearâs two Super Bowl contenders have soccer ties, but also nine of the last 10 NFL title combatants have a piece of that other football.â Kieran Francis, Sporting News: âIt seems both Manchester United and the Bucs have enjoyed a meteoric rise at least partly because of the stability installed in the club by the Glazers after years of tumult and short-term fixes. Even though the Glazers have been in charge for a long time, it seems a method for success in their ownership may have finally been found.â |
