Following the uproar over racist comments by Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, the often bizarre and sometimes surprising Newt Gingrich, Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives, advocates public ownership of professional sports teams.
The right answer to the Clippers ownership challenge is to sell it to the people of Los Angeles. Green Bay, not billionaires, is the model
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) May 1, 2014
Although some will accuse Gingrich of flirting with the dreaded “S” word, I say: Good for him.
As I posted after the 2011 Super Bowl, the Green Bay Packers football team is owned by the people of Green Bay, Wisconsin. This arrangement made the owners of other National Football League teams so nervous that in 1960 they amended the League’s bylaws to state that “charitable organizations and/or corporations not organized for profit and not now a member of the league may not hold membership in the National Football League.”
It’s known as the Green Bay Rule.