Everyone is aware that professional sports is a business. It’s the way it has been for a very long time now. Whenever you have the mega millions and sometimes billions of dollars at stake like in professional sports, there are bound to be plenty of bad seeds that rise to the top of the heap.

Greed and evil go hand in hand and because of that you have to have a lot of trust in the man running the ship for your favourite team. You have to hope that he (or she) will always have the best interest of the team in mind and not the best interest of their pockets.

As you will learn shortly, this has been going on for a very long time. If you haven’t heard of the Chicago Black Sox scandal from back in 1919 you’ll learn a little about it today. You’ll find out exactly what caused that scandal. Here is a hint; evil and greed were behind everything.

You’ll also learn about the man who dismantled a championship team to save money and a woman that gave up a football teams home field advantage on almost a whim. Years and years of tradition were washed away in a matter of just days.

The people running the ship don’t always have the best interest of their team in mind and you’ll see several instances of this throughout history as you continue to read on.

15. Daniel Snyder

Daniel Snyder is as good for football as Charlie Comiskey was for baseball. Snyder takes on any media source that talks bad about him or his Washington Redskins. He constantly tries to purchase the silence of people opposed to the Redskins name and he even sued a reporter and a local newspaper because they had different viewpoints on things than Snyder has.

He has no problem spending money and he does put forth an effort to make the team competitive and something the fans can be proud of, but what he does away from his luxury box makes the headlines as much as any game that is played. He thinks the team name means something different than it actually does, or at least that’s what he says in public. Can ignorance be considered evil? For the sake of this piece we are saying yes.

14. Howard Baldwin and Morris Belzberg

These two guys once owned the Pittsburgh Penguins and for some reason refused to do math when conducting transactions for the team. Their free spending ways got them into some deep financial trouble and it actually forced them into bankruptcy. This only happened though after they forced current players to take major pay cuts. Greed is what drove these two guys and the franchise into bankruptcy with the team almost completely going out of business.

At the time Mario Lemieux was stilled owed more than $32 million from the team and he knew that the chances of getting that money now were very low. He ended up taking that owed money and turning into him taking over ownership of the franchise. He turned it around and made it into the successful team it is today. But that was only possible because of the extreme greed on the part of the previous owners.

13. Jerry Jones

Jerry Jones made his money from oil. He is a very smart businessman in that regard. On the football field however, he is nothing but pure greed, which makes him pure evil. Cowboy fans can’t even remember when Troy Aikman led the team to the Promised Land because it seems like it was a hundred years ago. Even then it was Jerry Jones getting lucky that made those championships happen. The Vikings made a very dumb trade that hid the stupid moves that Jones had already made with Dallas. The results of that trade led to a pair of Super Bowls and masked what Jerry was up to.

Now though it’s very easy to see that the moves Jerry Jones makes for the Cowboys are for himself and nobody else. Why else would Greg Hardy continue to play after it was released what he did to his girlfriend?

Greed and evil go hand in hand and Jerry Jones is neck deep in both.

12. Donna Shalala

Donna Shalala was once the long time President of the University of Miami. She is the one responsible for the football team leaving the famed but broken down Orange Bowl in favour of the stadium that is now known as Hard Rock Stadium. The Hurricanes had a long tradition at the Orange Bowl and instead of fixing it up she made the very quick decision to move the team and sign a 25 year lease. Normally decisions like that take years to make but Donna made hers in very short fashion.

This killed the Hurricane fans not only to lose such a famed home stadium but their new home was a pretty good distance from the campus.

A couple of years ago, Shalala admitted that she had made a mistake several years ago, and said the current stadium was too big and too far from campus. Too little, too late, Donna. She will never be forgiven for that decision.

11. Gary Bettman

Gary Bettman has been the Commissioner of the NHL since 1993 and he has been credited for ruining the game of hockey many times over. One of the best times of the hockey season is the very last game each year. When he comes out onto the ice to present the Stanley Cup to the winning team, the arena is immediately filled with boos. Even if the home team is being awarded The Cup! It’s more funny than anything else because there isn’t a hockey fan (or player) around that likes Mr. Bettman.

He has been the man in control of the league for three work stoppages but he says he doesn’t mind the booing one bit. Once he was asked if it bothered him and he said “Not doing this job, no. You’re always going to have critics. What I’ve always told people: If I take the ice and it’s completely silent, then I’ll know I’m in trouble.”

10. James Dolan

The person deemed the worst owner in the NBA holds a dubious distinction. There are plenty of bad owners in basketball but James Dolan of the New York Knicks is far and away the worst. As you might have guessed, his being a bad owner is directly tied in to the amount of greed he has. That makes him pure evil in the eyes of the fans and anyone who might want to make money from the Knicks franchise. The only one who will ever do that is Dolan.

This guy makes bad move after bad move as if he doesn’t care about the franchise at all. It’s not just on or near the court that Dolan is an idiot. He does plenty away from the court as well. Someone like this does not deserve to own a franchise in any sport, let alone basketball.

9. John Spano

John Spano agreed to buy the New York Islanders in October of 1996. The team had been through some very rough times and the ownership change got the community all fired up again over their team. Spano signed a huge contract with a local cable channel that was going to bring in an addition millions of dollars to the franchise and it looked like having a winner on the ice again was only months away.

As most of you know by now, the only problem with the deal was that Spano didn’t actually have any money. He took over the team and made decisions for them despite not having the money to do so. In terms of Gary Bettman and the NHL it’s a very funny story. In terms of the Islander fans, it’s not funny at all and Spano is considered pure evil in their eyes.

8. Charles Wang

New York Islander fans have been through hell. They thought that maybe it was all over when Charles Wang bought the team but he turned out to be as much of a joke as the previous owners. Once again, the fans were led to believe that things would turn around and the team would be competitive again but Wang was just another owner who lied to them.

He signed Rick DiPietro, the 2000 #1 overall pick, to a ridiculous 15 year contract that was worth more than $67 million, before DiPitero had even put on an Islanders uniform. That’s where the three year entry level contracts that we know today came from. DiPietro only had three winning seasons with the team and was out of the NHL long before his contract was over.

That’s just one of the many stupid moves he made while in charge of the team. He is evil because he lied to a fan base that had already been lied to over and over again.

7. The Wilpon’s

The Wilpon’s own the distinction of nearly having the New York Mets, and everything else they own, lost in a Ponzi scheme not once, but twice. They structured countless player contracts to have deferred money and then gave those funds over to Bernie Madoff to invest. The money was supposed to grow into more money before needing to be paid out. We all know how that worked out.

The family uses the Mets for cash flow and they have an extremely small budget for the team for payroll. The team has put together some pretty good results over recent years despite what has been going on at the top but one has to wonder how long that can continue.

6. The Ricketts Family

OK, so the Chicago Cubs finally won a World Series. That doesn’t mean that their owners aren’t some of the most evil people in sports. The family went to war with rooftop owners in the neighborhood because they wanted to remove the seats that are on the rooftops and replace them with billboards. The revenue from the billboards was going to go to the massive renovations for Wrigley Field. The truth of the matter is that they could have paid for those renovations out of their pockets as easily as you and I go to Burger King.

Anything they try to do they see if they can get the public to pay for it first. If that isn’t evil what is?

5. Vince McMahon

If you ever want to talk about evil people in sports, you never need to look any further than Vince McMahon to find one of the worst. His antics have been well documented over the last 30 years or so and they are never ending.

The travel he puts his athletes through, the extremely tough schedules, not to mention what happens in and around the ring itself, Vince always has only one person in mind, and that’s himself.

He singlehandedly changed the world of professional wrestling by putting everyone else out of business. He made it into what he wanted it to be because suddenly there was no more competition. He did this for only one reason too, money. He wanted it all for himself.

4. Wayne Huizenga

Wayne was a sports giant in the Miami area by being a minority owner in the Miami Dolphins (NFL), and he was the first majority owner of both the Florida Panthers (NHL) and the Florida Marlins (MLB).

During his time in control he didn’t hide the fact that he didn’t want to spend any money on improving his teams. As a matter of fact, when the Marlins went on to surprise the world and win the World Series in 1997, Wayne spent the entire offseason dismantling the squad to avoid having to pay out large bonuses in new contracts. The team had a dismal winning percentage of just .333 the following season, the worst ever of a defending World Champion.

Due to his greed and evil ways the city of Miami was denied a possible baseball dynasty.

3. Jeffrey Loria

Loria is a man after Wayne Huizenga’s own heart. He got involved in baseball ownership by purchasing a part of the former Montreal Expos franchise. He didn’t stop being a dick until he owned 94% of the team but he lost everything else in the meantime, including fans and local government support. He then sold the team and bought the Florida Marlins.

He dismantled the team and put together the cheapest one he could. Then he got the city to pay for a new stadium that is gigantic and easily the ugliest stadium in all of sports.

He did bring in some top talent but when they didn’t win he dismantled the team again. Now the stadium is empty and so are most of the surrounding lots that were supposed to be businesses. Once again greed and evil screwed the fans in Miami.

2. Charlie Comiskey

Most people don’t realize that Charlie Comiskey was not only the first owner of the Chicago White Sox, but he was a very good player and then manager before moving over to the ownership side of the baseball business.

His stinginess as an owner led his players to revolt against him and lose the 1919 World Series on purpose. The movie Eight Men Out gives a fantastic look into that event.

Comiskey forced players on the team to buy their own uniforms, and then he even forced them to pay to wash them. During that 1919 season he promised pitcher Eddie Cicotte a $10,000 bonus (around $138,000 in today’s money), if he won 30 games on the year. Once Cicotte reached 29 victories Comiskey forced the manager to sit Citcotte for his final five starts, so the bonus couldn’t be reached.

1. Peter Karmanos

Karmanos owned the Hartford Whalers, who are now the Carolina Hurricanes. He continues to own the Hurricanes and will probably never step foot in Hartford, Connecticut again if he is smart.

He owned the Whalers for a couple of years before threatening to move the team. He said he wanted a certain number of season tickets to be sold, and then raised the prices of those tickets. Despite his evil actions fans stepped up and the number was met.

Karmanos then said he needed a new arena or the team would be forced to move. The state finally agreed to his demands and then he said he needed even more money. His greed was never ending. Eventually the state gave up because they were fighting a losing battle. It was obvious that Karmanos wanted to move the team and he did exactly that, despite getting everything he asked for from the state and from the fans. He is the most hated man in Connecticut history.

Source: rollingstone.com