With racial tensions casting a pall over
American football, rap mogul Diddy wants to buy the Carolina Panthers and
become the first African American owner of an NFL team.
The New York rapper, estimated by Forbes
magazine to be worth $820 million, voiced his interest as Panthers owner and
founder Jerry Richardson stepped down in the wake of sexual harassment
allegations.
“I would like to buy the @Panthers. Spread the
word,” tweeted Diddy, who is also known as Puff Daddy and whose real name is
Sean Combs.
“There are no majority African American NFL
owners. Let’s make history,” he wrote.
After Diddy’s initial tweets late Sunday, two
African American sporting stars said they wanted to join his bid — Colin
Kaepernick and Steph Curry.
Kaepernick, a former quarterback for the San
Francisco 49ers, began a movement of players kneeling rather than holding their
hearts during the national anthem as a protest against police brutality and
other racial injustices in the United States.
Kaepernick no longer has a job — retaliation,
his supporters say, for his outspoken politics — and President Donald Trump has
seized on the issue, demanding that owners punish athletes who do not stand for
the anthem.
Amid Trump’s attacks on the athletes, Curry, a
history-making shooter for the Golden State Warriors, said he would not want to
visit the White House with his NBA championship-winning team.
While more than two-thirds of players in the
National Football League are black, only one team has an owner who is an ethnic
minority — the Jacksonville Jaguars, who are owned by Pakistani-born tycoon
Shahid Khan.
Only one team in all of professional sports
has a black owner — the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets, whose controling interest is
held by basketball legend Michael Jordan.
Still, Diddy would face forbidding odds to buy
the Panthers. The move would need approval from other NFL owners, some of whom
might be loath to a deal that gives a role to Kaepernick.
The hard-living Diddy has also had his own
share of controversy, including his arrest on weapons charges after a 1999
shooting at a New York club, although he was acquitted.
Diddy, 48, was ranked the world’s top-paid
celebrity on the last Forbes list in June, raking in $130 million in the
previous year.
Outside of music, his business empire includes
fashion lines and a stake in French-made Ciroc vodka.
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