If Josh Harris didn’t exist, Tom Wolfe would have had to create him, then tweet about him. Harris is a thoroughly modern Master of the Universe, a man who made billions in private equity and who, like Gordon Gekko, creates next to nothing but aims to own everything. And in the 21st century, what billionaires aim to own are professional sports franchises.
As of Thursday, Harris owns three in this country, now that he and several co-investors — Magic Johnson among them — have reportedly paid a record $6.05 billion to purchase the Washington Commanders from Daniel Snyder. First the 76ers in 2011, then the New Jersey Devils in 2013, now the Commanders: At this rate, in a year’s time Harris may have to push aside Renato’s Pizzeria or Ardsley Auto Tags and take over sponsorship of an under-10 community softball team, just because there will be no other worlds left for him to conquer.
Such ambition, of course, comes with ramifications for the Sixers, for the NFL, and the Eagles, and for sports fans throughout the Philadelphia region. So let’s consider those ramifications.
This is not great for the Eagles.
There’s no overstating how much of a luxury it has been to the Eagles, the Dallas Cowboys, and the New York Giants to have spent the last 24 years sharing space in the NFC East with Washington. Snyder bought the franchise in 1999, and ever since, from his little-dictator style of leadership to a horrid (and allegedly illegal) workplace culture, from a stadium that is the worst in-game experience in the league for fans and teams alike to a never-ending controversy over the offensiveness of the franchise’s mascot, from Steve Spurrier to Carson Wentz, through a generation’s worth of terrible coaching and player-personnel decisions, Washington has been the NFL’s answer to Siberia. It’s the place that punishes you for your mere presence there.
Since Snyder took control of the organization, Washington has reached the postseason six times, had six winning seasons, and lost 10 games or more 10 times. FedEx Field might very well be haunted; it tried to kill Jalen Hurts, after all. The franchise was an abject embarrassment, and the Eagles had the advantage of getting to play it twice each regular season. No matter what complaints one might levy against Harris for his stewardship of the Sixers, it’s pretty much impossible to envision him being a worse owner than Snyder was. Which means Washington is likely to be a better team. Which means the Eagles’ road to the Super Bowl each year just got more challenging.
This is nothing but good for the NFL.
All anyone needs to know about the popularity and value of the league and its teams is this: Snyder single-handedly turned one of the NFL’s crown jewel franchises — the team of the nation’s capital, of politicians and celebrities — into a blight, an outhouse in a neighborhood of palaces. Yet he bought the franchise for $800 million and is selling it for more than seven and a half times what he paid for it. If Harris can restore Washington to respectability, if he can make the Commanders relevant or even excellent, he will reopen a revenue stream that has been dormant for decades.
This doesn’t have to be that big of a deal to the Sixers and Philadelphia.
It might feel unseemly, and a little disloyal, to fans around here to have Harris in charge of one of the Flyers’ biggest rivals (the Devils) and one of the Eagles’ biggest rivals (the Commanders) while he’s in charge of the Sixers. That feeling is understandable, given the strong local ties and allegiance that Ed Snider had, that John Middleton and the Phillies’ ownership group have, and that Jeffrey Lurie has managed to forge over his tenure.
But unless Harris starts siphoning money away from the Sixers to allow the Commanders to sign a free-agent wide receiver or defensive end, there isn’t much reason to think anything will be different from what we’ve seen from him so far. He has been a stick-a-finger-in-the-air kind of managing partner here, ricocheting from going all in on Andrew Bynum to greenlighting Sam Hinkie’s audacious rebuild to ditching Hinkie and hitching the team’s wagon to the Colangelo family phone plan to hiring big-name decision-makers in Doc Rivers and Daryl Morey.
To Harris, all that change and relative upheaval is no big whoop. He paid $280 million for the Sixers. They’re worth well more than $1 billion today. That’s what matters to him. That’s why he wants a new arena. The rest of it — The Process, the burner scandals, the inability to get past the postseason’s second round — is an annoyance, nothing more.
