CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There’s a controversy in Rock Hill, S.C. There’s a teetering NFL team that has had four straight losing seasons under his stewardship. There’s an all-star quarterback with all sorts of sexual misconduct allegations that the Panthers remain very interested in employing.
It’s time for David Tepper, the billionaire owner of the Carolina Panthers, to break his silence.
Tepper should answer questions about all of that: The financial impasse in Rock Hill, the direction of his football team and — especially if it comes to fruition — the team’s pursuit of Houston quarterback Deshaun Watson, which once again is reaching a fever pitch.
There are other issues to address, too, and not all of them are bad.
The Panthers didn’t raise most of their ticket prices for 2022, which makes all kinds of sense. The Charlotte FC soccer team that Tepper brought to Charlotte just made an extraordinary debut in front of a record crowd of 74,479 fans and has shaken up the Charlotte sports culture. Tepper’s charitable works have been laudable.
But the owner is doing himself no favors with these past 15 months worth of silence.
Rumors fill in the gaps that words don’t.
By the extremely low bar of previous Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, who once went nine years between press conferences and never publicly addressed the workplace misconduct scandal that brought him down, Tepper has been extremely transparent. He has sometimes called hastily assembled news conferences, where he has held forth on all manner of subjects with local reporters and explained his thinking in blunt, often funny terms. And to be fair, Tepper was both more available to the media than most NFL owners and more available than Charlotte Hornets owner Michael Jordan from 2018-2020.
But the last time Tepper held a real press conference was in December 2020, about 15 months ago, to discuss the firing of general manager Marty Hurney. He has answered a question or two here and there since then at various events, but it’s generally been hurried and limited to one subject.
That’s not enough.
There’s nothing that says Tepper must talk, but he should. There are just too many unanswered questions.
In the past 15 months, the Panthers have paused construction on their new palace in Rock Hill because, the team says, the city of Rock Hill hasn’t fulfilled its end of the monetary bargain. This financial impasse might delay this enormous project for years. Tepper has also launched a Major League Soccer team. He’s replaced the natural grass field at Bank of America Stadium with artificial turf. And he’s decided to retain coach Matt Rhule and general manager Scott Fitterer, although the two combined for a 5-12 season in 2021 that started 3-0 and then lost 12 of its final 14.
Perhaps most controversially, Tepper and the Panthers have pursued Watson in an off-and-very-very-on way — despite the fact that there are still 22 civil suits alleging sexual misconduct that have been filed against the quarterback. (A grand jury in Texas declined to indict Watson on criminal charges Friday after a police investigation, which likely cleared the way for NFL teams to actively pursue a trade for him).
There’s more, of course, because Tepper is a busy and gregarious guy, one who doesn’t like to stay still.
One day before long, Tepper is going to want a new stadium in the Charlotte area to replace the current one. He’s going to want various governmental entities to pony up public money — again. And the chance of that going smoothly will be increased if people perceive that Tepper is telling them the truth, and telling it to them regularly, rather than standing behind a velvet curtain somewhere until it’s time to ask for money.
So it’s in Tepper’s interest to speak to the media more often, because talking to reporters is basically the way you talk to the people who care about your teams.
Addressing the Charlotte fans
As for those Charlotte fans?
The futbol ones are happy right now because they finally have a team — even though it scores even less often than the other team it shares Bank of America Stadium with — but the football ones sure are perturbed.
Keeping ticket prices the same for 2022 was a good start, but Carolina has to win some more to re-engage the fan base. Carolina is 6-21 in its most recent 27 home games, and the stadium too often has had just as many supporters of the opposing team as the Panthers have had.
What’s the plan for that?
Carolina must address the quarterback position — again. As Tepper said 15 months ago in that most recent press conference of the quarterback spot: “That’s the most important position in the field. And unless you have that guy for sure that gets you to playoffs and Super Bowls, you have to keep re-evaluating that. Because that’s the only thing that matters: Super Bowls. And until you have that guy, you’re evaluating, evaluating, evaluating every year.”
The Panthers certainly don’t have that guy right now.
They are on the hook for $18.6 million for Sam Darnold in 2022 due to the ill-conceived move to pick up his option year. Backup quarterback P.J. Walker also remains on the roster, but they’ve been exploring everything on the QB shelf, including drafting one with the No. 6 overall pick. Carolina tried to get involved in the Russell Wilson trade talks, but never ended up making an offer once it became clear that Wilson’s preferred (and really his only) destination was Denver. Because Wilson had a no-trade clause in his contract, that was that.
Watson, though, sounds more likely to waive his own no-trade clause for Carolina.
The Deshaun Watson question
If the Panthers do end up trading for Watson — and Tepper has long been a fan of the former Clemson star — they’re going to have all sorts of questions to answer. Most of them would boil down to “Why in the world would you do that?”
But there are a lot of non-Deshaun issues on Tepper’s table, too, and the owner almost always helps his cause when he’s interviewed.
Like all sports owners, Tepper asks a lot from the fans he wants to support his teams, and also from the city he wants to help fund them. In return, at the least, he owes the fans and that city some regular explanations as to why he’s doing what he’s doing.
The phone lines are open, Mr. Tepper. I’m listening. We all are.
Call anytime.
Because although I bet when you’re a billionaire it feels like you’re never in debt to anybody, you owe us.
