because he won all of the time, rebuilt the Yankee brand and turned it into the biggest American franchise in the world.

And how the fuck you going to put George Steinbrenner and Jerry Buss into one category and Jones into another? They all stand together or not in terms of their respective impacts on their sport (indeed both Buss and Jones had quite a bit more impact than Steinbrenner).

WHAT?!?!?

That's insane. Putting aside their personalities, Steinbrenner's impact on the evolution of baseball so dwarfs Jones on football (and even Buss, to a degree, though behind the scenes he was always a conciliator for the good of the league) it's a farce. The modern economics of baseball is virtually all due Steinbrenner. He's the one who took full advantage of free agency and made rebuilding through that method the dominant way (though Gabe Paul's trades in Steinbrenner's first few years, for Nettles, Chambliss, Randolph, etc. laid the groundwork for those teams). He's the one who took sports off the back page and put it on the front page (something, ironically, baseball resists today more than the other sports, much to its detriment in terms of crossover appeal). He's the one who sought new revenue streams (creating their own network, aggressive marketing overseas, etc.) that have now become the business models that ALL sports franchises look to duplicate and he was one, more than any other really, who actually took that added revenue and put it back into the team. He's the SOLE reason why there's a luxury tax in baseball that attempts to even the playing field. In short, he is, without question, the single most impactful, influential owner in professional sports history.

That he was also a raging egomaniac, an incessant meddler, an impatient lunatic who soon was hurting his teams by signing too many extraneous players simply because they were available (Dave Collins) or trading away minor leaguers (Willie McGee, Jay Buhner, Doug Drabek) for any remotely warm body (McGee for Bob Sykes was one the worst deals ever in any sport), and his off-field criminal habits (illegal campaign donations, hiring people to discredit his own players, etc.), and just his comic buffoonery means that he'll always be remembered first and foremost for his outsized personality, but there have been countless blustery owners, only one had the continued success and the transformative impact on the entire sport that Steinbrenner had. Even the criticism for his decade long draught only makes sense when comparing it to his own standards. The Yankees actually were the major's winningest franchise in the 80's. Yeah, it took him being suspended in the early 90's for Gene Michael to rebuild the farm system and make solid trades (getting Paul O'Neill for Roberto Kelly, and signing free agents that fit and were not simply big name splashes - Jimmy Key, Mariano Duncan, later Scott Brosius), but this idea that he was just a joke is just wrong. Unlike Jones he won in different eras with different people and different styles entirely and also unlike Jones he was the one who completely changed the entire structure of a sport.

I'm not a Yankee fan at all, not a Steinbrenner fan (is there such a thing?), but to say that Jerry freaking Jones had more impact on football than Steinbrenner had on baseball is laughable.

And you think Steinbrenner would have acquiesed to free agency were it not forced upon him? Marvin Miller and the MLBPA (and of course Curt Flood) is more responsible for that than he. Steinbrenner taking advantage of free agency isn't the same thing as bringing it into force Nevertheless I will retract my statement that he wasn't important (although YES has been copied by only a couple of franchises and is something that is only feasible for a few). Steinbrenner's impact on the Yankees is significant.

Was that Steinbrenner alone who took sports off the back page or was it the growing power and revenue generated by sport? And how much impact did Steinbrenner have on the league direction in that pursuit and not just his own team. This get's at the importance.

Jones was intimately involved in the NFL's inner working near the beginning. Jones was intimately involved in the negotiations that produced the salary cap. He's also intimitely involved with just about all major league decisions (as he, Kraft, and Richardson held the most power during the latest round of negotiations). The NFLPA is to an extent a joke and so that goes on his resume too. Of course the other owners are participants but he's a leader in these matters. As to what's the bigger influence it's a closer run thing but I'd argue that on the sport itself football has changed more since 1987 than baseball has since 1973.

So I would like some more detail.

I didn't say Steinbrenner invented free agency, but he was the owner who embraced it the most right away and utilized it the best to start with, making it far more viable in the process. When free agency started it was a much different process than now (there was a free agency draft, so you had to first claim a player in that draft in order to even negotiate with them) and most owners who were vehemently opposed to it in principle weren't too enthusiastic about seeing it spread, so they were basically hoping it'd sort of wither on the vine to a degree. But Steinbrenner saw it as opportunity and swooped in and grabbed Catfish Hunter right away, then Reggie Jackson the next year, was the first to give ten years to a player, which was unheard of (Winfield) and basically legitimized it as a way to build a team. In the process it gave the players even more economic incentive than it was originally conceived for (the primary stated purpose was freedom of movement, but Steinbrenner turned it into a cash bonanza in his effort to buy championships, something that would continue unfettered). That was the biggest shift in sports economic structure, period. Now Flood, Messersmith, McNally, certainly Marvin Miller, deserve the credit for the fight to get it, but Steinbrenner deserves credit for the maniacal lust for free agents that drove the sport's salaries upward and the changed the entire business concept in ALL sports.

As for the second and third parts of the economic shifts, the media focus was definitely George-centric. You didn't see the same happening in other sports, in other cities in baseball, at the same time. The Yankees in the late 70's were simply the most interesting, entertaining, compelling overall STORY and thus demanded increased coverage. It was a daily soap opera, giving papers and TV a new lead every day, which is an editor's dream. Now I don't know how planned this was, certain George wanted more attention for himself, his team, etc., but it was also an extension of the oversized egos of the main participants (George, Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson, most notably), and the irrational knee-jerk decisions Steinbrenner made and the fallout from those. But headlines are headlines and that was the key shift in coverage. Sports outgrew the sports section. Remember, George turned the courtship of Reggie into headline news in the off-season, squiring him around town in limos and showing up at every hot spot in an effort to sway him to come to New York (which, in turn, is what pissed Thurman Munson off so much - lavishing that much attention on someone who hadn't done anything for them yet). So yeah, the way in which sports have been covered ever since - as entertainment, as much as competition - is largely because of Steinbrenner.

Lastly, the YES network, this is another Steinbrenner business model that other sports have followed which totally changed the entire sports industry. For years the primary way teams made money was in gate receipts. The radio and television deals were increasing over the years, but were still not the dominant source of revenue to the extent they are now. What changed was the rise of cable, more channels needing programming resulted in more games shifting from broadcast TV to cable, but it still wasn't harnessed by the teams until Steinbrenner said fuck it, let's start our own network, a move that was largely scoffed at. The critics suggested that with only Yankee games as the source of programming that the rest of the time on the air would be dead, but he knew that ownership meant you weren't simply selling your product (the game rights) to someone else, taking only that negotiated fee while the network reaped profits from commercials and cable/satellite fees, but that he'd get all of it himself. What happened was that other teams, seeing their revenue stream go way up, tried the same tactics (Red Sox bought NESN), while others without quite the same money to buy or start their own network, found that they could make deals with regional sports networks in an attempt to replicate the model of it - the team as the cornerstone of the entire network. You now see teams like Texas, Anaheim, Los Angeles, all following suit and in each case the influx of money those teams have is astounding, which leaves those who haven't done the same at a serious competitive disadvantage. Yeah, part of it is location (it helps to be in the Big Apple) but Texas's deal isn't predicated on that and they're rolling in dough now.

So baseball since 1973 has seen its three biggest business-related structural changes come around in large part based on Steinbrenner's maneuverings. Compare that to football since Jones took over the Cowboys in 1989. The structure of football has remained largely the same. The biggest business decision they ever had was when Rozelle made revenue sharing via the television deals which eschewed local rights for national rights (something that made following football less reliant on local team identification, their most ingenious decision). Jones was powerful behind the scenes since coming on board, but that was in procedural ways, not huge shifts in the business models that I'm aware of. The salary cap, though definitely important, was still a ownership incentive that he may have helped, but certainly wasn't a maverick in getting through. If you can enlighten me on how Jones changed the entire paradigm of football economics like Steinbrenner did for baseball, but really all sports in a way, I'd be happy to read it.

montana/young = kaepernick/gabbert?

pats need revis but they wont get him and its so fucking annoying.

man, and now Demarcus ware