It was one year ago Friday, June 7, 2023, that Josh Harris met with the NFL Finance Committee and the process that led to the Harris group purchasing the Commanders began in earnest.
And it almost didn’t happen?
Grant & Danny played some audio Thursday of Harris, in a CNBC interview this week, saying he almost didn’t put a bid in because he didn’t want to “price the Commanders for Jeff Bezos” and “spend a lot of time and get outbid.”
Yet here were are a year later, almost 11 months into the official Harris group era and the new regime, and one of the minority owners not getting enough credit for it.
“Here’s what I took out of what Harris said: in him expecting Bezos to join the negotiation and not wanting to basically set the price for him, Mark Ein was the mastermind, maybe of this entire thing. He's not getting enough love in all of this,” Grant said. “We talk about Harris who is the majority owner, and we talk about Mitch Rales, who I've been enamored with and really impressed by and think the world of, but Mark Ein was only the guy that went to Josh Harris and said we gotta do this – he used the word nagged, meaning I'm going back to the well, and Josh Harris is swatting him away thinking Bezos is going to buy the team.”
“Bezos hired Allen and company – and to the regular folks, people in various industries tell me they secure the big fish to swallow the little fish, so you don’t retain them without some sort of intention to do some due diligence to buy something,” Danny replied. “The whole world thought that this was done; if he wanted it, it was his, and Harris had already gone through that one time with the Denver Broncos.”
Grant joked that it could’ve seen Harris sitting at the table ready to sign the deal when Bezos lands his chopper, like Willis Reed coming out of the tunnel for the Knicks in the 70s, and the Washington Amazons would come to be – but, it was not to be.
And Ein was the mastermind.
“Ein owns the Washington Kastles, got some sports ties in the city, and in passing he seems pleasant, but he might be the guy that made this all happen,” GP said. “It sounds like Harris has given him the credit for that, because not only was he willing to initially go to Josh to try to get this done, he was relentless in his effort, and connected Harris to Mitchell Rales and the whole thing changed. So I think Ein gets slept on a little bit, and might have been the one that did a lot of the early leg work to make this happen – and I love it when occasionally, you hear something that corroborates our conversations or confirms something we were thinking.”
Take a listen to the entire lovefest above…and then G&D’s thoughts on how much different the last year would have been if Bezos did buy the Commanders!
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