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So what's the difference between Jim Balsillie and William (Boots) Del Biaggio?
Well, Balsillie seems to actually have the money that everyone assumes he does, thanks to the success of those addictive BlackBerrys. Unlike Boots, he isn't under bankruptcy protection, he isn't facing a wave of lawsuits from angry lenders who believe they were defrauded, his wife hasn't split, he isn't under investigation by the FBI.
When it comes to his ill-fated attempt to purchase the Nashville Predators, Balsillie was up front about his intentions. He was willing to overpay considerably for a franchise that was losing many millions of dollars a year, and if it continued to fail in Nashville, was planning to relocate it to Southern Ontario, following the rules set out in the team's arena lease and by the NHL for just such a situation. Hence those deposits accepted for season's tickets at Copps Coliseum.
Turns out — surprise! — that Del Biaggio had exactly the same plans, though he was bound for Kansas City, and not Hamilton, and he was careful to keep his true motivation secret from his co-investors in Nashville.
Of course, unlike Balsillie, he was actually allowed to buy into the Predators with the full blessing of the NHL, with commissioner Gary Bettman all but scattering rose petals at his feet.
Much has already been written here about why Bettman behaved much differently when it came to Balsillie and why having a team move into the territorial domain of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres would have created a legal quagmire the league had to avoid at all costs.
Now, thanks to the fine folks at The Tennessean newspaper, we are beginning to see a fuller picture of the guy the commissioner decided was the solution to a thorny problem.
After surely undertaking the necessary due diligence, Bettman must have believed that Del Biaggio offered the best chance to achieve his oft-stated goal: saving hockey in Nashville.
Otherwise, well, either he didn't divine the whole truth, or he wasn't letting it get in the way.
In a story published in Sunday's editions of The Tennessean, Brad Schrade reports on a heretofore secret document/computer presentation that Del Biaggio prepared to woo prospective co-investors.
In it, he laid out exactly what he believed would happen in the extremely likely event the Predators — despite huge infusions of cash from local government — continued to incur enormous operating losses. Del Biaggio extolled the "portability" of the franchise.
Del Biaggio outlined a scenario under which his group of minority investors could gain control of the team as early as the 2009-10 season if it continued to lose money and failed to hit attendance targets, and then move it wherever they wanted.
That might not come as an enormous surprise to a lot of people around the hockey world, who didn't really believe Del Biaggio had undergone some kind of epiphany about the potential of hockey in Tennessee, and who understood his true interest to be in the brand new empty arena in Kansas City.
But it apparently did come as quite the surprise to some people in Nashville, including Del Biaggio's local partners, who had no idea he was luring investors to the table with the promise that the team wouldn't be there for too long. They're claiming now that they never really trusted the guy.
"As we negotiated our partnership agreement with [Del Biaggio's company], we did so with respectful distrust of his motives," David Freeman, the team's lead owner and managing partner and the head of the local investors group, is quoted as saying.
What else can he say, given the choice between being complicit in a plot to rip off the town in which he lives or being taken for a fool?
Imagine how the good people of Nashville must be feeling about hockey this morning.
The diehards heartbroken because they have once again been played for suckers.
The politicians relieved that, thanks to Del Biaggio's financial implosion, they may have just dodged an extremely expensive bullet.
The local investors wondering where they can possibly find the money to operate without losing their shirts in a league in which — thanks to rising revenues elsewhere, especially in Canada, but certainly not in Nashville — spending even to the salary floor becomes ever harder to justify.
Everyone else, wildly cynical about the whole enterprise, and amazed that a "major league" sport could ever do business like this.
