Coach Dungy Weighs in on Rush

RUSH: Tony Dungy has weighed in on this on the Dan Patrick radio show this morning. Dan Patrick asked for his thoughts on the whole thing.

DUNGY: You know, I guess it bothered a lot of people, it really didn’t bother me. I think anybody should have the right to pursue whatever they want, they should go through the process just like anyone else and there would be 28 owners that would vote and I think the process should be able to go forth. I don’t like it when people say ‘because of this he shouldn’t be allowed to do that.’ We don’t have any minority ownership in the NFL right now, and I think, you know, that just strikes me as the same thing, because of the way this guy looks, because of the way he sounds, because of his political bent, that he shouldn’t be allowed to own a team, I think that’s something that the 28 owners should decide and not the general public.

RUSH: Brilliant man there, Tony Dungy. Well, he puts it on the owners, but he’s actually very brilliant about this but it didn’t get to the owners and the general public didn’t determine this. Three people, four people determined it. Well, five people, Sharpton and Jackson, DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the Players Association, Roger Goodell, the commissioner, and Dave Checketts, my ‘partner.’ (laughs) Those are the five people. It never got to the owners. They don’t even know if their bid’s going to be the winning bid. I’ll tell you something else, folks. We were told that there are two other groups that have made qualified nonbinding bids. Now, have you heard anybody’s names in those two groups? Have you heard anybody’s name other than me and Checketts, in Checketts’ group? And no, Dawn, Jamie Gangel had nothing to do with this.

Whoever leaked this, the only groups that knew, the NFL office knew, people at the Rams, of course, knew, and Goldman Sachs, because Goldman Sachs is the broker handling the potential sale. I find it fascinating that we don’t know who the other two groups are. We don’t even know if there are two other groups. We were just told that, but we’re not allowed to know who they are, and the confidentiality clause said we couldn’t tell anybody who was in our group. That’s why Reuters yesterday afternoon, after this program, says that George Soros is in the Checketts group. I was not told, I don’t know if it’s true or not. Maybe it could be a Dubai group, shut out of the ports deal, maybe they want to buy the St. Louis Rams. There’s a river there, the Mississippi River.