Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Tom Hicks on sports: “This isn’t my life”

Image (1) Hicks-thumb-200x133-10948.jpg for post 1456

Tom Hicks has gone from one of the best owners in the NHL, one who was able to inexplicably make hockey a viable sport in North Texas, to one that many wish would just go away as quickly and as quietly as possible. That’s not going to happen, it seems.

Hicks purchased the Dallas Stars and the Texas Rangers in the 1990’s and while he generally gets most of the credit for the Stars’ success over the years. Yet seeing how the Rangers have stumbled in his tenure and how the Stars have struggled once Bob Gainey left, it’s possible that the Stars being so good was due more to great management than anything Hicks did as an owner.

He’s always been a bit of a standoffish owner, never being one to be as involved as some of the other local owners in Dallas. That’s always been fine with Stars fans, as a Stanley Cup win tends to overshadow some of the warning signs that have started to show.

It was Hicks’ purchase of the Liverpool football club that really put things in high water. Before then, the Rangers may not have had the most success but they were still able to spend an exhorbitant amount of money. That didn’t work, yet now the team is incapable of spending any money whatsoever. His baseball team has been under the control of the MLB for nearly a year and the Dallas Stars have been handcuffed with a budget well under the salary cap. It’s caused some serious anxiousness for fans of both teams as they feel the Stars and Rangers are just one or two big acquisitions away from taking the next step.

As Tom Hicks announces that he is also looking to sell his Liverpool team, he tells the Times Online that he’s ready to give up being an owner of sports franchises:

“I can still be a fan. But I’ve paid a terrible price. I’m 64 years old. I don’t want that any more. Jerry Jones [the Dallas Cowboys owner] is a good friend of mine, but his life and his family’s life is the Dallas Cowboys. Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks are his life. This isn’t my life.”

I’m sure the Dallas Stars fans out there are deeply sorry for the terrible price Hicks has paid, as his greed at owning three sports teams put all three deep into a world of hurt. That he’s also making the sale of the Rangers tough to complete, and the asking price he’s listed for Liverpool ($1.2 billion) there’s no doubt that he cares only about his bottom line and not the teams he’s owned for so long.

Hicks has done a heck of a job alienating the fans of the teams he owns over the past few years, and even the most die hard of Stars fans that are still grateful of the wins he brought the team are admitting that it’s time for him to go. After building up hockey to incredible levels in Dallas, he now claims that the sport is far from a viable sport in North Texas unless the NHL drastically lowers the salary cap. Over the past few seasons, the Stars fans have seen their team fail to to make any big moves to improve the team even though the cap room was there, and for a team that has consistently been one of the top grossing franchises in the NHL that’s a hard pill to swallow.

Now we hear that he’s not even that interested in owning sports teams.

Good thing sports isn’t your life Tom, or you might end up owning three sports teams.