When the Texas Rangers made a (mostly) unexpected run to the franchise’s first World Series title, I doubt anyone predicted the chain of events it would trigger. First, after stalling for the better part of two decades and then dragging his feet for another two years, Jerry Jones announced that, finally, Jimmy Johnson would be inducted into the Cowboys Ring of Honor. Tom Gaglardi and the Dallas Stars heard that news and were like, oh, a name in the arena? Cute. How about a whole-ass statue out front? And so Mike Modano will take his place alongside Dirk Nowitzki on the PNC Plaza outside the AAC.
Then came the big one.
Yesterday evening, right before the Mavs played the Houston Rockets, Marc Stein reported that Mark Cuban intended to sell a majority stake in the team for a couple billion.
I’m not here to talk about that. Mike did it already, and I have already moved on to the obvious question:
What is FC Dallas going to do to top this?
Because they have to do something. The gauntlet has been thrown down, and then picked up and thrown down, and then picked up again and thrown down one more time. They can’t just let this go. You might think this is all coincidental and it’s just happenstance these announcements came less than one month after somewhere between 50,000 and 1 million people turned up for the Rangers’ victory tour of nearby parking lots. I would love to live in a world where I was allowed to be that naive.
I went for a walk, as is my wont, and came up with two possibilities for what the future holds. First, within the next week, word will emerge that Dan and Clark Hunt, FCD’s owners, have made a handshake deal with French soccer star Kylian Mbappé to join the team following PSG’s current season. Though Lionel Messi is clearly still better than anyone in MLS, no team has ever gotten a player as talented as Mbappé in his prime. The Hunts would be essentially putting the deposit down on a future statue to put up next to one of their dad, Lamar.
This possibility makes a ton of sense, but it is also boring and kind of easy to top. You can imagine any of the other teams would be able to outdo a move like that. In fact, the Rangers could do it and set off another round of all this by signing dual-threat superstar Shohei Otani, which many observers believe they will do, and soon. So let’s move onto the second possibility.
The Hunts sell FC Dallas to Taylor Swift.
First, they’ve probably already met her, since she’s dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and, of course, they also own the Chiefs. So, making a connection is easy. Second, Swift has so much cash they should rename currency something like $20 (Taylor’s Version). Third, I guess she kind of likes sports now? Or maybe always did? Fourth, from the Hunts’ end, yes, they would be losing a team in the league their pop helped found. But they could always easily get another—it feels like MLS is adding four franchises every season—and they would have plenty of money from Swift to do so, and there is zero chance any of the other teams in the area could beat this.
Unless the Wings get Beyoncé to play shooting guard.
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