Sports
The Arizona Coyotes are gone. Someone please tell ex-owner Alex Meruelo
True to form, Alex Meruelo was defiant.
Whether in a meeting with Arizona Coyotes employees last Thursday or during a local radio interview later that afternoon or as he was sitting next to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman at a hotel in Phoenix the following day, Meruelo, the owner of the Coyotes since 2019, reacted to being forced to sell the franchise by the league by insisting he hadn’t lost it at all.
Sure, the Arizona Coyotes were moving to Salt Lake City. Sure, players and hockey operations employees were already meeting with a new owner and making plans to visit their facilities in Utah, and, sure, season ticket holders in Arizona were wondering when they would be refunded the deposits they’d put down for next season, but Meruelo’s relationship with that reality was, at best, casual.
On the “Burns and Gambo” radio show, he corrected one of the show’s hosts, insisting he was still the owner of the team, which was now simply “inactive.” He said he merely sent “players and hockey operations to Utah.” In the meeting with staff the next day, he told employees, who were worried about their jobs, that he refused to go down as the guy who lost the Coyotes. In a news conference with Bettman on Friday, the commissioner interjected on multiple occasions, jumping in to “translate” when Meruelo blurted out “I don’t like the media.” At one point, Bettman grabbed Meruelo’s arm to stop him from talking.
A thriving NHL franchise in Arizona has long been an oasis the league toiled toward. It is a vibrant market with a robust youth hockey scene, and it has long presented an opportunity to diversify hockey’s fanbase. But since the club’s inception in 1996 (the club moved from Winnipeg where it previously played as the Winnipeg Jets), the league and Coyotes fans have endured much in pursuit of that dream. There was a failed attempt to build in Scottsdale in 2001 and a move to Glendale in 2003. Six years later, in 2009, the NHL had to take control of the franchise after the team’s third owner put the team into bankruptcy. The past two seasons, the Coyotes played out of a 4,500-seat college facility after getting kicked out of their former arena following a battle over unpaid arena charges and more than $1.3 million in delinquent tax bills.
In forcing the sale of the Coyotes to Ryan Smith, owner of the NBA’s Utah Jazz, the league finally pulled the plug on its Arizona dream — at least for now. At the center of that failure is Meruelo. He was viewed as a potential savior of the franchise when he bought the team five years ago but became the final nail in its coffin, failing and defiant to the end.
Tact and grace were never Meruelo’s preferred approaches.
He made his wealth in real estate development and construction and also owns media companies and casinos. He was the first Hispanic owner to hold a majority stake in an NHL club — one located in a market that was, at the time he purchased the team, 42 percent Hispanic or Latino. Xavier Gutierrez, his top lieutenant and a longtime Meruelo confidant, became the league’s first Latino CEO and team president. Both were emphatic about their desire to connect with the fan base and rolled out a number of community-oriented initiatives to achieve the goal. Despite the fact Meruelo had a deal fall through for an NBA franchise years earlier (according to one report, the league felt the deal was too highly leveraged), the NHL hoped his deep pockets and reputation for revitalizing distressed assets would finally lift the franchise to stability.
It took just over a year for that optimism to crack. In August 2020, reports surfaced that he failed to pay players signing bonuses. Gutierrez blamed it on their lack of experience owning a sports franchise. As more vendors and employees began cropping up with complaints about unpaid invoices and strongarm tactics, it became clear that it was a feature of Meruelo’s business practices, not a bug.
Finding a long-term home for the Coyotes under Meruelo’s ownership quickly developed into his most vexing problem. In his first news conference, he addressed the need for a “financially sustainable” solution to the team’s arena woes. Given his real estate and construction background, there was optimism he’d be able to build a state-of-the-art arena as part of that plan. But as word of his business tactics made the rounds, distrust within the business and political communities grew. Instead of trying to forge inroads with power brokers and rebuild his reputation among local leaders, he was brash and arrogant. Former Tempe city councilmember Lauren Kuby recalled an interaction in which Meruelo remarked: “I bet you’ve never met a billionaire before.”
In February 2021, The Athletic published a report that Meruelo’s first 18 months of ownership was marred by a revolving door of executives, strained relationships with corporate partners, and a litany of financial issues, some made worse by the pandemic. The story, which drew from interviews with more than 50 people, detailed a pattern of unpaid bills and jilted vendors, a disastrous draft pick that earned them universal scorn and employees complaining about a toxic environment.
At a company draft party in the summer of 2021, he unexpectedly took the microphone, telling the crowd the team would leave Glendale and build a new facility in Tempe. Executives in attendance, including Gutierrez, grew visibly uncomfortable at his bombastic speech given the team’s fragile relationship with Glendale and the corporate partners in the audience.
“That was one of the first signs I had that we were really in trouble,” said a former employee. “He had no self-awareness whatsoever.”
Later that summer, the Coyotes were told they were being kicked out of their Glendale arena after the 2021-22 season, with the city manager describing the situation as the “point of no return.” Meruelo had played hardball in lease negotiations, certain the City of Glendale would never boot him from the building. For a man who owns casinos, he was an ineffectual bluffer.
It was a massive misstep. It meant the franchise had no suitable place to play while Meruelo attempted to get politicians, unions and voters behind a $2 billion development plan in Tempe that included a new arena. As he worked to secure that project, Meruelo’s years of hubris came back to bite him. Grassroots organizers pounded his track record and credit rating, citing a financial analysis commissioned by the Tempe City Council. Campaign materials characterized him as “corrupt,” “scandal-plagued” and a “deadbeat billionaire.” Local trade and worker unions lobbied against the plan. And Meruelo didn’t dive deep into his coffers to counteract that negative messaging. He said last week he poured $7 million into the referendum; campaign finance records show that he spent just over $1 million.
In May 2023, voters rejected the proposal, leaving the team again with no clear path to a suitable arena.
“I think the narrative in Tempe … is that they botched this campaign,” said Randy Keating, a Tempe City council member who supported the development proposal. “And they did.”
The clock on relocation began ticking once the proposal was voted down, yet Meruelo remained undeterred. In early March 2024, news broke that the team was eyeing state land in north Phoenix. The team was initially considering a 200-acre parcel in that area but that plan was “pared back” because of high infrastructure costs, Gutierrez later told The Arizona Republic. But bidding on the land required months of public notice; by the time the team secured a place on the agenda with the Arizona State Land Department in mid-March, the timeline became too “stretched,” according to Bettman.
In January, Ryan Smith publicly stated his intention to bring a team to Salt Lake City. In February 2023, NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh blasted the Coyotes and made it clear that the situation was untenable. He stressed the urgency of addressing the matter and applied pressure on the league to take action.
On March 6, Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly met with Meruelo and asked whether he could look his players in the eyes and give them an honest answer of when they’d have an NHL-caliber home. He told them he could not. Over the next five weeks, a deal came together to send them to Utah for the 2024-25 season.
In a news conference on Friday, Bettman said the league decided it wasn’t fair for players to continue playing in a facility built to accommodate ASU’s hockey team and one-third the size of most of the league’s arenas. Meruelo called selling the franchise the most “painful decision in his life” — even though it was arguably not his decision.
As part of the sale, Meruelo will be given the exclusive right to bring a team back to the market, an effort that begins with the state land auction on June 27. Bettman said the league needs 18 months notice prior to reactivation and PHNX Sports reported that any arena must be 50 percent complete in order to trigger reactivation notice. According to Sportsnet, the “revival rights are non-transferable” and the $1 billion price tag to bring the Coyotes back is locked in. It is a path back into the NHL for Meruelo, but few people believe the league would allow that to happen.
“I have not witnessed a group more committed to doing things the wrong way and failing to develop any sort of meaningful support in the political community, business community and with the influential stakeholders they need to make this happen,” said David Leibowitz, a former communications consultant for the Coyotes who worked with three different owners, including Meruelo.
Said Keating: “I have zero faith they will be able to pull that off. The fact that he couldn’t build an arena when he had a team. Who’s going to build it now?” He added: “No one wants to do business with this guy. Why would you?”
Meruelo still exits with a golden parachute. Ryan and Ashley Smith of Smith Entertainment Group (SEG) purchased the team for $1.2 billion, $200 million of which will reportedly be divvied up among other NHL owners. Meruelo purchased the team for close to $450 million, according to two people familiar with the team’s finances. Even taking into consideration the franchise’s existing debts and yearly operating losses — which ranged from $50 to $70 million, those sources said — Meruelo is likely to net several hundred million dollars. One former employee, made aware of that fact, likened Meruelo’s tenure to that of a teenager who wrecks a car and then gets compensated with a Ferrari.
Employees within the franchise’s business side have been told their jobs are safe until the June 27 land auction. Meruelo said on Friday that those jobs will be evaluated over the next 60 days but that his intent “is to keep everything intact.” Those who remain behind have been told to focus efforts on the Tucson Roadrunners, the Coyote’s AHL affiliate that Meruelo still owns.
Last week, many of those employees and others from the past were at the anger stage of grieving. On social media, one former employee described a stint working for the organization as the worst four months of her life. A former in-game host revealed on X that the team tried to avoid paying the full amount of what she was contractually owed. Many employees attended the team’s final game in Arizona last Wednesday. Meruelo was conspicuously absent. He later claimed he didn’t attend because he was hammering out the final details of the sale of the team. In his absence, the mood was more Irish wake than funeral. Diehard fans stuck around for the final buzzer and long afterward. Players stayed on the ice in their gear and signed autographs. Employees congregated on the ice until their feet grew cold.
One young fan held up a sign that featured a border of Coyotes player photos. “THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME FALL IN LOVE WITH HOCKEY,” he wrote. In the center of the sign was a picture of Meruelo. Under that picture, in red, were the words:
“NOT YOU.”
— The Athletic’s Chris Johnston contributed to this report.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic. Photos: Norm Hall, Scott Taetsch / Getty)
Sports
The Daniel Jones era is over. Giants bench QB who could never find his footing in New York
Daniel Jones took off with nothing but open field in front of him during a 2020 game against the Philadelphia Eagles. The deceptive speed that has made the New York Giants quarterback an effective runner allowed him to increase the distance from pursuing defenders. Then, as Jones neared the goal line for an 88-yard touchdown, he inexplicably stumbled.
With a national audience watching on “Thursday Night Football”, Jones started to lose his footing at Philadelphia’s 30-yard line. He tumbled to the ground and was tackled by an Eagles defender at the 8-yard line, to the disbelief of everyone watching.
With Jones’ benching signaling the end of his six-year run as the Giants’ starting quarterback, that play perfectly encapsulated his tenure. A flicker of promise but, ultimately, a disappointing result.
DANIEL JONES. 80-YARD RUN.
📺: #NYGvsPHI on NFLN/FOX/PRIME VIDEO
📱: https://t.co/W5bCPYgMfo pic.twitter.com/zI1GumCyn0— NFL (@NFL) October 23, 2020
The unofficial end of Jones’ reign came Monday when a source confirmed an NFL Network report that Jones is being benched. This move was inevitable after the Giants’ embarrassing 20-17 overtime loss to the Panthers in Germany in Week 10. Jones’ poor play was a major reason the Giants couldn’t score against the NFL’s worst defense.
With the 2-8 Giants on their bye week, this was the logical time for a quarterback change to give backup Tommy DeVito — who was chosen over No. 2 QB Drew Lock — time to prepare to take over. The Giants went 3-13 in games started by Jones over the past two seasons, and they rank last in the league in scoring this season. His career record is 24-44-1.
The official end of Jones’ time with the Giants will come sometime after the season when the team releases him two years into the four-year, $160 million extension he signed in 2023. Jones, 27, will look to revitalize his career in a new setting, while the Giants will earnestly pursue a replacement this offseason.
The boos rained down at the draft party hosted by the Giants at MetLife Stadium when Jones was announced as the sixth pick in the 2019 draft. Factors outside of Jones’ control led to the chilly greeting from the fan base.
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After 49ers bash Daniel Jones, it begs the question: Why does Giants QB get so much hate?
There was little faith in then-general manager Dave Gettleman, with many believing it was a reach to take Jones with a top-10 pick after he compiled a 17-19 record at Duke. But Jones won over fans, teammates and the rest of the organization in Week 3 of his rookie season when he replaced franchise icon Eli Manning as the starting quarterback.
Jones engineered an 18-point second-half comeback in Tampa Bay, throwing for two touchdowns and rushing for two more, including the game-winner with 1:16 remaining. But the swagger Jones showed in his debut was fleeting.
Fielding a woeful supporting cast around Jones, the Giants lost nine straight games during his rookie season. Still, he demonstrated playmaking ability under coach Pat Shurmur while throwing 24 touchdown passes, which remains the highwater mark of his career by a wide margin.
Shurmur was fired after Jones’ rookie season and replaced by Joe Judge. He and offensive coordinator Jason Garrett focused on eliminating Jones’ ball security issues after he had an NFL-high 19 fumbles as a rookie. In the process, they eliminated the young quarterback’s aggressiveness.
Jones cut back on his turnovers at the expense of throwing the ball downfield. He combined for 21 touchdown passes in two seasons under Judge and Garrett. The second season was cut short due to a neck injury that sidelined Jones for the final six games in 2021.
The coaching changes, a perennially poor offensive line and a lack of playmakers led Giants co-owner John Mara to proclaim after the 2021 season that, “We’ve done everything possible to screw this kid up.”
Jones received a clean slate when Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll replaced Gettleman and Judge, respectively, after the 2021 season. One of the new regime’s first major decisions was declining Jones’ fifth-year option for the 2023 season. That set up the 2022 season as a prove-it year for Jones.
He rose to the occasion. Using his legs more than ever, Jones engineered an efficient offense that relied on running back Saquon Barkley and opportunistic passing.
Jones still only threw for 15 touchdowns, but he added another seven rushing to lead the Giants to a surprising 9-7-1 record and their first playoff appearance in six years. Once in the postseason, Jones raised his game to an inconceivable level in a 31-24 wild-card round win at Minnesota.
The performance was treated as vindication for Mara, who declared, “We’re back,” in the victorious locker room. The mood was far more somber a week later when the Giants were steamrolled 38-7 by the Eagles in the divisional round.
Despite the bitter end to the season, the optimism about Jones within the organization was unbridled. Schoen affirmed that Jones, who was set to be an unrestricted free agent, would be back with the Giants in his season-ending news conference days after the loss to the Eagles.
That wasn’t a simple process, as Schoen tried to simultaneously negotiate with Jones and Barkley during the 2023 offseason. When Barkley wasn’t receptive to the Giants’ initial extension offers, Schoen turned his focus to Jones.
Not forgetting the fifth-year option slight, which would have locked Jones in at $22.4 million for 2023, the quarterback drove a hard bargain at the negotiating table. With talks coming down to the franchise tag deadline, the Giants and Jones agreed to a four-year, $160 million extension. The Giants immediately pivoted to tagging Barkley minutes before the deadline.
If there’s one decision Schoen could do over in his three years, it has to be that one. Rather than giving in to Barkley with a contract worth roughly $25 million guaranteed, Schoen wound up guaranteeing $82 million to Jones. Schoen was mindful of maintaining an escape hatch, however, so the Giants can cut Jones after two seasons while eating a manageable $22.2 million in dead money on the salary cap.
The worst fears of committing to Jones were realized immediately during a disastrous 2023 season. Jones went 1-5 in six starts while suffering a second neck injury that sidelined him for three games before a torn ACL in his right knee ended his season in Week 9.
With buyer’s remorse established, Schoen and Daboll extensively scouted a potential replacement in the 2024 draft. The problem was that the Giants were picking sixth and the teams with the top three picks desperately needed quarterbacks.
Schoen tried in vain to trade with the Patriots for the third pick, but New England took North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye. With Maye, USC’s Caleb Williams and LSU’s Jayden Daniels off the board, the Giants chose not to take a quarterback.
It marked the fifth straight draft since Jones was selected that the Giants didn’t add a quarterback. Instead, they used the sixth pick on LSU wide receiver Malik Nabers in the hopes that the dynamic playmaker could help unlock Jones in another make-or-break year.
Nabers has flashed his talent, but it hasn’t made a difference. Jones has proven incapable of leading a high-octane offense.
The breaking point came in Munich. Jones threw two interceptions in the red zone to kill scoring drives. His most egregious play, however, was taking a sack on a flea flicker despite Nabers and wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson running wide open on the trick play.
There’s financial incentive to sit Jones, who has made $108 million in his career, because he has a $23 million injury guarantee in his contract. If he suffers a major injury that will prevent him from passing a physical in mid-March, the Giants will be on the hook for $12 million. Another $11 million would become guaranteed at the start of next season. The savings from cutting Jones this offseason would be wiped out if the injury guarantee was triggered.
The injury guarantee is a valid reason to bench Jones, especially as he has repeatedly rammed himself into defenders on runs this season. But finances aside, the Giants simply couldn’t trot Jones out again in front of a hostile home crowd that has seen the team lose all five of its games at MetLife Stadium this season.
No one has ever questioned Jones’ intangibles. He’s tough, hard-working and an exemplary teammate.
Jones is cut from the same cloth as Manning, down to having the same personal quarterback trainer and college coach. But for all of the similarities between the quarterbacks, Jones lacks the traits that made Manning one of the best big-game quarterbacks of his era.
Jones seemed too determined to copy Manning’s ability to sidestep controversy in the New York media market. Perhaps being wound so tight can explain why Jones performed so much worse at home — 29 touchdowns and 30 interceptions in 35 career home games compared to 41 touchdowns and 17 interceptions in 35 career road games.
The Giants scored a touchdown three plays after Jones’ meme-worthy stumble four years ago, and they were in position for a rare win at Philadelphia late in the game when he floated a pass to tight end Evan Engram. A catch could have sealed the win; instead, the perfect pass slipped through Engram’s fingertips.
Jones’ stumble and Engram’s drop were representative of this forgettable six-year period. The failures weren’t all Jones’ fault, but he also wasn’t able to overcome the circumstances around him.
So Jones’ time is up in New York. The Giants are now on the clock to get it right on their next swing at a quarterback.
(Photo illustrations: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; top photo: Cooper Neill / Getty Images)
Sports
Eric Bischoff hopes pro wrestling companies put more of an emphasis on this aspect of the sport
Pro wrestling is the hottest it’s been in nearly 30 years with WWE taking production levels to the next level, AEW bringing in international and veteran talent, while TNA, Major League Wrestling, Game Changer Wrestling and Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling have been among the promotions receiving increased attention in North America.
With the rise comes various styles of booking, matchmaking and storytelling. Some companies build up monthslong storylines that culminate in epic finishes, some put together once-in-a-lifetime dream matches and others make matches based on the skill sets that are available.
Most of it is wonderful to watch.
Eric Bischoff, the pro wrestling legend who worked for World Championship Wrestling at the height of the industry in the 1990s, told Fox News Digital in a recent interview what he’d like to see more of in the sport.
“I think in order for any form of entertainment, whether its wrestling, movies, hell, books, even infomercials for that matter, the storytelling is everything, and the characters, the character development,” Bischoff said. “So, I would like to see more emphasis put on storytelling and perhaps less emphasis put on some of the ‘highly athletic and very fun-to-watch wrestlers inside of the ring.’ When the moves don’t mean anything, and they don’t really create any emotion, that’s like watching gymnastics floor exercise for me.”
Of course, Bischoff added, that’s no disrespect to gymnasts and their athleticism, which he greatly appreciates.
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“But when it comes to professional wrestling, what always worked are good guys, bad guys, good girls, bad girls, a story behind it. It allows the audience to identify and live kind of vicariously through the characters,” he said. “And I think the more sophisticated the stories become and [disciplined] they become, the greater the product becomes, the interest in the product. We’ve seen that over the years.
“The ‘Monday Night Wars’ was all about great storytelling and great characters, and I’d like to see that level of intensity when it comes to storytelling. It exists across all the different wrestling organizations, not just one. I think WWE is undoubtedly doing a fantastic job when it comes to storytelling and the results prove that.
“I think there’s such a great opportunity for other companies to find their own way. It’s not like copying the WWE, but there’s a million ways to tell 2 million different stories. And I think if a commitment is made to the stories and the characters in them, I think the opportunity for growth in any wrestling company is right there at your fingertips.”
Bischoff will have another chance to embark on another storytelling journey with Major League Wrestling’s One Shot pay-per-view on Dec. 5.
He will have creative control of the show and will donate his paycheck to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
Sports
Clippers fend off Stephen Curry-led Warriors comeback in thrilling victory
The top two sharpshooters in NBA history squared off Monday night — Clippers three-point king James Harden and Golden State long-distance wonder Stephen Curry bringing a high level of excitement to the Intuit Dome.
They had one crowd-pleasing moment in the first quarter when Harden drilled a three-pointer only for Curry to follow up with a three on the next possession.
For the Clippers, their focus was on slowing down a potent Warriors offense and stopping Curry, who entered the game with the most three-pointers in NBA history at 3,782.
The Clippers achieved their goals on defense, holding back the Warriors just enough to pull off a thrilling 102-99 win that wasn’t sealed until the final buzzer.
“However we got a win, we got a win,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said. “So, it doesn’t matter. Defensively, I thought we did a good job… and then rebounding the basketball.”
The Clippers appeared to be in control once they built a 10-point lead with 2:30 remaining, but they failed to score the rest of the way.
After the Clippers’ 10-point lead was cut to three, a costly turnover in the final seconds nearly sent the game into overtime.
Golden State’s Gary Payton II stole the ball from Norman Powell with 21 seconds left. But Curry, who had 26 points and was six for 15 from three-point range, missed a three-pointer with 12 seconds left. Draymond Green got the rebound and the ball eventually got to Payton, who missed another three-point try with 2.2 seconds left to secure the Clippers’ second victory over Golden State (10-3) this season.
Both teams struggled with turnovers — the Clippers had 20 and the Warriors 19.
Powell led the Clippers with 23 points, including five three pointers. Harden had 12 points and 16 assists, but was four for 15 from the field and two for six from three-point range.
“It was a little bit of everything,” Harden said. “We had opportunities to score. We turned the ball over a couple of times. They missed shots. We didn’t rebound. They get offensive rebounds. They get more chances. So, we’re just happy to come out with the win.”
Harden, who moved into sole possession of second place on the NBA’s all-time three-pointer list Sunday, still found a way to play nearly 41 minutes despite not feeling well.
“We got a mission, we got a goal,” he said. “For me, if I’m able to run and still be myself… Like, I’ve played through injuries where I couldn’t really run. So, this little sickness — where it’s chest tightness — wasn’t going to stop me from playing. I’m just happy that we came out with the win.”
The Clippers played well defensively in the first half, holding the Warriors to 45 points on 44.7% shooting, including 33.3% on threes. They took advantage of 13 turnovers by the Warriors to build an 11-point halftime lead despite having 11 turnovers.
The Warriors are averaging 121.3 points per game, the third-best mark in the NBA. They lead the league in assists (30.3), are second in three-point shooting percentage (39.2) and second in rebounding (49.0). The Clippers managed to overcome those lofty marks despite playing on back-to-back nights.
“Just really proud of our group,” Lue said. “It was on a back-to-back and to come in with this kind of effort tonight, just pleased with that.”
Etc: Kawhi Leonard continues to deal with inflammation in his right knee and is out indefinitely. “He’s out all week,” Lue said.
Asked to describe what Leonard has been able to do, Lue said, “shooting a little bit.”
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