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Using The Word "Owner" For Fantasy Sports Teams - What Do You Think? (1 Viewer)

What Do You Think Of FBG Avoiding Using "Owner"?

  • Totally agree with FBG in avoiding using "Owner"

    Votes: 10 5.7%
  • Mostly agree with with FBG in avoiding using "Owner"

    Votes: 2 1.1%
  • Slightly agree with FBG in avoiding using "Owner"

    Votes: 5 2.8%
  • On The Fence / Don't Care

    Votes: 28 15.9%
  • Slightly disagree with FBG in avoiding using "Owner"

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • Mostly disagree with FBG in avoiding using "Owner"

    Votes: 11 6.3%
  • Totally disagree with FBG in avoiding using "Owner"

    Votes: 117 66.5%

  • Total voters
    176
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Joe Bryant

Guide
Staff member
Stephen A Smith had a passionate reaction the other day as some are saying the NBA should move away from using the word "Owner" in describing the people who own a team. https://twitter.com/TheNBACentral/status/1148311164679524353

For the record, I asked our guys to stop using "Redskins" several years ago where they could. In some places where we're using all the team names, we still do. But I ask our writers, myself included, to use Washington wherever we can. 

But back to "owner". 

Last year I quietly asked our guys to use the word GM ( @General Malaise ;)  ) or General Manager instead of Owner. I'm not militant about it. It's just something I casually asked our guys to do. It's not "official policy" whatever that is. 

My thinking is it's very often it's a white guy that's running a fantasy team that's very often made up of a lot of black players. It just seemed like an unnecessarily bad look. When it's just as easy to write GM or General Manager.  And like with Washington, it's not an absolute thing. In DFS, "Percent Owned" is a standard phrase everyone looks for. We'll use the term there as without it, people think we don't have the info they're looking for. 

But Stephen A.'s post made me think. We'll still continue to use GM or General Manager as it's so easy. But I was wondering what you guys thought about using the word "owner" for Fantasy General Managers. 

And for now, let's leave the real NBA and NFL owners out of the talk. 

 
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It's not a bad look at all.  It's what it is.  You own a team.  You paid money and that makes you the owner.  You don't own the players.  You own the team.  If people are offended by this, that's on them.  As I said in your other thread about women at bars:  If you continually try to not offend every person who's easily offended, there will be nothing you can say.  

For the record, General Manager offends me and my family.  It's like the worst thing you could possibly say.  Please find a new term.

 
It's not a bad look at all.  It's what it is.  You own a team.  You paid money and that makes you the owner.  You don't own the players.  You own the team.  If people are offended by this, that's on them.  As I said in your other thread about women at bars:  If you continually try to not offend every person who's easily offended, there will be nothing you can say.  

For the record, General Manager offends me and my family.  It's like the worst thing you could possibly say.  Please find a new term.
I'll bite.

You said, "If you continually try to not offend every person who's easily offended, there will be nothing you can say. "

I know the slippery slope is popular but I don't agree with this. When the issue is "Owner", there IS something you can say. General Manager. 

It's easy and takes no effort. The "cost" to say something else is virtually nothing. Why the opposition?

 
I'll bite.

You said, "If you continually try to not offend every person who's easily offended, there will be nothing you can say. "

I know the slippery slope is popular but I don't agree with this. When the issue is "Owner", there IS something you can say. General Manager. 

It's easy and takes no effort. The "cost" to say something else is virtually nothing. Why the opposition?
For the reasons I said.  

1) It's not offensive.

2) Do you kowtow to every request for things being offensive?  How many people have to be offended for you to make a change?  1?  100?  If it's 100, do you not care about the 95 people who are offended?  That seems racist.  

We shouldn't let the idiots (please excuse this term) and uneducated people dictate our set of norms.  Owner is not an offensive term.  If 10,000 stupid people find it offensive, that's their problem.  All we're doing is empowering uneducated people.  At what point would you, as a business owner, tell someone that you're not changing your business based on their incorrect facts?   

 
Owners own property or assets.  A professional team is an asset, thus there is an owner of that asset.

Unfortunately, at one point in our history, black people were also treated like property or assets and had owners.

The problem is with classifying a person as property, not the name referred to the person that has the rights of possession to the property.

 
I think it is an unnecessary step to take, and makes it seem like you are trying to hard to be PC.  As a poster said above, are you trying to make yourself feel better about your white guilt, white privledge, etc?

It is one thing to be upset about the term "owner" where a professional team is involved, a white man with black men working for him and he's called the owner.  For the sake of argument, let's assume it is something valid to be upset about, that's a different conversation.

For fantasy football purposes, a fantasy owner does not have people working for him.  There's no apparent racism in the term, because a white fantasy owner drafting a black player does not exhibit any power, influence, or treatment of that player.  The only thing I own is my position in the league.

If you want to say GM, that's your right.  But it just looks like you're trying to hard to give credence to a claim that might not be valid in the first place (in a situation where it actually arguably applies).

 
Thought never crossed my mind until this post.  Been playing since 1984 and a founding board member of fsta. 

This Is so wrong on so many levels and only perpetuates racism when we keep having to label everything. 

 
Owner seems pretty different from Redskins to me.  If you look up "redskin" in the dictionary, it is referred to as a disparaging and contemptuous, and it is commonly considered as such.  "Owner" is not.

 
It's not a bad look at all.  It's what it is.  You own a team.  You paid money and that makes you the owner.  You don't own the players.  You own the team.  If people are offended by this, that's on them.  As I said in your other thread about women at bars:  If you continually try to not offend every person who's easily offended, there will be nothing you can say.  

For the record, General Manager offends me and my family.  It's like the worst thing you could possibly say.  Please find a new term.
This.

Also, a General Manager receives a paycheck, but doesn't own the team. Same applies to fantasy sports. I paid for the team, I guess that makes me the owner. When it comes to free leagues, I guess you could argue that you didn't pay for anything. But, nobody can take the team away from you without your consent. So, that establishes ownership. 

You own the team, not the people. 

 
It doesn't really matter to me, but I do think it's silly.  I own my business (or at least a part of it with my partners). That doesn't mean I own the employees.  You can change Fantasy Owner to Fantasy GM, but what are you going to change Business Owner to? The Rooneys certainly aren't the GMs of the Steelers. What are we to call them?

 
I seriously doubt that anybody anywhere is actually offended by using the word "owner" in this context.  If such a person exists, they're just being unreasonable and need to get over it.  This is a spot where I think the "reasonable person" standard serves us well.

 
I'm going to blow people's minds here that know me politically. I fully agree with NOT using the term "owner." Whenever humanly possible, I say that I "roster" somebody if they fall under my auspices as GM.

That's it.

No owners, no chattel. 

 
I'll bite.

You said, "If you continually try to not offend every person who's easily offended, there will be nothing you can say. "

I know the slippery slope is popular but I don't agree with this. When the issue is "Owner", there IS something you can say. General Manager. 

It's easy and takes no effort. The "cost" to say something else is virtually nothing. Why the opposition?
I know this was directed to the Sheik, but I'll respond anyway.

We should avoid using terminology that might reasonably give offense.  All of us on this board know that the term "#####rdly" (if that gets censored, it's a term for "cheap" or "miserly" beginning with an N) has nothing whatsoever to do with the racial slur it resembles.  But all of us also know better that to use it in a speech.  The reason why is because it's normal and reasonable for a person to do a double-take when they hear that word.  It's inconsiderate to the listener because of the involuntary mental reaction that we know it's going to cause.

The "owner" thing isn't at all like that.  Nobody actually thinks that owning a fantasy football team in any way resembles owning slaves.  People who say they have a problem are most likely lying.  And we shouldn't dignify bad-faith arguments by pretending like they're made in good faith. 

 
I know this was directed to the Sheik, but I'll respond anyway.

We should avoid using terminology that might reasonably give offense.  All of us on this board know that the term "#####rdly" (if that gets censored, it's a term for "cheap" or "miserly" beginning with an N) has nothing whatsoever to do with the racial slur it resembles.  But all of us also know better that to use it in a speech.  The reason why is because it's normal and reasonable for a person to do a double-take when they hear that word.  It's inconsiderate to the listener because of the involuntary mental reaction that we know it's going to cause.

The "owner" thing isn't at all like that.  Nobody actually thinks that owning a fantasy football team in any way resembles owning slaves.  People who say they have a problem are most likely lying.  And we shouldn't dignify bad-faith arguments by pretending like they're made in good faith. 
Nope. I'm totally white, privileged and very uncomfortable with the word "owner" when it comes to labor of all colors, sexes, etc. 

 
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I'm not going to turn up my work speakers for a Stephen A. Smith rant.  Could someone summarize his main point?

 
maybe we should stop trying not to offend people at all costs and just use some common sense when speaking/communicating.  If you do that and someone gets offended then so be it.

 
This is taking things too far.

Property owner, business owner, home owner. No court would ever consider property owners, business owners, home owners to "own" the persons, employees, family who are attached, located or live connected there.

Players fought in court and won to rid themselves of the reserve clause which had created a form of servitude and thus established free agency. Players now have the right to sign with whoever will have them after their initial contracts. 

 
I saw some complaints about this and/or the whole "auctioning" of players a while back on the general internet.

It's ridiculous.  I'm offended that "they" are offended.    

 
Very touch topic.  Whenever I refer to myself as the owner of my team I always preface it by saying that I lawfully acquired the assets with no undue influence, coercion or any other forms of human trafficking and bondage involved.
I always knew Robert Kraft posted here.

 
Please stop.

Wait..this is still "Fantasy sports"   If we pay money we own our Fantasy team.  

I play all Fantasy Leagues..I own my FBB team but don`t actually own Mike Trout or Justin Verlander.  I don`t think Malex Smith or Elvis Andrus really care about my FBB team either.

 
Nope. I'm totally white, privileged and very uncomfortable with the word "owner" when it comes to labor of all colors, sexes, etc. 
But Fantasy players are not on your payroll..you own your team in the league you play but nobody owns the players as we don`t pay them.

 
A fantasy football franchise costs money (in most leagues) to gain control of, and represents an asset that can potentially return real value.  If I, the person who paid for the franchise, am not the owner of it, who is?

If I pay a million dollars to buy a grocery, do I not own the store?  What if I buy a theater?  Why should buying an NFL fanchise be any diferent?

If you want to complain about said fantasy franchise owners using “I own Player X” rather than the more accurate “I own the right to profit in League Y from statistics compiled by Player X,” I will accuse you of nitpicking but acknowledge your point.  That is a very different issue than ownership of a company or fanchise,

 
Correct, nobody is talking about actually owning humans.  When Joe lists himself as owner of FBG, I don't think he is saying he owns the staff (I think he just refers to them as his #####es actually). 
He did say in his OP that part of the FF concern is that fantasy teams are composed of a lot of black players.  And, looking at the staff page that was linked, uh, (not judging or anything, but), not a lot of racial diversity on staff.

 
Before I read any responses, I will just say that when I heard about this I thought it was the most ridiculous thing ever.  Still do.  They own the team, hence they are owners.  When you have an asset that you can sell, you own the asset.   Owner.  You dont own the players, you own the team.

For fantasy, you are an owner.  You make or lose money based on how the team does.  You can sell the team.  GMs cant sell a team, hence they are not owners.  

I own my fantasy teams and am the acting GM.

Horrible.

 
This is too much.

While we're in hypersensitive mode, shouldn't this site's name be changed to footballpeople.com?
Not a big fan of "dominate your league" and find that pretty offensive.  Remember your T-shirt with the character with the whip?

We should probably talk about losing sucks.  What's wrong with losing if you try your best?  What are you referring to by the word "sucks"?  Is that some type of sexual reference?  Pretty sure sucking down a beer or milkshake wouldn't equate to losing.

If you really want to climb up on the morality horse, stop producing tools and information that could lead to gambling addictions.

 
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