Innovative owners hope new Earthquakes take root

Oakland A's owners (from left) Mike Crowley and Lew Wolff had a major hand in the new Quakes; Billy Beane (far right) will play a big role. Michael Zagaris/MLB Photos via Getty Images

By Ridge Mahoney, Special to SI.com, Soccer America

Nearly a decade after a consortium led by MLS founder and former chairman Alan Rothenberg failed in its attempt to buy the original San Jose MLS franchise, one of his long-time friends is taking the plunge with an expansion version.

In plunking down $20 million, forging ahead with a stadium plan, and revving up his organization for the 2008 season, Oakland A's minority owner and managing partner Lew Wolff has already done what MLS, Kraft Sports Group, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), and Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment (a.k.a. the NHL's San Jose Sharks) failed to do during a decade of futility: give the team stability, resources and hope for the future.

"You go all the way through it and look at what we didn't have in the past," said former player and assistant coach John Doyle, who was hired in October as the Quakes' general manager. "We didn't have a stadium, we didn't have Lew Wolff, we didn't have backing. We started out as a league-run team, but when people in the front office called the league and said, 'We need help,' we didn't get it.

"We didn't have that ownership we needed, the team was always for sale. Phil Anschutz is phenomenal, but he came in here to save the team and then said, 'I want to move the team,' and I don't blame him. Not at all. He gave everybody a fair chance to buy the team.

"It's great now that there is an owner, someone who wants soccer to make it in America and wants to make it in San Jose. That's going to help."

Doyle has already staged a coup by snatching Frank Yallop away from the Galaxy for a third-round draft pick. Before the team moved to Houston, Yallop led the Quakes to MLS titles in 2001 and '03. Yallop, Doyle and assistant coach Ian Russell are handling the soccer side of the operation. But winning wasn't enough to save the original team and that's where the A's expertise is needed.

"I think the league is doing a lot of things right," says A's president Michael Crowley, who will fill the same position for the Quakes. "Getting individual owners for individual teams, getting local owners is obviously a key, and some of the corporate deals they've done with Adidas and some of these other ones who are non-soccer companies show there's some interest in the league.

"You have to have local ownership. You can't manage these things from a thousand miles away or 2,000 miles away. It just doesn't work. It's like someone who opens a restaurant and after it's successful as one entity, starts branching out, and they go under. It's because you lose that personal touch. Right, wrong, or indifferent, we're going to give it a go."

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