Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Tweet of the Day: Best Front Office in Sports

from ESPN SportsNation producer Kevin Wildes, who asked what the top front-office in sports is.

His proposed Top 5 included: Cavs, Red Sox, Patriots, Steelers, Red Wings.

I immediately responded "no way" for the Cavs, who not only lucked into LeBron via ping-pong balls, but failed to figure out they needed someone to stop Rashard Lewis.

My nominee was current man-crush Daryl Morey and the Rockets, but I quickly changed my mind seeing Jonah Keri's nomination of the Spurs. Of course: The Spurs front office rules.

If I had to pick a Top 3, it would be in this order: (1) Patriots (because the NFL is so much more competitive than the other big sports, but I'd like to see how they'll do without Scott Pioli); (2) Red Sox; (3) Spurs. I'd like to give a shout-out to Andrew Friedman and the Rays, too.

I would also like to point out that if you consider college football and college basketball programs to be damn-near-professional, then a contender for "best front office" is Florida football, no question. They run that team modeled after the Patriots, and it shows.

-- D.S.

1 comment:

Michael W said...

Whoa, Dan, I'm with you. Cavaliers as a model of a top front-office? I'd struggle to call them decent.

A couple of teams I thought should deserve consideration:

Dodgers - usually field a good team, have a good farm system and are miles ahead of virtually every other major sports team on diversity issues.

Trail Blazers - Between some draft wizardry (Oden notwithstanding) and a major, major public image improvements, it's hard to argue against 'em. Takes a lot to recover from "Jail Blazers."