An Admission of Audacity
Doctors said he'd never walk. Now he wants to own a franchise. The answer is still no — until it isn't.
Many of the founders I work with set huge goals. Get acquired. Build a unicorn. Neither is easy, and when founders fall short, I hear them reframe the whole journey as a failure. They’re devastated by a few-million-dollar exit that wasn’t a hundred-million-dollar exit.
Knowing the danger of huge goals, I’m going to write about one of my own.
I want to own a piece of FC Cincinnati or the Cincinnati Bengals. Maybe just 1%. Enough to help guide the franchise and bring, or continue, a culture of consistent winning to a city that deserves it.
Some of you will read that and think of Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s been chasing the New York Jets for years with the same stubborn, public audacity. Gary’s goal is the Jets. My goal is Cincinnati.
Sports have always been a vehicle for me. As the “different” kid with a disability, they helped me acquire things that people with disabilities often struggle to find: friends, belonging, and a place to compete. Later, sports taught me a lot about leadership, including that your players (or employees) don’t work for you. You work for them.
I’ve also watched what a winning team does to a city. A high school basketball team on a deep run can bring a divided community together. A professional franchise in the playoffs puts money in local businesses’ coffers, pride in people’s hearts, and a shared identity in the air.
That’s why I want to be part of it.
I can hear some readers now: what makes you think you can pull that off?
I’ve heard that before.
When I was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, my parents were told I would likely never walk. I now move freely — sometimes in a wheelchair, sometimes with forearm crutches, and sometimes on my own two feet. When physical therapists held me to a lowered standard, I built my own fitness regimen. I lift weights at least three times a week. I row nearly every day. (Stay tuned: I have a rowing goal for 2027 that I will write about later.)
Academically, I was told there were “special schools for people like me” and that I “should be happy with a secretarial job.” I graduated from THE Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. And you know what? It is a special school.
Owning a piece of a professional sports franchise is an audacious goal. It will not even be close to the hardest thing I have ever done.
I hear the doubters. I just don’t have to believe them.
My overall goal is ownership. But the deeper goal is contribution: to contribute via sports to this great city, and to help bring a culture of winning to a place that deserves it.
And if that day never comes — if I remain nothing more than a season ticket holder who helped build something real in a city he loves — I’ll take it. It is the process, not the destination.
That’s not a consolation prize.
That’s the whole point.