While the Raiders get Tom Brady, the Chargers add another owner from a bad franchise

LA Chargers owner Dean Spanos has been on the hot seat with the fanbase for years. Some of the vitriol has subsided with the team hiring Jim Harbaugh and building a state-of-the-art training facility, but it would be a stretch to say Spanos is beloved, let alone liked, by the fans of the team he owns.

Adding a high-profile minority owner of the team could have at least brought some buzz for the Spanos family and the organization. That is exactly what has happened for the Las Vegas Raiders, who are now partially owned by the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady.

Ironically enough, the Chargers did add a minority owner at the exact same time as the Raiders added Brady to the mix. After a lawsuit between Dea Spanos Berberian and her brother, the former opted to sell her 24% share of the team to Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores. Gores also bought 1% each from Dean Spanos, Alex Spanos Ruhl and Michael Spanos to take his ownership stake up to 27%.

The Spanos family still has control of the franchise so there are no operational changes from adding Gores. However, it still is the most Spanos move possible to sell a minority stake to someone who owns one of the worst sports franchises in the country while the Bolts' most heated rival sells a minority share to the greatest quarterback who ever lived.

Chargers' new owner is much less exciting than Tom Brady

Brady has never owned another professional sports franchise (unless you want to count pickleball) so we cannot really pick apart his track record as an owner. What we can do is pick apart Gores' track record, and it is quite easy to do so.

Gores purchased the Detroit Pistons back in 2011 and ever since that franchise has been the laughing stock of the NBA. No team has been as consistently bad as the Pistons have been. They are arguably the worst-run franchise in the sport, as indicated by the litany of draft misses and boneheaded coach hires.

Detroit has won exactly zero playoff games since Gores bought the team. Not playoff series, playoff games. The Pistons have made the playoff twice since 2011 and in both cases, the team was swept in the first round.

It is a classic Spanos move to sell the team to someone who comes from a disorganized franchise with no success to speak of. Why couldn't the Spanos family have sold to someone from the Los Angeles Dodgers' ownership group, or the Golden State Warriors' ownership group? At least then the Chargers would have winning culture engrained into the ownership regime.

The Spanos family does not appear to be stepping away from the Chargers any time soon but if they ever do, Gores will become the favorite to become the majority owner of the team since he is already invested.

And that could lead to something that Chargers fans thought was truly impossible: a worse owner than Spanos.