Tell me about Jack Kent Cooke

[sportscurmudgeon]

Dirtbag:

JKC was indeed a character. He owned/built the Fabulous Forum in LA and owned the LA Kings and the LA Lakers for a time. He owned radio, TV and newspapers too. He once owned a minor league baseball team and tried to buy a major league baseball team and move it to Toronto in the late 50s/early 60s as I recall.


Early on as Skins' owner he stayed in LA and allowed Edward Bennett Williams (Washington lawyer of no small reputation) to run the Skins. Williams owned a small part of the team (7% I think). Then Cooke severed his LA ties - - proximal to one of his several divorces - - and moved east to an estate in Upperville/Middleburg VA. That is when he bought out Williams and became the guiding force of the Redskins and built the team by spending more money on the Skins than any other owner of the 1980s spent on their teams -- except perhaps for Eddie deBartolo in SF. [BTW, Edward Bennett Williams then purchased the Baltimore Orioles and ran that team for a while...]


If you are doing a paper on JKC, leave room for a section on how he thought he might outsmart the Feds and the IRS with regard to his estate taxes and created an arcane will that all but guaranteed that his son could not own the team. That is how the team was up for sale in the late 90s - first to the Millstein Bros and subsequently to Danny Boy - all because JKC's intracate will made it such that the estate had to sell the team to pay the estate taxes that JKC thought he was going to avoid.


As I understand it, the key to his tax machinations was that the Chrysler Bldg in NYC - - which he also owned - - was supposed to be valuable enough to sell quickly and pay all the estate tax that might be due. Unfortunately, the Chrysler Bldg wasn't worth more than about 60% of what the estate needed to raise to pay the estate tax - - even with all of is hedges and shelters and foundations and all that stuff. And that is where the house of cards began to fall...


Just a guess, but Smootsmack should have info for you on this subject too...


Good luck.