Former NFL star Antonio Brown never fails to make headlines, and he was back in the news this week for reported missteps as a team owner.
The erstwhile wide receiver bought an ownership stake in National Arena League football franchise, the Albany Empire, earlier this year, doing so alongside his father. AB’s dad was a star player for the Albany Firebirds in the 90s, so he’s come full circle in a way.
But, less than two months removed since they bought the team in March, they’re already attracting some bad publicity as the team’s head coach and a number of players, including the league MVP, quit with claims they were not paid on time.
The development left the Empire without a head coach, forcing Brown to rehire the one he fired in April. Tom Menas, who had led the team to two consecutive league titles, was relieved of his duties before the start of the season, receiving quite the surprise on April 6. Offensive coordinator Damon Ware took over but he’s now gone as noted above.
Brown was at a press conference to unveil Menas this week and said the appointment was a no-brainer as the latter is a top-quality, title-winning coach, which has us wondering why he was fired in the first place.
Anyhoo, the Super Bowl winner was quizzed on the payment issue and noticeably steered clear of giving a direct answer.
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“Everyone’s paid here. I’m running a business,” he replied. “The MVP Arena is paid. I don’t know what the minutiae of the articles, I don’t want to get into the ‘he said, she said.’ Everyone is paid. If everyone wasn’t paid you wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be here.”
Asked if the players who left were paid, he responded with the following:
“Everybody on our payroll, you know payroll right? You know paychecks? You know you can’t just get paid when you want, right? You know they run a course, right?”
He has since taken to Twitter to post the cryptic message shown below.
AB also insisted during the press conference that he has pumped the most money into the community, noting he paid a bill of $1.5 million for workers’ compensation.
