Since the death of team founder Bud Adams in 2013, the NFL and the Titans have engaged in an ongoing dialogue regarding the franchise’s ownership structure. The Titans now believe that the situation will soon be resolved.
“I think they obviously think there is a little something to it,” owner Amy Adams Strunk told Paul Kuharsky of ESPN.com regarding the expectation that the situation will soon come to a conclusion. “Every month we’re getting closer to what they want. It’s going to get resolved. We’re not worried about that at all.”
The finished product apparently will have Strunk firmly in control of the team. “Which I already think I am,” Strunk told Kuharsky.
The problem isn’t control now as much as it is control in the future. With the Adams estate splitting the team among the three branches of his family tree, none had full and complete and final say over the operation of the franchise.
It has long been believed that the situation could easily be resolved, if the other two branches (including grandson and namesake Kenneth Adams IV) were to surrender completely any potential claim to running the team, now or in the future. Although equity can pass to various family members when the principal owner dies, one of them has to become the principal owner, with none of the other owners having a direct or indirect path to controlling ownership.
It’s unclear whether the NFL relented or the other Adams heirs agreed to draw up the appropriate paperwork that puts Amy Adams Strunk fully and firmly in charge. As of December, the situation seemed to be approaching critical mass, amid reports that the Titans were consulting with an antitrust lawyer -- a sign that the Adamses were preparing for a legal attack on the ability of the league office to tell any of its 32 individually-owned business how to handle their own business.
Strunk, who skipped the historic meeting in January that allowed the Rams to return to L.A., plans to attend the annual league meetings that open on Sunday.
“Like I’ve said before, I’m the new guy and it’s kind of just time for me to get out there a little bit and let people know me,” Strunk said.
More and more people will be getting to know her, if as it appears she will be running the team indefinitely into the future.
