What do you consider to be "meddling" by a sports owner?

Much ado is often made about “meddle-some” sports owners, most notably Jerry Jones, but also guys like Woody Johnson, Dan Snyder, James Dolan, etc.

What would you consider to be “reasonable input” and what would be “meddling?”

For instance, say, an owner tells his GM or head coach, “Our defense was one of the worst in the league last year; what do you think about us drafting heavily on defense this year?” Or, “I think a trade for Player XYZ with our draft picks would be a good idea, what do you think?” At what point do suggestions become disguised orders/commands?

I think the line is crossed when the owner becomes directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the sports franchise.The owner should be someone the GM goes to when they need something, particularly if it involves money. Other than that, the owner should be there to encourage the team, make sure the bills are and players are paid, and to tell the press that next year will be better.

I guess if you own something, you really can’t ‘meddle’ in its affairs. If James Dolan wants to name himself the new starting power forward for the Knicks, he certainly has that right.

The extreme example of “owner meddling” probably comes from professional wrestling when the owner/promotors makes themselves “world champion”.

Examples: Vince McMahon, Vince Russo, Verne Gagne, Dusty Rhodes, The Sheik.

To my mind, it’s meddling when, as @dolphinboy notes, the owner gets involved in the day-to-day operations of the team, especially decisions about players and coaches. You could have a hypothetical case – like, in the past, when Paul Brown owned the Browns, then the Bengals – that the owner actually knows enough about the sport itself to be a credible GM, but I think that those days are long past in major professional North American sports.

At this point, being a GM in the NFL or other sports leagues is absolutely a full-time job (and then some); any team owner likely has many other business decisions that they need to be focusing on (with the team as well as their other businesses), as well as almost undoubtedly not being experienced in the nuts and bolts of running a team. Good GMs come up through the ranks of scouting, player personnel, operations, etc.

Jones is the poster child for this, because he actually has given himself the GM title. As discussed in another thread here, he seems to be under the impression that the skills he had as a GM in the 1990s, when the Cowboys were winning Super Bowls, are still enough today, when the game, and the administration of an NFL team, was much less complex than it is today. (Also, there’s the matter of how much of Dallas’s on-field success was due to Jimmy Johnson back then.)

I’ll also add George Steinbrenner to the list of examples.

Well, yes, at a certain level. It’s your team, do what you want. But, if you, as a team owner, lack the brains and humility to realize that you need to let actual professionals do their job if you want your baby to be successful on the field / on the court, then you absolutely do earn the “meddler” title, IMO.

I think that it qualifies as meddling if the owner gathers a bunch of hippies and a talking dog to run around solving mysteries and possibly meeting a random celebrity like, say, Cass Elliot or The Harlem Globetrotters (again).

And Harold Ballard, owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He got involved in all kinds of trades and deals, few of which made sense, and even fewer of which worked.

Dressing up as a pirate ghost to steal treasure, scare the opposition, and hope no one spends their weekend driving around in a van through the countryside solving mysteries.

Part of it is also what was agreed upon when hiring general managers and other staff. GMs under Steinbrenner knew before taking the job that he was going to meddle in day-to-day operations. Not only did Steinbrenner involve himself in drafting players, he also required that all trades and free-agent acquisitions receive his prior approval. He suggested trades too, perhaps most infamously before the 1996 season. He was convinced that Derek Jeter wasn’t ready for the fulltime shortstop job and wanted his GM to trade Mariano Rivera for Felix Fermin. Fermin was out of the league by the end of the '96 season.

Has there ever been a worse meddler than Steinbrenner?