PANTHERS FOUNDER, FORMER NFL PLAYER
Jerry Richardson, the Carolina Panthers founder and for years one of the NFL’s most influential owners until a scandal forced him to sell the team, has died. He was 86.
Richardson died peacefully Wednesday night at his Charlotte home, the team said in a statement.
Richardson became the first former NFL player to own a team since Chicago’s George Halas when he landed the expansion Panthers in 1993.
A former teammate of Johnny Unitas who caught a touchdown pass in the Baltimore Colts’ victory over the New York Giants in the 1959 NFL championship game, Richardson only spent two years in the NFL before venturing into the restaurant business. He used his championship bonus money to open the first Hardee’s in Spartanburg, S.C.— close to where he had attended Wofford College.
He went on to make his fortune in the restaurant business, becoming chief executive officer of Flagstar, the sixth-largest food service company in the country at the time.
The Spring Hope, N.C., native spent years trying to persuade
the NFL to put a team in the Carolinas, ultimately succeeding through a relatively original concept of funding a new stadium through the sales of permanent seat licenses.
“Jerry Richardson’s contributions to professional football in the Carolinas are historic,” current Panthers owner David Tepper and his wife Nicole said in a statement. “With the arrival of the Panthers in 1995, he changed the landscape of sports in the region and gave the NFL fans here a team to call their own.”
Richardson said in 2018 his greatest mission in life was bringing the NFL to the Carolinas.
The Panthers began play in 1995 and Richardson quickly built Carolina into one of the league’s model franchises, while becoming a powerful figure in the NFL. Richardson served on several high-level owners committees, playing a key role in labor negotiations with the players’ union.
But Richardson’s reputation took a tremendous hit when he announced he was selling the
Panthers on Dec. 17, 2017 — the same day Sports Illustrated reported that four former Panthers employees received significant monetary settlements due to inappropriate sexually suggestive language and actions by Richardson. It was also reported he used a racial slur directed toward a team scout.
He sold the team to Tepper, a hedge fund owner, in May 2018 for a then-NFL record $2.27 billion. The following month the NFL fined Richardson $2.75 million for alleged workplace misconduct.
Richardson never addressed the allegations against him publicly.
After purchasing the Panthers, Tepper said he was “contractually obligated” to keep the statue of Richardson, flanked by two panthers, outside of the downtown Charlotte stadium that Richardson built.
But in June 2020, the Panthers removed the statue, saying they were concerned there may be attempts to take the statue down due to protests and unrest following the death of George Floyd.
The team said that “moving the statue is in the interest of public safety.” It has never returned.