Charlotte city councilman sees David Tepper drink toss as a glass half full | Opinion

You don’t often see people defending Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper.

Not when the Panthers are doing so poorly, with only two wins to their name all season and a (former) head coach who was fired after just 11 games. And especially not after he was caught on video Sunday tossing his drink at Jacksonville Jaguars fans in a fit of immature rage — an incident which resulted in the NFL handing down a $300,000 fine.

But there are Tepper defenders out there, even now, and one of them sits on Charlotte City Council. Following the drink-tossing incident — which Observer sports columnist Scott Fowler has dubbed “Cup-Gate” — District 6 councilman Tariq Bokhari took to social media to offer a defense of the beleaguered Panthers owner.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Bokhari wrote, “I’d prefer a franchise owner inappropriately rage-throwing a drink versus not giving a crap. Doing new things isn’t easy, but you can learn. You can’t learn a passion for winning.”

Like I said, defending Tepper makes you somewhat of a unicorn these days, so I gave Bokhari a call to hear more of his perspective. Bokhari’s point was simple: David Tepper deserves some grace.

“He’s learning how to be an owner,” Bokhari told me. “The fans expect him to win, he expects to win, but it’s going to take him time. But you can’t learn or teach passion for winning. Not all owners have that. And it would be very shortsighted for us to sit around here and say he’s got to go when he could end up being a great owner and create a franchise that does amazing things.”

Bokhari went on to say that Tepper reminds him of another billionaire: Elon Musk.

“There are so many critiques on this guy, and a bunch of them are fair and true. The question is, is the world better off because Elon Musk is in it?” Bokhari said. “I think the same thing is true, at a much smaller level, of David Tepper. Is Charlotte better off with him here, controlling and owning our most prevalent and powerful franchise, or not?”

The answer to that, Bokhari believes, is yes. After all, the stadium does generate more than a billion dollars in economic impact for the city — a figure that is higher under Tepper than under previous owner Jerry Richardson. Tepper and his wife, Nicole, have done philanthropic work in the community through their charitable foundation, as well.

I asked Bokhari what he might say in response to people who point out that Tepper has owned the team since 2018, with little to show in terms of the product on the field. After all, it’s not as if their frustrations were born from one disappointing season — they’ve been building for five years.

Bokhari conceded that point, but he thinks the story is still being written on Tepper and the Panthers.

“What I would say to them is this stuff doesn’t happen overnight. And there’s a lot of franchises out there that have sucked for a very long time,” Bokhari said. “This is how this works. There does come a certain point where, OK, yeah, it’s not gonna happen. I just, I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Tepper himself has sung a similar song, preaching patience and promises that things will get better, both after firing head coach Matt Rhule in 2022 and after firing Frank Reich in November. One would imagine all of the noise would quiet down if Tepper makes good on those promises and turns out to be the amazing owner that Bokhari believes he can be. But it’s taking a while to get there, and the patience (and hope) fans may have once had is running thin. At this point, it’s hard to blame them.

Bokhari might be right that an owner who cares so much about winning that he rage-throws a drink at the opposing team’s fans is better than one who doesn’t care at all. But what a false dichotomy that is. There is, of course, a third option: an owner who manages to care about his team without also embarrassing it. That’s something all of us — Tepper defenders or not — can hope for.