Cooke’s Sights Set On ‘Skins But Son Of Former Owner Finds Nfl Team Is Expensive Target

You can have the Chrysler Building and the Los Angeles Daily News. They are toys John Kent Cooke can do without.

He doesn’t care for celebrities in the owner’s box. He doesn’t seek out or desire the very public, often tabloid-esque, lifestyle led by his late father.

John Kent Cooke doesn’t want an empire. All he wants is his father’s Washington Redskins. And that’s hassle enough.

“We have a lot of troubles,” Cooke said, measuring his words, “a lot of problems.”

The stream of attorneys that file almost daily into the big corner office at Redskin Park are a testament to Cooke’s woes. A formidable set of hurdles - including the Internal Revenue Service and a fiery widow left out of the will - stand in the way of his retaining control of one of the county’s most popular teams.

“My goal is to buy the Redskins, the stadium and (Redskin) Park,” Cooke said in one of his first full-length interviews since his father’s death. “And I intend to reach my goal.”

He just isn’t sure how.

Cooke moved into the corner office after his father, Jack Kent Cooke, died of a heart attack April 6 at the age of 84.

A soft-spoken man missing the boisterous, gravelly voice and cantankerousness of his father, the 55-year-old son has since struck a theme that’s big on reassurance and short on detail, promising that he would run the team, that it would stay competitive and “remain in Washington for many years.”

To accomplish that, Cooke must hope his father’s will was structured carefully enough to avoid the fate of the Joe Robbie family after the Miami Dolphins owner died in 1990. Robbie’s family had to sell the team to pay a $55 million inheritance tax bill.

The value of Jack Kent Cooke’s estate has been estimated at $825 million. Cooke’s will ordered its executors, led by John Kent Cooke, to establish a charitable foundation for underprivileged children with the bulk of the money.

“It is our duty as executors to sell everything off to fund the foundation,” Cooke said. “Everything will have to be sold off, including the Washington Redskins and the new stadium, and it is my intention to be the buyer.”

The Redskins are valued from $184 million-$250 million. The Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, near completion in record time in Landover, Md., was built for approximately $180 million. Cooke isn’t saying how much of the team he already owns - his father gave him a percentage before his death - but his personal wealth will not permit him to retain the rest of the Cooke properties.

That means the Chrysler Building, the Daily News, the Elmendorf horse breeding farm in Kentucky and everything else will have to go. It’s time to break up the empire.

“They will definitely go to other buyers,” Cooke said. “I have been here (at Redskin Park) since 1981. This is my first love. It’s been my life.”

Cooke said there were also “ownership policies” in the NFL that would have to be addressed before he could buy the team, but he declined to elaborate. However, he said he was encouraged by the response of other NFL owners in his endeavor, and his support seems widespread.

“He would have no NFL problems,” Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson said. “He’s very well respected. In his case, the vote would be 29-0.”

Cooke attended NFL meetings on behalf of his father for more than a decade.

“He’s a very fine owner,” Wilson said. “He recognized the history of the league. He likes to stick by the rules that have been established over the years. We speak the same language.”

Even Art Modell, who didn’t exactly elate the elder Cooke by moving his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore last year, gives the younger Cooke his “full support.”

“He’s a neighbor of ours now,” Modell said. “The taxes and the will, that’s an internal problem. (As far as the owners are concerned), there’s no impediment of him staying in control of the Redskins as long as he wants to.”