Today's titans of sport.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: EDGE OF SPORTS - Column

There's the wealthy. There's the 1 percent. Then there are the pro sports owners.

Over the last century, the titans who have stood astride the games we love have changed in character, along with the plutocracy.

Just as George Romney made his fortune overseeing the building of cars while Mitt Romney made his considerably greater fortune taking companies apart, today's sports owners see how they make their fortunes in radically different fashion than their forbears.

This does not mean they are necessarily better or worse people. But the change of the business model has changed the type of person who owns the team.

Almost gone are the family owners who could trace their possession of a franchise back to winning it in a card game or buying ownership over a handshake deal.

In place are corporate raiders who see fans, at best, as scenery.

The recent forced sale of the Los Angeles Clippers from disgraced octogenarian Donald Sterling to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer illustrates the point. Sterling purchased the team more than three decades ago at a cost of $13 million, with only $3 million upfront. Ballmer purchased the franchise for a record $2 billion.

Donald Sterling was a throwback owner, and not merely because he is an open racist. Sterling very much resembled the owners of yesteryear who counted every butt in every seat, nickel-and-dimed players, and cared greatly about his public relations and image in the broader community. He counted every crackerjack, and if sales weren't where he wanted them to be, his employees heard about it. This was also how the low-income real estate mogul ran his slums: with an eye on ruthless business practices and public relations.

While Donald Sterling was personally driving through his housing projects, counting the plants on people's windowsills, and looking for any reason to evict his tenants or jack up the meager rents, he was also tunneling millions into the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP. They would shower him with awards at night, in a morally bankrupt effort to cleanse his actions during the daytime hours.

Over the decades, the Clippers became Donald Sterling's life. He loved being a big shot more than winning games, and losing the team is a punishment that not even Steve Ballmer's billions can truly heal (although it certainly helps).

If Sterling was a throwback to the last century, Ballmer is the epitome of a...