Amazon’s Jeff Bezos might buy an NFL team. Wait, what?

Jeff Bezos wants to buy an NFL team. Wait, Jeff Bezos wants to buy an NFL team?

Yes, the Amazon founder is reportedly interested in purchasing one of the NFL’s 32 franchises — assuming the NFL chooses not to expand between now and the time he ponies up the cash to make it happen.

The man who turned a small internet bookstore into one of the world’s largest and most iconic internet companies is worth over $110 billion. That fact alone is why many current owners in the league support a potential partnership.

But which team could Bezos potentially own?

Certainly, Raiders owner Mark Davis is not interested in selling the team his father so famously “Committed To Excellence.” With Davis moving the team to Las Vegas, they may be more profitable than ever, but a negotiation at this stage would be a non-starter.

Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports

The Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos are the two franchises currently most likely to be sold. Given Bezos’ story, taking over the Seahawks as a younger, more contemporary Paul Allen is an intriguing storyline.

The Broncos are the franchise that obviously would most effect the Raiders. While Bill Simmons and others have noted that first-time team owners tend to struggle early on, there is little doubt that if Bezos were truly committed to the franchise (and not just using it as a cash grab), he’d have the resources and ingenuity to turn Denver into one of the league’s prominent franchises once again.

A third franchise is intriguing. Everyone knows the NFL is hellbent on getting an NFL team settled in London at some point. And there’s a team that only last week was said to be a possible match: the Chargers, currently of Los Angeles.

The hard part would be getting Dean Spanos to sell the team. It’s doubtful that Spanos would just give it up, even if the league more or less ordered him to move the team to London.

But the reality is, Bezos would be the perfect owner for a London team. As already mentioned, he’s is a big believer in spreading out the base of a major corporation, which of course, an NFL team really is nowadays.

As The Ringer’s Robert Mays and Kevin Clark discussed on The Ringer NFL Show on Thursday, it would take a two-city approach for an NFL team which calls London home. The team would have to have a U.S. operation somewhere in the southeastern United States, be it Atlanta, Orlando, or some other city with a major international airport, yet also is not going to cause the team’s employees to go broke over having two residences on different continents.

Bezos, or whichever owner calls London home, is going to have to pay their front office and support staff more than any other NFL franchise. As an aside, this is one reason many franchises are likely slow to embrace the idea, even if their current situation looks bleak.

If the Chargers were the London team, they would likely be moved to the AFC South, meaning a team such as the Houston Texans would be moved into the AFC West. This would have major ramifications for the Raiders. In the immediate future, the thought of seeing Deshaun Watson twice a year is a nightmare for Jon Gruden and Mike Mayock.

On the sentimental side, it would mean bye-bye, more or less permanently, to one of the league’s truly underrated rivalries — Chargers vs. Raiders.

Nothing is imminent, but it is an interesting thought. Jeff Bezos as an NFL owner.

Kind of feels like one step closer to the apocalypse.