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| Bakers fans gathered in Sevier Park yesterday to show their support for the team, and team owner, QCurl Sharif, who has been declared dead by a Nashville judge. |
By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya
FSN Sports
In a terse announcement Monday morning, NFFA Commissioner Lorena “Meemaw” Murmann declared that she has accepted a judge’s ruling that QCurl Sharif is legally dead and that the league will sell his franchise, the 12th Avenue Bakers, to a new owner.
“We have no choice but to accept the court’s ruling,” said Murmann in a prepared statement. “It is unfair to the league and to the many fans of Baker Nation to leave the franchise in limbo with its ownership missing and now declared dead. We will begin considering proposals from prospective new owners immediately.”
Sharif, along with PR maven Faith Popcorn, has been missing ever since they were seen, along with an unidentified chimpanzee, boarding a private jet bound for Kiev, Ukraine, in early March.
As news of Murmann’s decision quickly spread, reactions in NashVegas were intense but varied widely — a reflection, perhaps, of the polarizing nature of Sharif’s ownership.
Hundreds of Baker fans, many of them weeping openly, gathered in Sevier Park at the Satan Tree near the team’s headquarters as a show of support. “This whole business is a conspiracy by the NFFA to defraud Mr. Sharif,” said neighborhood activist Roz Tefarian. “He’s working for world peace, and this is how they treat him.”
But another fan group, the Bakerbackers, hailed the news of Murmann’s decision as a positive development. “This team has had a missing owner forever,” said superfan Bill Cheatham, president of the Bakerbackers. “The league is finally getting around to recognizing it.”
Mos Ded, owner of the West Nashville Beelzebubbas, expressed “profound shock” upon hearing that the Bakers were for sale. “I think this decision comes too hastily,” Ded said. “Without naming names, I can think of at least two owners — Dave the Animal and Mojo D — who might pressure the commissioner to take Sharif’s franchise away. And of course we still have an owner who once tried to kill the other owners by planting a bomb in Sharif’s boot. I believe QCurl is still alive. I feel it in my spirit.”
Within an hour of Murrman’s announcement, a group of investors led by SodBakers CEO Nate Newton and friend of the team Little Jimmy Dickens said it would bid $2 billion for the Bakers franchise.
Another bid, for an undisclosed sum, arrived from a consortium calling itself The Clinton Group — which, as FSN has learned, is led by former President Bill Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic founder George Clinton. Both Clintons have been regular guests and performers at the annual Bacchanal co-sponsored by the Bakers and Beelzebubbas.
While no other public offers have surfaced so quickly, it has been reported that former NFFA franchisee Thurmann Murmann was interested in bidding for the Bakers. Some analysts also believe that the shadowy Russian investors who reportedly now own 45 percent of the franchise will make a bid for majority ownership, though it is widely believed that the NFFA will reject such a proposal.
If a Russian bid fails, it is not clear how the Bakers’ current Russian investors would be paid when the franchise is sold. Some analysts suggest it is possible, if the U.S. government bows to pressure to freeze or seize the assets of these investors, that they might receive nothing.
Sharif’s other assets — including the Cherry Bomb Café, Sod Bakers Inc., and the team’s Hohenwald complex — would be unaffected by any sale of the franchise. Nonetheless, those assets appear to have diminished in value in the past several months since Sharif’s disappearance. Federal agents have threatened to confiscate the Hohenwald properties amid claims of unpaid zombie grazing fees. Business at the storied Cherry Bomb has been down 50 percent since March, and the club’s popular house band, Lewis Had the Weed, is now playing four nights a week at a Village Green hangout, the Goodrow-a-Go-Go.
The absence of Sharif and new ownership for the Bakers, Mos Ded noted, might also mean the end of the annual Bacchanal to the Future music festivals.
“Based on past history,” Tefarian said, “I’d still like to believe that QCurl will show up in Nashville this week, and it will turn out that Shiva had transported him to some Pacific island to clear his head, or QCurl decided on a whim to go on a two-month Himalayan trek with Faith. I mean, it’s not unusual for people with the Bakers to disappear for weeks, and nobody stresses about it because it’s just how they roll. But I’m worried that this time, he’s really gone because he got mixed up with the wrong crowd. You know, Shiva has a code. There are no lines that Vladimir Putin won’t cross.”
“We have no choice but to accept the court’s ruling,” said Murmann in a prepared statement. “It is unfair to the league and to the many fans of Baker Nation to leave the franchise in limbo with its ownership missing and now declared dead. We will begin considering proposals from prospective new owners immediately.”
Sharif, along with PR maven Faith Popcorn, has been missing ever since they were seen, along with an unidentified chimpanzee, boarding a private jet bound for Kiev, Ukraine, in early March.
As news of Murmann’s decision quickly spread, reactions in NashVegas were intense but varied widely — a reflection, perhaps, of the polarizing nature of Sharif’s ownership.
Hundreds of Baker fans, many of them weeping openly, gathered in Sevier Park at the Satan Tree near the team’s headquarters as a show of support. “This whole business is a conspiracy by the NFFA to defraud Mr. Sharif,” said neighborhood activist Roz Tefarian. “He’s working for world peace, and this is how they treat him.”
But another fan group, the Bakerbackers, hailed the news of Murmann’s decision as a positive development. “This team has had a missing owner forever,” said superfan Bill Cheatham, president of the Bakerbackers. “The league is finally getting around to recognizing it.”
Mos Ded, owner of the West Nashville Beelzebubbas, expressed “profound shock” upon hearing that the Bakers were for sale. “I think this decision comes too hastily,” Ded said. “Without naming names, I can think of at least two owners — Dave the Animal and Mojo D — who might pressure the commissioner to take Sharif’s franchise away. And of course we still have an owner who once tried to kill the other owners by planting a bomb in Sharif’s boot. I believe QCurl is still alive. I feel it in my spirit.”
Within an hour of Murrman’s announcement, a group of investors led by SodBakers CEO Nate Newton and friend of the team Little Jimmy Dickens said it would bid $2 billion for the Bakers franchise.
Another bid, for an undisclosed sum, arrived from a consortium calling itself The Clinton Group — which, as FSN has learned, is led by former President Bill Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic founder George Clinton. Both Clintons have been regular guests and performers at the annual Bacchanal co-sponsored by the Bakers and Beelzebubbas.
While no other public offers have surfaced so quickly, it has been reported that former NFFA franchisee Thurmann Murmann was interested in bidding for the Bakers. Some analysts also believe that the shadowy Russian investors who reportedly now own 45 percent of the franchise will make a bid for majority ownership, though it is widely believed that the NFFA will reject such a proposal.
If a Russian bid fails, it is not clear how the Bakers’ current Russian investors would be paid when the franchise is sold. Some analysts suggest it is possible, if the U.S. government bows to pressure to freeze or seize the assets of these investors, that they might receive nothing.
Sharif’s other assets — including the Cherry Bomb Café, Sod Bakers Inc., and the team’s Hohenwald complex — would be unaffected by any sale of the franchise. Nonetheless, those assets appear to have diminished in value in the past several months since Sharif’s disappearance. Federal agents have threatened to confiscate the Hohenwald properties amid claims of unpaid zombie grazing fees. Business at the storied Cherry Bomb has been down 50 percent since March, and the club’s popular house band, Lewis Had the Weed, is now playing four nights a week at a Village Green hangout, the Goodrow-a-Go-Go.
The absence of Sharif and new ownership for the Bakers, Mos Ded noted, might also mean the end of the annual Bacchanal to the Future music festivals.
“Based on past history,” Tefarian said, “I’d still like to believe that QCurl will show up in Nashville this week, and it will turn out that Shiva had transported him to some Pacific island to clear his head, or QCurl decided on a whim to go on a two-month Himalayan trek with Faith. I mean, it’s not unusual for people with the Bakers to disappear for weeks, and nobody stresses about it because it’s just how they roll. But I’m worried that this time, he’s really gone because he got mixed up with the wrong crowd. You know, Shiva has a code. There are no lines that Vladimir Putin won’t cross.”
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