But he'll still own the teams?

It's been fascinating to watch Little Lord Paulson having his hands pried off his soccer empire, one finger at a time. He went from "Nothing to see here" to "We're giving him training, he's a nice guy" to "I'm so sorry, this is the darkest day of my life and I'm stepping down as CEO" over the course of a month and a half.

When the corporate sponsors started pulling out, the jig was up. Alaska Airlines called, they want their name off the shirts. You wonder how long Providence is going to leave its name on the public building that Sam Adams and Randy Leonard gave him.

But LLP's still hanging on by his pinkies: He still owns the teams, and he probably thinks he'll get to keep them. He may even believe that eventually this will all blow over, and he can go back to strutting around the stadium.

If that's what he thinks, he's nuts.

Just about everyone who's got an opinion on the subject says he should sell both franchises and get the heck out of Dodge. And maybe he will. But it's more complicated than it sounds. To sell a closely held business, you have to show your books to prospective buyers. You can swear them to secrecy ahead of time, but still, they get to kick the tires and look at a lot of stuff that you have never before shown anybody, for whatever reasons.

And in this case, the sellers would be the Paulson family. They are not known for being, shall we say, the most transparent people in the world. LLP's daddy was Bush Jr.'s secretary of the treasury when the economy melted down in '08. And funny thing, his friends all got bailed out by the taxpayers. 

I would bet there are some interesting critters under some rocks on the money side of the Timbers and the Thorns. If there's going to be a sale, there may be a fair amount of tidying up to do before the goods get shown around.