Nick James Mileti (born April 22, 1931) is an American author, retired lawyer, former businessman, sports entrepreneur and former sports franchise owner who was, during the 1970s, the owner of the

Cleveland Indians The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central division. Since , they have ...

Cleveland Cavaliers The Cleveland Cavaliers (often referred to as the Cavs) are an American professional basketball team based in Cleveland. The Cavaliers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central ...

Cleveland Crusaders The Cleveland Crusaders were a professional ice hockey team from Cleveland. They played in the World Hockey Association from 1972 to 1976. Their home ice was the Cleveland Arena from 1972 to 1974, and the Richfield Coliseum from 1974 to 1976. ...

, the Cleveland Arena, the

Coliseum at Richfield Richfield Coliseum, also known as the Coliseum at Richfield, was an indoor arena located in Richfield Township, between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio. It opened in 1974 as a replacement for the Cleveland Arena, and had a seating capacity of 20,273 ...

and radio station "3WE" WWWE AM/1100 (now

WTAM WTAM (1100 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio, and carries a news/ talk/sports format commonly known as "Newsradio WTAM 1100". Owned by iHeartMedia, WTAM serves Greater Cleveland and much of surrounding Northeast Oh ...

Sports franchise ownership career

Born in southeast Cleveland, Mileti put himself through college, graduating from

Bowling Green State University Bowling Green State University (BGSU) is a public research university in Bowling Green, Ohio. The main academic and residential campus is south of Toledo, Ohio. The university has nationally recognized programs and research facilities in the ...

(BGSU) in 1953. The BGSU Alumni Center is now named in his honor. He was a member of the

Theta Chi Theta Chi () is an international Fraternities and sororities, college fraternity. It was founded on April 10, 1856 at Norwich University then-located in Norwich, Vermont, and has initiated more than 200,000 members and currently has over 8,700 c ...

fraternity at BGSU. Following his time at BGSU, he earned a J.D. degree from the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...

Moritz College of Law The Michael E. Moritz College of Law is the professional graduate law school of the Ohio State University, a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. Founded in 1891, the school is located in Drinko Hall on the main campus of the ...

in 1956. After military service he opened a law practice in

Lakewood, Ohio Lakewood is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, on the southern shore of Lake Erie. Established in 1889, it is one of Cleveland's historical streetcar suburbs and part of the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Area. The population was ...

and became prosecutor there after befriending the mayor. He became involved in sports after serving as chairman of the Bowling Green alumni association and organizing a BGSU game at the Cleveland Arena. Shortly thereafter he purchased the Arena and its prime tenant, the original

Cleveland Barons The name Cleveland Barons has been used by three professional hockey teams and one junior team. *Cleveland Barons (NHL), the National Hockey League team that played between 1976 and 1978 *Cleveland Barons (1937–1973), the original American Hockey ...

hockey team. Recognizing that the Arena needed another tenant, he sought an expansion NBA team for Cleveland. Mileti spearheaded a group that purchased the ownership rights to the

in 1970 to enter the league as an

expansion team An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...

, paying a fee of $3.7 million; he eventually sold his twenty percent interest in the team in 1980 for $1.4 million. Another syndicate he headed purchased the Indians in 1972 for $10 million from Vernon Stouffer. His partnership that purchased the Indians included

Howard Metzenbaum Howard Morton Metzenbaum (June 4, 1917March 12, 2008) was an American politician and businessman who served for almost 20 years as a Democratic member of the U.S. Senate from Ohio (1974, 1976–1995). He also served in the Ohio Hous ...

and

Ted Bonda Alva Theodore Bonda (1917 - October 22, 2005) was the president of the Cleveland Indians from 1973 to 1978. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, which also served as his death place. He was a partner in Nick Mileti's ownership group who assumed control o ...

. Soon after winning the Cavaliers franchise, Mileti realized that Cleveland Arena was nearing the end of its useful life. However, when politicians balked at building a new arena downtown, he bought land in Richfield, halfway between Cleveland and

Akron Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city ...

, and built the

Richfield Coliseum Richfield Coliseum, also known as the Coliseum at Richfield, was an indoor arena located in Richfield Township, Summit County, Ohio, Richfield Township, between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio. It opened in 1974 as a replacement for the Cleveland Arena ...

, at the time the largest arena in the country. In late 1972, Mileti formed Ohio Communications with veteran radio executive Tom Embrescia, which acquired WKYC AM/1100 and FM/105.7 from NBC, renaming them "3WE" WWWE-AM and "M105" WWWM-FM. Mileti then moved the radio play-by-play rights for the Indians and Cavaliers, as well as pioneering sports talk host

Pete Franklin Pete Franklin (September 22, 1927 – November 23, 2004), nicknamed "The King", "Sweet Pete" and "Pigskin Pete", was an American sports talk radio host who worked in Cleveland, New York and San Francisco. He is widely credited with pioneering ...

's ''Sportsline'', to WWWE. Already the most powerful AM station in Cleveland, with a 50,000 watt clear channel signal, WWWE quickly turned into a sports radio powerhouse. In his sports ownership heyday, Mileti was a master of leverage of sorts, owning 51 percent of his enterprises with little of his own money at risk.Torry, ''op.cit.''. This practice came back to haunt him not long after he bought the Indians. He only paid for controlling interest with $500,000 of his own money, with the rest secured through loans. The lenders first grew concerned when the construction of the Richfield Coliseum was bogged down by lawsuits and

cost overrun A cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, involves unexpected incurred costs. When these costs are in excess of budgeted amounts due to a value engineering underestimation of the actual cost during budgeting, they are known ...

s. Despite this, Mileti had ambitious plans for reviving a team that had spent the better part of the last two decades in the bottom half of the American League. One of his first acts as owner was to hire new scouts; Stouffer had made drastic cuts to player development. However, his plans were brought undone when two major partners in his Indians syndicate,

Steve O'Neill Stephen Francis O'Neill (July 6, 1891 – January 26, 1962) was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played in Major League Baseball as a catcher, most notably with the Cleveland Indians. As a manager, he led the Detroit Tig ...

and

Gabe Paul Gabriel Howard Paul (January 4, 1910 – April 26, 1998) was an American executive in Major League Baseball who, between 1951 and 1984, served as general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, Houston Colt .45s, Cleveland Indians and New York Ya ...

, joined

George Steinbrenner George Michael Steinbrenner III (July 4, 1930July 13, 2010) was an American businessman who was the principal owner and managing partner of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees from 1973 until his death in 2010. He was the longest-serving own ...

's bid to buy the

New York Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one ...

. While Mileti was able to find new investors, it wasn't enough to restore the confidence of his lenders, who believed he was spread too thin. Mileti was forced to name Bonda as the team's executive vice president and chairman. For all intents and purposes, his tenure as owner was over, though Mileti didn't formally sell out his stake to Bonda until 1975. Mileti also founded and was the principal owner of the short-lived CFL team, the

Las Vegas Posse The Las Vegas Posse were a Canadian Football League (CFL) team, that played at the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, in the league's 1994 season as part of the CFL's short-lived American expansion. Lasting only one seaso ...

in 1994. Mileti has become a writer in retirement; to date, he has published three books. He was inducted into the Cavaliers Wall of Honor in 2019.

Publications

* ''Closet Italians: A Dazzling Collection of Illustrious Italians with Non-Italian Names'' (2004) * ''Beyond Michaelangelo: The Deadly Rivalry between Borromini and Bernini'' (2005) * ''The Unscrupulous: Scams, Cons, Fakes & Frauds that Poison the Fine Arts'', (2009)

Bordighera Press Bordighera Press is an independent publisher that was founded in 1989 by Fred Gardaphé, Paolo Giordano, and Anthony Julian Tamburri. Committed to Italian and Italian American Italian Americans ( it, italoamericani or ''italo-americani'', ) a ...

Honors

In 2019, Mileti was inducted into the Cavaliers " Wall of Honor", which recognizes prominent figures in team history.Inaugural Wall of Honor Class inducted - Cavs.com
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References

External links

Nick Mileti bio on Cleveland Seniors' website
Retrieved on December 15, 2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Mileti, Nick 1931 births Major League Baseball executives Major League Baseball owners Cleveland Cavaliers owners Cleveland Indians owners Cleveland Indians executives Lawyers from Cleveland Bowling Green State University alumni Living people Major League Baseball team presidents National Basketball Association executives National Basketball Association owners American lawyers and judges of Italian descent Ohio State University Moritz College of Law alumni

Sports franchise ownership career

Publications

Honors

See also

References

External links