Antonio Brown’s short-lived tenure as owner of the National Arena League’s Albany Empire was filled with controversies, with allegations about unpaid fees and people getting locked out of hotel rooms overshadowing anything the team did on the field.
In an ESPN feature about Brown’s disastrous tenure with the Empire, which ended with the team getting kicked out of the league in June because of unpaid fees, the outlet reported that Brown allegedly threatened three players with a gun when a birthday post dedicated to a former player who’d died the previous year was unexpectedly deleted.
Dwayne Hollis, Darius Prince and a third player — this one unnamed in the article — allegedly approached Brown at a cigar lounge, asking about the situation behind the post intended as a tribute to offensive lineman Mo Ruffins.
“AB looked at Ryan [Larkin] and was like, ‘Hey, man, you still got the AR [rifle] in the car? Go get it,’ ” Prince told ESPN. “Then I was like, I’m not going to allow this dude to walk out of here after you just threatened us. … After he said that, things did calm down and we had a conversation. But the fact is that he threatened us by telling his assistant to grab his AR.”
Hollis told the outlet that they were “there to just talk, to give our views about how that’s wrong.”
Brown’s association with the Empire started as a part-time owner in March, but he eventually became the majority owner of the team for which his father, Eddie Brown, once starred.
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The controversies started, though, when members of the team alleged at the beginning of May that they hadn’t been paid in three weeks, and that spiraled into players getting locked out of hotel rooms and the team cycling through four different coaches, according to previous reports.
Another strange twist occurred when Brown advertised his participation in the league and a looming debut, though that never happened.
Brown and the Empire also incurred about $21,000 in unpaid league dues and another $1,000 conduct fine, according to ESPN, and other conflicts continued to arise.
“He came in promising the world,” Prince said earlier in the ESPN article, “and didn’t show for s—.”
Brown faced plenty of legal troubles during his NFL career and the troubles have continued since he played his last game for the Buccaneers in 2021 when he tore his jersey off and walked across the MetLife Stadium field.
His court cases have included domestic violence, sexual assault and the failure to make child support payments, which, most recently, led Florida police to order Brown’s arrest for failure to make a $15,000 payment in August.
