You didn’t have to be a Cincinnati Bengals fan to cringe at the sight of Stan Kroenke reveling in his own glory on national television Sunday night. The LA Rams players had just exhausted themselves on the field to win the Super Bowl, but it was the franchise’s stiff seventy-four-year-old billionaire owner who first held aloft the championship trophy like a conquering hero after safely watching the action from the comforts of the luxury box of his $5 billion trophy of a stadium.

But what Kroenke’s long career proves is that it doesn’t take talent or charisma of someone like quarterback Matthew Stafford or Joe Burrow to succeed as a capitalist. Just luck, connections, and money — lots and lots of money.