John Bassett

John F. Bassett was an early investor in the World Football League and United States Football League and the father of teen-age tennis star Carling Bassett.

He had interests in the USFL's Tampa Bay Bandits, the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts and the WFL's Memphis Southmen. He also put together a group of investors in 1973 that bought the Ottawa Nationals of the World Hockey Association and moved the team to Toronto. But the team eventually moved to Birmingham, Ala, and later went out of business when the National Hockey League absorbed four WHA teams in 1979.

He passed away in 1986 at the age of 47; a victim of melanoma that developed into two malignant brain tumors.

His father was media baron John W. Bassett