Diddy and Colin Kaepernick are serious about buying the Panthers

Sean “Diddy” Combs wasn’t joking when he said he wanted to buy the Carolina Panthers. Combs is reportedly arranging meetings for a potential ownership group, according to Yahoo’s Charles Robinson.

What happened? Current Panthers owner Jerry Richardson announced Sunday that he will make his majority interest in the team available for sale after the season. Richardson’s announcement came on the heels of the news that the NFL is investigating Richardson over allegations of workplace misconduct and sexual harassment.

Richardson owns 48 percent of the franchise. But the way the team is structured makes his share a controlling interest. That’s expected to also be true for whoever purchases it.

Who’s involved? Colin Kaepernick will be a part of Combs’ effort, according to the report. Combs and Kaepernick want to create an ownership group that more closely resembles the racial makeup of the NFL. About 70 percent of NFL players are black. Every majority NFL owner but one — the Jaguars’ Shad Khan — is white. There has never been a black majority owner of an NFL team in league history.

Kaepernick is involved in reaching out to venture capitalists and other prominent athletes to help with the effort. Diddy and Kaepernick got some volunteers early in this process, too, in the Warriors’ Steph Curry, model/actress/Panthers fan Brooklyn Decker, and her husband, former tennis star Andy Roddick.

But there’s no confirmation on who might end up being major players in this effort.

Can Diddy afford to buy the Panthers? Probably not on his own. The team is currently valued by Forbes at around $2.3 billion. A team’s value often escalates when it’s up for sale. Richardson’s share could go for around $1.2 billion, according to Robinson.

Diddy’s net worth is estimated to be right around $820 million. Even if Kaepernick, Decker, and Curry do all chip in, they’ll be short. Curry has the highest net worth of the four, which is about $47 million, per Forbes.

But if they’re strategic about pulling in investors, they might be able to make it work. Then they’ll face a bigger hurdle: Getting the NFL to approve the group for ownership.

The league’s ownership lacks diversity. That racial divide between owners and players has never been more glaring than it has been this season in the reactions to players’ protests of racial inequality and police brutality during the national anthem.

Creating more diversity at the top would be good for players and good for the NFL. We’ll see if the league is willing to let that happen.