It isn’t often that two of my favorite conversational topics these days — the global economic meltdown/ collapse of Wall Street and the Philadelphia Eagles — manage to find themselves in the same news item, but I guess Christmas came a little early for me.

The Madoff investment fraud, considered to be “the biggest Ponzi scheme in financial history,” has a long and distinguished list of victims, including former Eagles owner Norman Braman (also here if you don’t have a WSJ subscription):

New potential victims emerged of Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff’s alleged giant Ponzi scheme, with international banks, hedge funds and wealthy private investors among those sorting out what could amount to tens of billions of dollars in losses.

New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon, GMAC Chairman J. Ezra Merkin and former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman were among the dozens of seemingly sophisticated investors who placed money on what could prove to be history’s largest financial scam.

I mean, it’s one thing to have the Mets get stung by this, but the Braman-man?  That’s glorious!  Now if we could only get Antonio Pierce involved as well.

Note that longtime Braman observers consider his decision to invest with Madoff to be only his second-worst financial/ management decision ever, narrowly edging his choice to sell the Eagles in 1994 (just prior to the boom in NFL franchise values) for the number-two slot (a deal on which Braman still managed to make money).

His worst decision ever remains the hiring of Rich Kotite.

(HT to Ben and Trish.)