Russ Baugh and William Grimes had never owned a sports team. But fearing that yet another minor-league basketball team would pack up and leave town, they bought the Des Moines Heat, setting the team not only as a business opportunity but also as a potential source of family entertainment.

“I have a belief that you have to be able to support the teams in your own back yard,” said Baugh. “And if you can’t support the teams in your own back yard, then you shouldn’t be complaining if there are no teams in your back yard.”

The Des Moines Heat was one of 17 teams founded early this year with the creation of the International Basketball League. The Heat was co-founded by IBL Commissioner Mikal Duilio, who assumed co-ownership responsibilities for the 2005 season. The team finished fourth in the IBL West with a 10-6 record.

But for various reasons, the team’s three owners could not continue into another season, leaving the future of the Heat in limbo. Baugh’s staffing company, which he owned from 1996 to 2001, was once a major sponsor of another minor-league basketball franchise, the Des Moines Dragons, and was disappointed when that team left town in 2001.

Baugh was asked about his interest in assuming ownership of the Heat, knowing the team likely wouldn’t be around for a second season if another ownership group didn’t step forward. Still, his initial reaction was, “No.”

“I’ve seen the finances of the teams of the past,” he said. “There’s significant financial need, sizable budgets.”

Baugh did, however, discuss the proposition with Duilio, who convinced him that it is financially feasible to operate a team under the league’s frugal approach. One of the major cost savings points for IBL team owners comes in the form of travel: Teams are guaranteed a maximum of one long-distance road trip that requires air travel over the course of the season. In 2006, the Heat will spend a four-day weekend in Colorado, and will otherwise play their away games in Waterloo, Chicago and Lake County, Ill. Players are paid about $50 to $100 per game, and the league emphasizes keeping staff levels to a minimum.

Baugh, now vice president of human resources at Career Management Associates, took his business plan to Grimes, a senior vice president at the full-service human resources company, family founded in 2003. Grimes, a U.S. Navy veteran with sales and marketing expertise, jumped on board and the two assumed ownership Oct. 1.

Despite having an ownership team in place and a workable business plan, Baugh said he was “confident but concerned” as Oct. 1 drew near.

“My concern was the budget and whether it was a budget that would fly here in Des Moines,” he said. “The budget is put together on an extremely low threshold requirement for attendance. And knowing what kind of attendance past professional basketball teams have achieved here in Des Moines, I thought that attendance figure was easily attainable.”

In fact, the Des Moines Heat needs to average just 400 spectators at its 10 regular-season home games in order to break even. During the Dragons’ five years in Des Moines, the team had an average attendance of about 3,400 people, and occasionally drew crowds as large as 6,500 people.

“Most people don’t necessarily buy sports teams to make a profit, but they don’t buy them to lose money, either,” Baugh said.

Though team ownership is new to them, Baugh and Grimes have stepped out of the role of sports fans and into the role of business owners.

“If you look historically at some of the best owners in the history of all sports, they’re not the fans,” Grimes said. “They really are just businessmen. That is the key, and that’s something Russ and I talked about. It is obviously a form of entertainment, but it is also a business. And to run it like a business, we have to run it based on the bottom line and based on what the principles and motivations of our company are.”

The two say owning a sports team isn’t that dissimilar to owning any other type of business. Many people, Baugh said, purchase a sports team without giving serious consideration to running it as a business. But in paying attention to the bottom line, “you’re going to find a way to succeed.”

With less than six months until tip-off on April 7, the owners have spent several long nights in front of the computer and anticipate many more. As of last week, they were preparing to hire a marketing director who can assist them with some of the major projects that need to be complete by the end of the year. They also are in the hunt for a venue that is visible but economical. The Heat played at Hoover High School during the 2005 season, which didn’t provide the visibility the owners are hoping for.

Much of the Heat’s financial success is contingent upon obtaining corporate sponsorships. Baugh and Grimes are armed with newly designed sponsorship packages that they believe will encourage large and small companies to sponsor the team. They also hope that, after one year in operation, the team will be an easier sell to potential sponsors who may have been reluctant to put their money into an unproven organization.

For inspiration, Grimes looks to team owners such as the New England Patriots’ Robert Kraft, whose smart business practices have allowed the organization to turn a profit annually, and New York Yankees’ George Steinbrenner, who has so effectively branded the team in the New York City metropolitan area that regular sellouts protect against any losses over the next decade or more.

But he and Baugh also don’t want to be the type of owners who remain anonymous to the team and its fans.

“Quite honestly, I want people to come out to a game and see us wandering around and talking to people in the crowd,” Grimes said. “Do I hope the Des Moines Heat gets to a point where there are press boxes and that kind of thing? Sure, everybody does. But I still want it to be about community involvement and staying in touch with people.”