That's how you leave a club you have messed up. Ellis Short has sold the club and paid off something like £100,000,000 in debt on his way out the door, leaving the club debt free for the new owners.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/inews.co.uk/sport/football/sunderland-sold-ellis-short-steward-donald-chris-coleman-debt/amp/ 
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Club has been getting huge Premier league payments for past x years, then relegated , but still getting parachute payments. It is one of the best supported clubs in the land - yet get relegated again.
It clearly hasnt invested in players, and then the (Amercian) owner decides hes going to pay off all the debt.
Just doesnt add up.
It's a club that has been poorly run for a long time. They have had a litany of bad managerial appointments and bad signings. And in listening to people more knowledgeable about the club than myself, it just sounds like there's something wrong at their core, something miasmic.
As to them being one of the best supported, I just don't know how much that matters in the modern era. I'd say they're one of the best domestically supported clubs, but have no global appeal. And unfortunately, that means a lot these days.
This is the chairman who got them a decade in the premier league. It seems to me that he feels incredibly guilty/responsible for what has happened in the last 2/3 years and so wants to move on and give someone else the chance to do it. And he's giving them the beat chance possible by writing off all debt.
Clubs could get extra points if they have a high social media presence, a strong celebrity following and if they promote a forward thinking lifestyle. The brand of the club needs to be just as important as the football.
He doesn't have to actually pay anybody to clear the debt, just write off the millions he and his farcical freakshow have already burned, the debt is real only in his shitbox for a skull.
Both owners' plans for their clubs have manifestly failed. As the controlling interest, the responsibility for said failure is theirs and theirs alone. Both have reached the point where they no longer wish to be involved. Short has taken it on the chin and enabled his club to move on afresh. Dooshitalot is the polar opposite, an organism without merit, integrity and now stripped of all credibility. He doggedly hangs on in the delusion he is entitled to be reimbursed for his lunatic spending and systematic idiocy.
In spite of rd's catastrophic calumny and thanks only to literally 'the last men standing', he finds himself with an asset that someone might consider worthy of interest, even restoration. Said asset is still worth virtually nothing in cash terms. The balance sheet is ghastly, the financial performance has been horrifying. The only value is the dreaded 'potential'. Even on the sunniest day; 'potential' won't pay the bills, it won't recruit and retain players, managers, executives, anybody.
But what of logic, reason, sense? None of those resonate even slightly in the bungler's toxic pantomime.
Even the most desperate addicts and severely troubled souls occasionally have moments of clarity. Would that roly's septic synapses be thusly smitten.
1) They marketed to be big in Thailand with a Thai owner (don't know the effect Nigel Pearson's son had on that).
2) They are the exception that proves the rule. What they did was fantastic. But it's unlikely we'll see anything like it again in the near future, if not in our lifetimes.
Calling it debt is a conceit, it's an owner saying "I haven't blown all the money, I've lent it to the club, I'll get it back one day". In 99% of cases that's pure fantasy, you're not getting back, not even part of it in many cases.
It appears Short was paid some amount for the club. Guessing £30-50M. This probably covered what was owed to himself or close to it. And then it appears he paid off the entire amount to the bank, leaving the club debt free.
Most of that debt to the financial institution pre-dated his ownership. Clearing that debt was an honorable think to do given the double relegation under his tenure but still unheard of by owners on the way out the door. But it appears he really did do that.
They are now a debt free club.
Again, I'm skeptical, and his tenure hasn't been great, but if true its a good thing to do. I just suspect he did the math of what relegation has and will continue to cost and this way was cheaper. I know they have a couple more years of parachute payments but even in the Prem their wage bill was really high if memory serves.
Would love it if we picked up Joel Asoro the young Swede and Lynden Gooch the brilliantly named American from them. Suspect both might attract bigger offers though.
I'd imagine pretty much the entire squad is for sale, or free to have their contract cancelled should they wish to leave.
I know it is not as simple as that and he has done the honourable thing but I do get wound up with things like this. In my opinion this should be the way it is anyway. Buy a club and if you f### it up you pay up. Let the next one have a clean slate to work with.
Just my simple and humble opinion having no clue whatsoever about buying and selling anything more than a house and that was confusing enough.
A lot of contracts finally end this season and apparently 14 players at minimum will be sold/dropped. Then again, as parachute payments drop, it may offset those cost cutbacks.
I think the big threat for Sunderland now is they clearly have exceeded FFP loss limits for a few years and I wonder if a transfer embargo is in their future?
In League One, they can cut your spending in advance of your financials coming out, not after the fact like in The Championship and PL.