Mike Brown Owner Of Cincinnati Bengals is Gone……..
Over fifty years ago, Cincinnati welcomed the NFL thanks to the legendary coaching of Paul Brown. The family, including his granddaughter Katie and son Mike, is still focused on winning the big game.
Look no further than their owners to see the differences between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals, the two clubs vying for football immortality on Sunday.
The lavish SoFi Stadium that billionaire Stan Kroenke built for his club will host the Rams on Sunday. The Rams are the glittering $4.8 billion crown jewel of his $10.5 billion sports empire. One of the wealthiest men in sports, Kroenke owns the Denver Nuggets and Arsenal FC. His wife, Ann Walton, is an heir to the Walmart empire. The Bengals, on the other hand, are a family-run corporation, cofounded by legendary coach Paul Brown fifty years ago and closely managed by his 86-year-old son Mike, who is almost recognized outside of football. The Bengals are the NFL’s second-least valuable organization, valued at an estimated $2.3 billion.
“The Brown family has never been focused on making the most money as long as I’ve been around the league,” states Marc Ganis, head of Sportscorp, a consulting business that has worked with many NFL clubs and owners. “They have been committed to putting a quality product on the market and conducting business in a solid, professional manner.”
For a team that has been stuck in mediocrity for the most of its 54-season existence—making the postseason only 15 times and losing its two prior Super Bowl trips, in 1982 and 1989—even that benchmark has been difficult to meet. Since the Bengals haven’t won a postseason game since 1991, many angry supporters have directed their ire towards Brown over the years. However, the NFL’s rising popularity has increased revenue for all of its clubs and made the Brown family extremely wealthy; according to Forbes, their ownership part in the franchise is worth $2.1 billion.
Football has always been the family’s priority, win or lose. In 1967, franchise patriarch Paul Brown assisted in moving the team to Cincinnati. His middle son, Mike, a quarterback at Dartmouth and Harvard Law School alum, collaborated with him right away. The squad also included Mike’s brothers, Robin and Peter, who both died in 1978 and 2017, respectively. Other family members eventually joined. Katie Blackburn, the daughter of Mike, holds the position of executive vice president for the franchise and is the first female member of the NFL Competition Committee. Mike’s granddaughters, Elizabeth and Caroline Blackburn, as well as son Paul H. Brown and son-in-law Troy Blackburn, are employed by the Bengals. (The Browns choose not to be involved in this report.)
The football origins of the family go back considerably further. In the early years of the NFL, Paul Brown was a trailblazer and a great coach. The native of Ohio was a football player at Miami University, a 96-9-3 high school coach, the 1941 Ohio State head coach who won the national championship, and the 16-year general manager and head coach of the Cleveland Browns. Brown, who is the team’s literal namesake, guided the squad to three NFL titles in the 1950s. In 1963, Cleveland’s owner, Art Modell, sacked him.
