Instead of saying he’s throwing me out of the press box because he doesn’t have a seat for me, Steele was demanding that I actually use the seat last year – just so I wouldn’t have the pleasure of enjoying the game from my rightful seat in Section 513 with my wife. There is no benefit to me to do my job by being in the press box vs. my seat in our stadium. I see the game better in my seat. And I pay for it.
This spring it became very clear that Steele intended on having me thrown out of the press corps when I was “uninvited” to speak to Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti after flying to Florida to be a part of a press briefing at The Breakers during the annual NFL Owners Meetings, which I have attended every year for most of this century. This was to be the first time Bisciotti had made himself available to anyone in the media in nearly five years. I cared enough to fly to Florida for three days to ask the owner about his new team president, meet Sashi Brown and ask relevant questions about the direction of the franchise. I was credentialed by the NFL for the event, but I was disallowed to speak with Bisciotti as my competitors at ESPN and The Athletic (essentially The New York Times at this point) and The Baltimore Sun (owned by God-knows-who or what out-of-town vultures at this point) huddled with Bisciotti near the Atlantic Ocean. Turns out, I am the only truly local media entity left ready and educated enough (and supported by sponsors who support me flying to a Palm Beach resort) to ask legitimate questions of ownership. I was treated like my skin was the wrong color, and like I, nor my media organization, had never covered a Ravens game in my life. I was locked out of a media briefing that I flew a thousand miles to attend. I saw Jeff Zrebiec, Jamison Hensley and Jonas Shaffer and told them I was being locked out of the Bisciotti press briefing. They know what happened to me. And they know it’s wrong.
(Psssst. If they stand up for me, they’re next…see how this works?)
In Steele’s caste system, I didn’t rate the audience of King Bisciotti. As you can imagine, I took umbrage with this professional attack on me and my credibility but somehow Steele later told me that if Luke Jones were in Florida, he would’ve allowed Luke to ask Bisciotti questions because Luke actually “covers” the Ravens and I don’t, even though I employ him and own the company and was there representing WNST and Baltimore Positive.
(Folks, remember, it’s gaslighting: it’s not supposed to make sense!)
And, as Luke would tell you, when it comes to asking business or ownership questions, I’m the guy in that role in our company. I always have been, ever since I watched the Baltimore Colts slink out of town in 1984 and have needed to keep an eye on how the business of sports works for a community. You couldn’t be a legitimate Major League Baseball or Orioles fan and not understand contracts, salaries, unions, ownership and front office dealings when Camden Yards was being built and Cal Ripken was chasing Lou Gehrig. And when this city was chasing the impossible dream of ever having an NFL team again, understanding stadiums, bonds, politics and money were paramount. I also learned about the importance of sponsors, promotions and local media when I kept covering minor league hockey teams that folded and bars like Hammerjacks that went out of business. I have covered the civic demise of the Baltimore Orioles too well – so well that they threw me out, too, after 21 years of doing my job of covering the baseball team. I consider how much I pissed off Peter Angelos with absolute truth over the years, and it makes me proud because I was the only one with the balls and courage to ever stand up for what was right.
All of these are people are billionaires who haven’t EVER been told they are wrong in their lives – or certainly not in a long time.
8
I know Steve Bisciotti. He’s been in my home and in my company over the years. I know him well enough to have his phone number. We have exchanged several texts in recent years. Both times my wife was diagnosed with leukemia, I heard from him. We appreciated that. He heard from me with a random compliment after his Black Lives Matter video in June 2020 that he returned and acknowledged. When I have reached to him in the past, it’s always been cordial and mostly professional. You can watch any number of videos over the years of my chats with him. I spent an hour with him on the same veranda I was restricted from this spring a decade ago, discussing his love of the team, the city and his responsibility of being a steward of a community gem. He spent two hours on the phone with me when I was writing Purple Reign 2: Faith, Family and Football and later told me it had too many typos in the first edition. (And he was right! But luckily for you the whole book is on this site and nicely edited!)
I want to make this abundantly clear: I have always believed Steve Bisciotti to be honorable and decent. And certainly, like John Harbaugh, a man of God.
In March, when I was in a room with him for the first time since COVID at Palm Beach, I believed that he would have enough professional respect for me to hear my issues and to not allow Steele to throw me out of the first press briefing he’s held in five years and a thousand miles from home at a Florida resort. I never believed he’d sanction that behavior or allow that personal treatment of me and my organization. But he has – and he did.
That morning in March at The Breakers, I reached to Bisciotti via a lengthy, detailed text and quietly and professionally (and privately, because I am a grown up) voiced my concerns about the direction his public relations man was taking in regard to bullying me and denying my access and retaliating against me for reaching to Dick Cass for relief so that my wife and I could sit together during games and I could continue doing my job reporting on the team. I will be happy to share that text thread with anyone who wants to see what I wrote. I wrote the truth, exactly what I’m writing to you right now.
I don’t write things that I’m not proud of, because I am a professional.
Bisciotti immediately texted me back and indicated he wanted me to sit down with Dick Cass and Chad Steele in Owings Mills. I assured him that I would be further berated and spoken to like a farm animal. And the following week, that’s exactly what happened after the Liar’s Luncheon. Chad Steele called a wholly unprofessional, open air “sit down” with me in the middle of the cafeteria with every media member in the city on the other side of the room to berate me (over a meal that he began with an abrupt private prayer) and repeatedly shout at me over and over again that he’s not a bully, while making more stipulations and mandates about “ways to keep my credential” by being at practice more often, which I wholeheartedly agreed to participate in during the first non-COVID, open locker room, “maybe we can get some real work done and I can finally meet Calais Campbell and Patrick Queen” season in three years. Mark Viviano of WJZ accidentally walked in on me getting chastised, trying to say good-byes to a retiring Cass, who was sent “emeritus” by Bisciotti to referee the discussion about whether I’m a real media member and what I would need to do to keep my somehow “now shaky” media status in the future with Steele, who was destined to throw me out no matter what I did.
After 26 years of covering the team, this was my “public hearing” in the court of Steele and Cass, who was officially retired and had long-since washed his hands of my treatment by his tall, handsome power-forward soldier.
8Several times, Steele shouted, “Kevin is not here anymore; he’s gone!” at me, like somehow I had been on scholarship instead of working since 1996, and that Byrne somehow allowed me special access that I didn’t earn or deserve or warrant. All of it was insulting (honestly, I thought it was really disrespectful to Kevin), but even more so was how ham-handed all of it was from an accusatory standpoint. Steele was throwing out “transgressions” like sitting me with my wife for a final hour of a January football game in seats we had paid for as a reason to remove me. And then bringing up a selfie at Jimmy The Greek’s lambchop tailgate from 2019, where I held up an actual cold beer at 10:30 a.m. (You know, like a sane football fan in America having fun with his friends downtown. After my wife survived the second time, her pre-game rendezvous with her old workmate and the tailgate food was a highlight of her week.)
No, there’s zero shame in his game. It was a series of such pathetic reaches and thinly-veiled immature accusations. Everything I’d ever believed about him and the innate mojo of twenty years of mostly avoiding him proved to be prescient on my part. I suppose I’m a better “read” of people than I give myself credit for because this was one sorry performative act, the bullshit he was laying on me in front of Cass.
In the end, his weapon of choice was that I was guilty until proven innocent of not being around the team enough anymore to warrant a media credential. That was the newest charge Steele came up with: I didn’t attend enough practices during a plague when I had a serious back ailment and a L4/L5 spinal condition that kept me from functioning for most of six months. After I had sold off my tickets and promised to never sit in the seats again with my wife. Essentially, Steele was weaponizing my back injury against me, and then he accused me of being lazy, which forced me to laugh in his arrogant face. Of course, he had previously laughed in my face when I told him I was an asset to his press conferences because I asked questions fans wanted answers to after games – like whether it’s a good idea for the quarterback to run the ball 21 times in a game when they have to play in Miami four days later.
In late July, Steele said I didn’t attend enough OTA practices to warrant having access in August for training camp and that he wasn’t letting me into the building anymore. I told him his quarterback didn’t even attend the OTAs and spent more time on Twitter that week fighting with Chris Simms than he did at the facility.
As usual over the last 15 years, I attended one day of mandatory camp in June on the day when Lamar Jackson took the podium after skipping the previous two weeks of voluntary practice. I asked Lamar two significant questions about his future with the Ravens, including whether he wanted to be a Raven for life. Incidentally, I had been in Europe with the man who saved my wife’s life the previous two days and traveling home from Amsterdam. I was lucky to make that practice in June, and Luke Jones even sent me a text in Cologne earlier in the week saying that they were “saving” Lamar for me on the last day, when I could attend in Owings Mills. And I told Steele in April, when I sat with him and Cass, that I would be in Europe during that period. It was the only week of vacation my wife’s savior had in Germany. We had never met his wife. My trip had been booked for months.
It goes without saying that I should not be losing my press credential because of a back ailment or because I spent time in June with the man who saved my wife’s life.
(P.S. Gaslighting isn’t supposed to make sense.)
I attended a few Owings Mills events during the offseason – Sam Koch’s marvelous retirement departure and the sham welcoming press conference with new president Sashi Brown, where the folks who would be allowed questions that day were pre-selected before the event. I took four hours of my day to go to a press conference, and I wasn’t allowed to ask a question of the new leader of the franchise. This was after spending three days and a lot of money flying to Florida and being denied access to the owner.
This is the way Chad Steele is operating his public relations department. This is how the Baltimore Ravens “communicate” in 2022.
