“Steve (Bisciotti) is straightforward and that makes it easy. He’s not a prima donna. He’s direct. He’s upfront. If there’s something he doesn’t like, he tells you. If he feels strongly about something, he tells you. There’s no secret agenda. There’s nothing you have to discover. Steve is a great believer in direct communication and he runs the business that way.”
— Baltimore Ravens President Dick Cass (March 2013)
IN MANY CITIES IN AMERICA the owners of sports franchises can still somehow stay or hide in the shadow of their local investment and create nary a stir when they enter a room. Being anonymous has its privileges and benefits, a thought Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti would certainly echo. But in Baltimore, where the owners of the local professional teams have been true newsmakers and iconoclasts for the better part of a half a century, owning the NFL franchise that a community treats like family or a personal treasure can be like carrying the collective weight of the civic mood on your shoulders.
Bisciotti did his best to remain a private citizen after taking over the Ravens from Arthur B. Modell in early 2004, but you can’t be invested in the most significant sports soap opera in the community and stand at the top of the pyramid making the most important decisions for the fan base without becoming a public figure of the highest order.
If you are a sports fan from Baltimore, Maryland, you have endured your fair share of abuse. In the 1970’s, the Baltimore Bullets were dragged down I-95 to the Washington suburbs by owner Abe Pollin, professional hockey went into hibernation with the Clippers and there were strong whispers of the Orioles going to D.C. to replace the departed Washington Senators. It got no better in the 1980’s. There was always the ominous and omnipresent shadow of Robert Irsay, the man who acquired the Baltimore Colts from Carroll Rosenbloom in a swap for the Los Angeles Rams in 1972 and later moved them to Indianapolis in a convoy of Mayflower moving trucks in the middle of a snowy, teary night for the Charm City on March 28, 1984 after a decade of tyranny and threats to the community of the inevitable move.
Since the turn of the century, both the Washington Redskins and Baltimore Orioles fan bases’ have been tormented and tortured by disastrous moves on the field and big moves downward in the standings since the involvement of Daniel Snyder and Peter G. Angelos have fallen upon the I-95 corridor. These two have shined a bright light on what can go wrong when poor decisions are consistently being made from the top of the organization and how quickly decades of support for enduring brands can erode and deteriorate when fans and customers smell the stench of poor ownership.
The reality in the 21st century is that with the scarcity of teams available and the cost of buying a sports franchise for hundreds of millions of dollars, no one wants to pony up the kind of money to be an owner without having a strong desire to be heavily involved in strategy and a strong desire to win – whether it’s on the field or at the cash register. Many of these thrill seekers have lacked proper training, background and the feel for sports ownership especially with such a public light illuminating every decision that is made in real time on the internet. What sounds like fun in the beginning becomes an albatross and a public nuisance once it becomes apparent how specialized each league, sport and business is from an ownership standpoint.
8
It was no secret that Art Modell was struggling financially in Cleveland and those ghosts of burgeoning debt followed him east to Baltimore in 1996. By 1999, the NFL and his debtors with the banks demanded that he find a partner to buy the team and help him find the exit door with the class and dignity that his departure from Cleveland clearly lacked.
The same man who found Modell in Cleveland and brokered the deal for the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore in the Fall of 1995 was the same man who found a buyer four years later: local attorney and sports franchise expert John Moag. After Modell made the move to Baltimore, Moag became a trusted confidant and had all of the institutional knowledge that would be necessary to assist in finding a new owner for the Baltimore Ravens.
Moag knew Bisciotti and was privy to most of Modell’s financial struggles. The rest is history.
By any account, Steve Bisciotti is a sports nut. He’s long been a fiercely loyal University of Maryland supporter, close confidant of legendary Terps basketball head coach Gary Williams and a Ravens and Orioles season ticket holder at the time. At worst, he would’ve been a very educated sports radio talk show caller before he got involved in the purchase the Baltimore Ravens in 1999.
Bisciotti, born April 10, 1960 in Philadelphia, came to the Severna Park area of Anne Arundel County in 1961 when Bernard and Patricia Bisciotti moved from Philadelphia for Bernard’s new sales executive job. He was 8 years old when the Colts lost Super Bowl III to Joe Namath and the New York Jets. He was a huge Paul Blair fan during the heyday of the Earl Weaver-led Orioles in his adolescence. He journeyed with his friends up Richie Highway to Memorial Stadium in the 1970’s and loved the Bert Jones-era of the “Shake and Bake” Colts.
Bisciotti’s father died of leukemia when he was in elementary school leaving his sports-crazed widowed mother, who raised him by preaching faith, hard work, determination and manners. Nicknamed “Shots” by his college pals at Salisbury State, where he earned a Liberal Arts degree, Bisciotti became obsessed with making enough money by the age of 35 so that his wife and kids wouldn’t have to work if his father’s fate befell him. He had the early jobs of a kid who worked hard and learned the world: pumping gas, mowing lawns, and building piers in Anne Arundel County, where he graduated from Severna Park High School. He founded a staffing firm called Aerotek in his basement with $3,500 of seed money at age 23 during the Colts final season in Baltimore. He now owns a massive stake in Allegis Group, the nation’s largest staffing firm by sales (estimated at $5.5 billion annually). Like many figures in the story of the 2012 Baltimore Ravens, a whole book could be written about his everyman American success story that routinely puts him in the “Top 500 Most Wealthy Americans” lists by those who measure such stature.
At one pnt during his ascendance into massive personal wealth, Bisciotti dabbled with the notion of buying the Minnesota Vikings in 1998, but knew his family wouldn’t move to the Midwest, and he felt that it wouldn’t truly make him happy. It would’ve been a great investment. Red McCombs wound up making $350 million in profit by essentially flipping the team in the same deal that Bisciotti turned down.
8There was also a dalliance with owning the Florida (now Miami) Marlins, but the rules of baseball and the lack of payroll parity made him squeamish about the amount of losing his team would do on the field, and he ultimately thought he wouldn’t be truly happy owning a baseball team in Florida.
“When Moag came to me to present the Ravens deal I was actually shocked,” Bisciotti said. “I really thought Art was set after the move. Angelos bought the Orioles in ’93 and Modell came in ’96. I didn’t really see any way I’d ever have an option to own my hometown team.”
He was, at heart, not just a sports nut. He was a Baltimore sports nut. He was a guy who knew the entire history of the Orioles. A guy who remembered being on the field with Johnny Unitas as a kid in Westminster when the Baltimore Colts held training camp there in the 1960’s. He had the pictures on the walls of the den of his multi-million dollar home on the Severn River, almost as if those old players and memories were family members. And in 1999, he was mostly known as a regularly-seen, passionate fan on the court of every Maryland Terrapins men’s basketball home game as a donor and occasional hell raiser for the “Carolina referees” just a few feet from his friend Williams, who also knows a little about sports competition and fire.
“I would have bought the Maryland Terrapins,” Bisciotti once said jokingly to The Baltimore Sun, “but there is some kind of state law against that type of ownership.”
Bisciotti even admitted to a lifelong hatred of the Washington Redskins when he bought the team, a pre-requisite for his Baltimore fan “man card.”
But Bisciotti, as is his custom in any business negotiation, waited patiently and quietly and effectively negotiated a deal with the Modells that provided an influx of necessary cash that allowed the Ravens to compete in free agency in 1999 and 2000 and really aided and funded the Super Bowl XXXV win.
During the honeymoon and educational period of his apprenticeship in learning the business of the NFL from the Modell family from 1999 until 2003, Bisciotti once said: “Being rich is good. Being famous is not.”
8When he bought the initial 49% interest in 1999, he looked at it as an investment with an option. “I wasn’t really sure if I would love doing this,” Bisciotti said. “I had the option on the other 51% in 2004 so what’s the downside? I write a check, I own 49% and the team appreciates. I was going to exercise my option four years later no matter what. But the far downside was that if I really didn’t want to take over the team, I could buy it for $600 million and flip it for $700 million. I had four years to see if I liked it, to see if this business was for me.”
Bisciotti was very, very concerned about his privacy and his personal happiness. “The biggest decision that I had to overcome was whether I wanted to be a high profile person or not,” he said. “I had a wonderful life being a low profile person.”
Or as he told The Baltimore Sun early in his ownership: “I really have no interest in the notoriety,” he said after admitting that he had worked hard at keeping a low profile during all phases of his financial growth at Aerotek. “I would love to be the least-known NFL owner in the country.” Almost 15 years later, when you’re standing on the dais in New Orleans holding the Lombardi Trophy next to Ray Lewis, Joe Flacco and John Harbaugh, that’s become unrealistic.
The journey from wealthy fan in the stands with club seats and season tickets to the owner of the Baltimore Ravens hosting a parade for 250,000 is what makes this fairy tale even more magical than just the obvious journey of Ray Lewis or Joe Flacco or John Harbaugh. This Super Bowl XLVII championship is also a tremendous source of pride for the kid from Severna Park who just wanted to make enough money by the time he was 35 to protect his wife and kids.
And it’s not as much the fame, per se, that concerns most Baltimore Ravens fans, but simply the accountability of knowing who is behind the curtain, hiring and firing of head coaches, and moving training camp out of Westminster – two of the few times that matters have publicly fallen onto Bisciotti’s desk.
By all accounts, Bisciotti kept a very tight circle of friends from his life as a self-proclaimed “C student” at Salisbury State University. Everything about his background spoke of determination, hard work, high standards and incredible loyalty to his key employees who surrounded his core efficiency of being a master salesman with their own set of world-class skill sets. There was a “family” feel at the beginning of Aerotek because he founded the company with his cousin Jim Davis.
At every turn, and in every examination, over a decade of ownership of the Baltimore Ravens, he has essentially replicated his core model and brought foundational beliefs from the residue of his success in the billion dollar primary business. Bisciotti knew that stability would be the key. He knew there were key areas of expertise that he’d never be able to master – like football talent evaluation and marketing a billion dollar sports franchise. He knew enough to leave that to others in The Castle. He knew what he knew, and he knew what he didn’t know.
8He saw across the spectrum of the sports business that changing leadership at the top of the franchise would be detrimental. In his residency days of 1999-2003 he befriended Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones at the NFL owners meetings and picked the brain of Dan Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Robert Kraft of the New England, who all have had success on the field and with the growth of their brands and franchises. They also all have a reputation for stability in every facet of their organizations.
Meanwhile, at home in the local sports community he’s had a box seat watching the dubious decisions and cranky fan bases of the Washington Redskins and Baltimore Orioles. His NFL counterpart in D.C. is Daniel Snyder, who for years has been singled out by the burgundy and gold faithful as being too meddlesome and profit-centric in all aspects of the franchise after buying the team in 1999. Then there’s his parking lot neighbor to the north at Camden Yards, MLB owner Peter Angelos, whose Baltimore Orioles spent 14 consecutive summers from 1998 through 2011 playing meaningless baseball games in front of ever-dwindling crowds and waning interest before finally playing pennant race and postseason baseball in the early part of what became the Ravens’ championship run in the Fall of 2012. Bisciotti can’t help but look good when juxtaposed against these traditionally losing and obviously mismanaged outfits that compete for fans’ hearts and wallets throughout the sports calendar.
Bisciotti demanded an FAO Schwarz experience, and he was competing with the Island of Misfit Toys.
However, the Ravens’ annual relevance and postseason aspirations and successes have not come by accident.
Bisciotti has studied the way other owners have gone about their business. Clearly, he’s a brilliant man and a sponge for information. He’s spent 15 years amongst NFL owners and knows the challenges – publicly and behind the scenes – that his 31 partners have endured in their local markets for every charge from profiteering to leveraging municipalities for new stadia or for any malfeasance from losing games to not signing local football heroes. Hearing the roar from your fans is almost a tribute to how vested the community is regarding the team.
There’s only one “winner” every year in the NFL, and Bisciotti has said many times that the hardest adjustment to being a sports owner has been the public nature and dissection of every human transaction and the inability to win every year. Since he took over primary ownership from the Modells, Bisciotti’s franchise has earned a postseason berth in six of nine seasons and appeared in three AFC Championship Games and won one Super Bowl.
“The best part of the league is that it’s fair,” Bisciotti said. “We all spend the same amount of money on the field and on the talent. Then I think it does comes down to the talent you put in place to manage the business, like Dick (Cass) does, and then manage the football side like Ozzie (Newsome) does. We have a fighting chance, all the time. Our losses are our losses. And our wins are our wins. And it’s easier to accept failure when you’re in a fair fight and you shake hands in the middle of the ring and you salute the victor.”
8Much like in his other business he knew he needed strong people, great leadership and experts at every level of the Ravens who knew the industry of the NFL – politics, economics, marketing, television, legal, salary cap, local decisions, tickets, etc. – and Bisciotti knew that the Modells had assembled a very competent team aside from the obvious success that Newsome and his department had accomplished on the football operations side of the enterprise.
Bisciotti knew that he couldn’t hire or acquire talented people and then overrule them. “You’re fighting a losing battle if you’re questioning people who have more knowledge than you do,” he has said on more than one occasion to the media.
With Art Modell selling the team it was apparent that David Modell would be leaving the Ravens upon the family exit in 2004. Bisciotti, using his five years of research and contacts within the NFL, had known for quite some time that he wanted Richard “Dick” Cass, a Washington, D.C. attorney who got his start in the NFL when he represented Jerry Jones during his acquisition of the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, to lead the Ravens. Cass was deeply rooted in almost every aspect of the league’s interests and had been involved in two franchise transactions in his home state of Maryland: he represented the estate of Jack Kent Cooke in the sale of the Washington Redskins to Daniel Snyder and oversaw Biscotti’s purchase of 49-percent share of the Ravens in 1999. When Biscotti became the majority owner of the Ravens in 2004, he installed Cass as the President of the franchise.
Cass, who played freshman football and rugby at Princeton and later attended law school at Yale, had seen over his two decades near the league just how different the NFL was from most businesses because of the public scrutiny it endures and the community pride it can inspire. And from the legal side, and his work in the collective bargaining space beginning in 1992, his vast experience gave him great insight into league matters that sometimes confused the “C student” in Bisciotti.
Routinely at the early owners’ meetings then-Commissioner Paul Tagliabue would have “one per team” roundtables and it was quietly expected that these two-hour summits were just the 32 primary owners. Bisciotti, however, would insist that Cass be in the room instead of him because — as his is his leadership style and ideology — he wanted the most effective person to be in the room when the most complex issues were being discussed and a vote from the Ravens was needed to pass new rules or by laws. Eventually under Commissioner Roger Goodell many of those affairs became “two per team” summits.
And while most traditional companies in any business space in our society operate solely from a bottom-line profit center as a barometer of success, the Ravens’ mantra is far different. Cass and Bisciotti concur that the Ravens are more of a community trust than a traditional business.
“We don’t run the Ravens to maximize profit,” Cass once told The Baltimore Business Journal. “We run the Ravens to win football games.”
8Cass had spent a lifetime in the world of corporate law in Washington, D.C. and had been with the same firm, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, for 31 years and became a partner there in 1979. His was a life of a world-class attorney serving as the chairman of the firm’s Business Transactions Section and a member of its Management Committee. His initial work was as a general corporate and securities practice, representing companies and entrepreneurs in complex corporate partnership and securities transactions. When Jerry Jones was interested in purchasing the Dallas Cowboys in 1988 Cass advised Jones on a variety of matters, including sponsorship contracts, the CBA and salary cap, broadcast arrangements, internet policies, stadium financing, estate planning, local broadcast partnerships and the NFL substance abuse programs. He served as an NBA counsel when the Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans in 2002 and also worked with the U.S. Olympic Committee in 2003.
It is very difficult to find a more qualified leader in the league and when Tagliabue stepped down as Commissioner of the NFL in 2006, Cass was mentioned as a candidate for that post until he withdrew his name very early in the process because he was committed to the Ravens and happy being in Baltimore working for Bisciotti.
Then in 2007 with the Ravens in the midst of a nine-game losing streak, Cass was consulted on the temperature of moving forward with head coach Brian Billick and was a key part of the search committee that landed John Harbaugh in early 2008.
Clearly, Bisciotti felt as though he and the franchise were in their element in being prepared to hire a head coach even after the initial offer to Jason Garrett was turned down. “I told Ron Shapiro and my wife, ‘We had a good third choice as well,’ ” Biscotti said at the time.
“It’s tough to hire because it’s so public,” Bisciotti said. “It’s not because intellectually it’s over my head or emotionally over my head. Doing something in public like this — having to fire a friend and then pass on other quality candidates is not easy. In my (other) organization we don’t parade around the ones who don’t get the promotion to Executive Vice President. They’re worthy or they wouldn’t get the interview, and I have to pick one. And I feel sorry for the ones who don’t get the job and that’s what makes it hard on me. I have to live with my decision. No matter what I do, I’m going to disappoint people in my decisions.”
Therein lies the constant double-edged sword and the rush that comes with owning and operating the Ravens – everything is up for public debate and by-and-large the public knows less than anyone about what’s really happening inside the framework of the franchise. Generally, the media sets the barometer and gauge for the public conversation and most of the scribes who hang around the locker room wouldn’t have the first clue about running a lemonade stand let alone the decisions being made with a $300 million per year organization with a network of revenue streams, media and business partners that’s a tangled web of influence, hospitality, and intense passion and scrutiny.
Clearly, when Bisciotti and his seven-person selection committee turned the team over to Harbaugh, there were many questions in regard to his “outside-the-box” thinking and hiring of a career special teams coordinator. Bisciotti stayed open-minded and eventually gravitated toward the outlier pick in Harbaugh, who he bonded with spiritually as well as in ideology and vision for the franchise.
8“What I kept getting from people around the game who knew the game was, ‘Don’t underestimate the value of a special teams coach. He understands every aspect of the game.’ Why special teams guys don’t get more attention, I’m not sure? You’d have to ask the other owners. It certainly peaked my interest when Belichick is taking note of it.
“I’m a glass half-full person. Things happen for a reason. I really believe that. If (Harbaugh) turned me down, I’d be down to my 3rd choice. I believe the six coaches we interviewed could’ve all helped us get to where we wanted to go.”
The same system and ideology that built Bisciotti’s business at Aerotek has made the Ravens successful over the first decade of his ownership: picking qualified, motivated people, building teams, and demanding accountability and growth.
Bisciotti has always been reasonable regarding consistent expectations for the franchise on the field and has become more understanding that wind blows in many directions as wins and losses occur each week in the public forum. The group dynamics and tribal mentality of the fan bases in the NFL are strange and somewhat unique in his new business and made even stronger in an age when every word, decision, rumor or non-action becomes fodder for Facebook and Twitter. It all plays in real time now as fans have a live barstool to the world in between every play, every Sunday. And then much like in the political realm, there is never-ending criticism and over analysis of every aspect of the NFL the remainder of the week until the gladiators report for combat on the seven-day life cycle. And it’s increasingly unkind in the era of social media with manufactured outrage and conversation over the more trivial items on and off the field and the players are now exposed and involved in the conversation.
But it’s this never-ending conversation and fascination with all aspects of the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL that fuels the business and makes it a billion dollar property. Fame, criticism and a vested fan base just come as the residue of the power of the brand and the spoils of success on the field.
Bisciotti acknowledged this reality when speaking to the media immediately following the hire of Harbaugh and his lofty hopes and dreams for his first NFL head coaching hire as a “Hall of Fame” hopeful.
“I don’t think it’ll put added pressure on him,” Bisciotti said. “You don’t get into this business as a head coach without dreaming of being in the Hall of Fame. No player plays without dreaming of going there. That’s not going to hinder his development, and I hope it doesn’t raise your expectations because you don’t get to the Hall of Fame in a year or two or three. I just hope our fans are kind to him. I hope the local media treats him as if he were your brother. Give him a break – it’s high pressure, high profile. For everyone of you – if it were your brother or your brother-in-law — you’d want to give him benefit of the doubt and give it a chance.”
8Again, family rolled off the tongue of Bisciotti. He also spoke of the “family” side of his ideology with the Ravens fans that’s consistent with his message when prodded about what Art Modell would think of John Harbaugh:
“Art’s going to say, ‘Trust the people around you,’ ” Bisciotti. “He preached, ‘Just get good people around you.’ Art has constantly done it and he knows the game – surround yourself with quality people if you want to be successful. And treat them like family.”
When Bisciotti talked to John Harbaugh about being his head coach, the conversation barely touched on football-related decisions. “I had different things to talk about than my football guys,” Bisciotti said. “We talked about leadership. We talked about strategies and how he views situations of leadership and how he handles different situations. That’s what I focused most of my one-on-one time with him on.”
Harbaugh is quick to answer his favorite lesson from the Bisciotti school of management over his first five years:
“From a business standpoint, he’s taught me that you must manage and plan for downside,” Harbaugh said. “Times will not always be good, so build downside into every decision.”
Certainly, the Ravens moving on after Super Bowl XLVII can only prepare for the downside because when you’re atop the 32 teams in the NFL – remember all aspects of the enterprise can be construed as “not for long” – changes moving forward are inevitable. Players will change. Salaries will change. The draft will bring a new crop of young Ravens. Hall of Famer Ed Reed will play the 2013 season for the Houston Texans. And the Ravens will adjust to life after Ray Lewis.
Perhaps Bisciotti’s most impressive management of a relationship over his tenure has been that with his star linebacker, who hit the open market as a free agent in 2009 upon the advice of his owner. Once again, Bisciotti was pragmatic in analyzing all aspects of Lewis’ decision and desires. It was an all-too-familiar refrain. A legendary NFL player winds up in another jersey at the end of his career because the salary cap number and the team’s ability to justify it often becomes an inevitable ticket to a semi-tarnished or diminished perception by the player moving on to a strange town. There, he’s a 30-something mercenary trying to win another ring someplace where it wouldn’t have the same value or meaning as his original home. Bisciotti did not want Ray to take his decision lightly.
8The Ravens fan base is a bit spoiled in that regard having seen Jon Ogden and Peter Boulware play solely in purple. But, conversely, Matt Stover kicked in a Super Bowl for the Indianapolis Colts and later beloved Todd Heap was cut in 2011 due to age and the team’s drafting of younger, replacement players. There’s a life cycle to every football career and in 2009, Ray Lewis and the Ravens were both assessing the value of staying married through the December of his career.
Like his monumental decision to hire John Harbaugh just 11 months earlier, he would now be publicly negotiating with the most beloved public figure in Baltimore and the Ravens were put in that awkward position of retaining a future Hall of Famer and a guy who had been the lifeblood of the organization from its inception. From the initial 1996 team through his trials and tribulations and the 2001 Super Bowl MVP in the most glorious night in franchise history, Ray Lewis had been the one constant in the franchise and the city’s favorite son.
Clearly, there was less tread left on his tires after his 12th season and third contract in the NFL. At every turn, the Ravens were as respectful as any franchise could be in discussing the value of Ray Lewis and what it would mean for him and the franchise to walk the remaining steps in what had been a glorious lifetime marriage for them both through the first dozen years.
Ray Lewis found an embryo of a franchise in 1996. By January 2009, he had become the oak of the community, the most famous man in the state and a first-ballot Hall of Famer that every fan knew was obsessed with having one more chance to win a Super Bowl.
Had Lewis bought into rookie coach Harbaugh and rookie quarterback Flacco and the Ravens moving forward just weeks after losing in the AFC Championship game in Pittsburgh?
Rumors swirled. The Dallas Cowboys were interested. The New York Jets had just hired Rex Ryan as their new head coach. Could Ray Lewis be wearing No. 52 in green in the biggest city in the sports world? Is that the way it was going to end?
Bisciotti was the one person in charge to make sure that his open communication style was understood and reciprocated by Lewis. Bisciotti had developed a personal relationship with Lewis that saw them courtside together at Maryland basketball games, on the sidelines laughing like old pals and news spread of them spending time together in Florida where they both keep primary homes within a few hours of each other. Bisciotti felt like he and Ray Lewis had a trust and a responsibility to try to make the relationship continue until the end of his career.
8Bisciotti always deferred to Newsome to put a price on the playing value of Ray Lewis, aging 32-year old middle linebacker. But what Bisciotti knew was that a player like Ray Lewis was only going to come along once in a generation – and only if the Ravens were lucky, that would happen in the way it did with Lewis who is the only star the Baltimore fan base has ever known. And this was this generation’s answer to Johnny Unitas or Cal Ripken – an iconic figure who was one decision away from playing the remaining days of his NFL road in a purple uniform and leaving the game with a far different legacy than becoming the latest mercenary or aging veteran to take a few dollars to move elsewhere.
“There’s always going to some owner out there who wants a player,” Bisciotti said. “If someone needs a player like Ray Lewis to provide leadership, it’s probably going to be a place that Ray Lewis doesn’t want to play, if that makes sense. You can’t buy leadership.
“Ray’s either going to want to stay a Baltimore Raven or he’s not. We’re not going to be offering him less than anyone else. The money will be the same. But we won’t be irresponsible and worry about it 3 or 4 years from now. We’re either going to come to a good agreement or not. I want Ray to look at what he wants to do. I’m not going to sign him to six-year deal and he only wants to play two years and we eat dead money (against the salary cap). If he really wants to go, well, I just don’t see that happening.”
Bisciotti, at that point, reiterated a phrase that is simple in translation: “You don’t want people who don’t want to be here.”
In the end, Ray Lewis really did want to be in Baltimore. He sought counsel from everyone in his vast community and said he prayed for the right answer. And despite all of the rumors of New York and Dallas, Ray Lewis never visited any other city, never turned the negotiations into a circus and when the dust settled, he was on a dais with Bisciotti, Newsome, and Harbaugh signing a deal to remain the rest of his career with the Baltimore Ravens.
“I remember talking to Ray and talking extension during the (2008) season and I said to Ray, ‘You should wait. I want you to be happy.’” Bisciotti said. “I thought if we went 5-11 that Ray might go somewhere else. I’m happy we produced team that made him feel like he could win a championship here.”
Once again, Bisciotti managed to keep the top leadership person in his organization by retaining Ray Lewis. And once again, Newsome could also look Bisciotti in the eye and know that the Ravens still got a fair price for Lewis vs. the salary cap and his added value far outweighed parting ways.
8Like most in the Ravens organization, Bisciotti marvels at Newsome’s almost savant-like ability to predict, obtain, and manage football talent over 17 years in Baltimore.
“I’m lucky that I got to watch him for four years as a minority owner to see that what I had in him was a brilliant mind and a small ego,” Bisciotti said. “That’s the best you can ever have – smart and not egotistical. It’s a great combo, talent and humility.
And in regard to his work ethic and his long-ago performed, but not quite forgotten, life as a Hall of Fame tight end as a football player, Bisciotti still shakes his head. “Dan Marino lasted three weeks doing the same job. He accepted the job and then said, ‘I’m done. This is too much work.’ Hey, I wouldn’t want to do that job. I don’t want to work the hours it takes. Ozzie is dedicated to 70 hours a week doing this and no one in the world is better at doing it. Trust me, I would be a hindrance, not a help (with football personnel advice). I have a firm idea what my level of participation should be. I want to contribute. I want them to say ‘he helps us’ but that’s it.”
Without question the most tension during Bisciotti’s ownership was the summer of 2011 when the NFL’s labor unrest started simmering and the reality of the impact this was having on the structure of doing business for the Baltimore Ravens.
Cass had two decades of experience in dealing with collective bargaining with the NFL Players Association and was a constant source of top-level information for Bisciotti as well as Goodell.
Perhaps the most significant global occurrence for the NFL – and much underappreciated by fans – was the labor unrest during the summer of 2011. It speaks to the respect Cass has throughout the league that he was a crucial voice and insider with Roger Goodell’s committee during the very public and ugly side of the 11th hour negotiations. Cass, along with Newsome’s voice as a former player, Hall of Famer and personnel expert, makes the Ravens presence in league circles as strong as any of the 32 teams. And once again, it’s that stability that makes it possible with two men with more than 50 years of their lives’ work with the sport and the NFL on virtually every issue imaginable.
And as much as the Ravens’ focus is on winning football games and Super Bowls in Baltimore, the business side of their offseason has been maximized on the local side as well. Cass has also been integral in bringing world-class soccer games, championship lacrosse and major concerts like U2, Kenny Chesney, Justin Timberlake and Jay Z to M&T Bank Stadium. All of the facility upgrades in Owings Mills, stadium upgrades downtown and business opportunities for the Baltimore Ravens have also hit Cass’ desk since 2004.
8The Under Armour Performance Facility that was erected in Northwest Baltimore County remains the jewel of the NFL with state-of-the-art everything to train and build a Super Bowl winning team. It is a stellar tool to recruit NFL free agent players and speaks to the seriousness and premium that is placed on “winning” in Owings Mills. It is very hard for any player to come to the facility for the first time and not want to make it a place they come to work every day.
The facility is so nice that it created the biggest public relations fiasco of their stewardship, and the story didn’t have a happy ending for Carroll County or the town of Westminster that had hosted the Ravens training camp beginning in 1996 – and had been a host of Colts camps in the 1950s & 1960s. In 2012, the Ravens announced that they were moving summer camp from its historical roots back to The Castle.
This was an issue that publicly seemed to get pointed at Bisciotti simply because he was the final decision maker in the eyes of the fans. And strangely enough, he was perhaps the only proponent in his entire organization for keeping the practices in Westminster, a place he found far more romantic than any of the others who functioned differently in preparing for a football season.
Perhaps the biggest public relations hit he and the franchise have taken during his tenure came as a residual fallout of the NFL and NFL Players Association labor dispute in the summer of 2011 when the Ravens were forced to cancel their annual training camp stay in Westminster.
Westminster, just 35 minutes northwest of Baltimore in bucolic Carroll County provided one of the most stunning backdrops for a sports mini-camp terrain in the country. It had everything the Ravens and Modells could’ve wanted in 1996 when they made it their early August home. There was a sense of history – the Baltimore Colts held the same-style of training camp during the halcyon days of the 1950’s and 1960’s before moving to Goucher College. The Ravens also considered Goucher, Towson, and other area schools closer to Baltimore, but the Modells inevitably chose Westminster and then-Western Maryland College (renamed McDaniel College in 2002) to be an easy-to-reach destination for fans who wanted to get close to the team and experience the view of an NFL team working toward its goals. It was a throwback setting amongst trees, open fields on a college campus and the blazing sun. And once the fans reached Westminster, they were treated to sidelines located just a few feet away action in the heat, watching legends like Ray Lewis, Jon Ogden, Rod Woodson, Shannon Sharpe and Deion Sanders run routes and sweat almost at their feet. The Ravens, under Brian Billick, made it a traditional end-of-practice practice to sign autograph and take pictures with the fans. And every year it grew larger it seemed with more families, a children’s fun zone and a rite of summer for many Ravens fans in Maryland. And when practice was over, families journeyed to nearby Baugher’s for homemade ice cream and blueberry pies. It was the best of summer traditions for many families.
Perhaps the biggest fan of the Westminster setting was Bisciotti, himself, who once fondly met Baltimore Colts Hall of Famer Johnny Unitas on that same practice field in the 1960’s when he was a boy and has said it helped shaped his love of football for a lifetime that led him on the path to owning the Ravens.
In 2011 when the labor negotiations essentially shut down in May, the Ravens needed to inform everyone in Carroll County and Westminster whether or not camp would be canceled. Clearly, Bisciotti and Cass were handcuffed on the issue and as the war drums were booming on both sides of the NFL revenue pie, the team informed Westminster that they wouldn’t be coming in August 2011.
8After a protracted labor war all summer, the Ravens and the other 31 NFL teams had an almost normal scale of training camp in 2011 and the team quickly found out the advantages to having training camp in their own 200,000-square foot, $20 million facility that was built for the express purpose of housing, training and improving football players. Multiple fields – indoor, outdoor and improved facilities that was designed to win football games and give players the best chance to compete and improve.
In the spring of 2012 the Ravens were once again being pressed by Carroll County, Westminster and their own fan base about whether the team would be coming back to McDaniel College and after a long, internal debate the team opted to put an end to its era of open practices in August. Clearly, this created quite a bit of upheaval amongst the tens of thousands of fans – many of them who didn’t have PSL’s or the economic wherewithal to buy tickets during the season.
As a peace offering – and because it was the right thing to do – the Ravens selected three dates for practice scrimmages in the summer of 2012 and wound up having huge events in Baltimore, Annapolis (at Navy’s Marine Corps Stadium), and in Owings Mills at Stevenson University, where a gigantic field sits on what was formerly the Colts and then Ravens complex on Owings Mills Blvd.
For many fans, Bisciotti wore the bulls eye as the protagonist to move training camp from Westminster back to Owings Mills permanently. The reality from inside the organization was the polar opposite. It was Bisciotti who fought and who lobbied his entire organization to find a way to make a return to Westminster a reality, but once again his open communication style found a swell of resistance from virtually every department in his building and for a myriad of reasons.
First and foremost, the team doesn’t practice and sweat in August for the approval of the fans. Head coach John Harbaugh and all of the football personnel were adamant that the prime reason to have a training camp is to prepare to win football games. And there’s nowhere to better prepare for a season than in a complex that’s wholly built to support that goal.
On the business end, the Ravens made a nominal amount of revenue from training camp in Westminster via sponsors plus some product and concession sales on site at McDaniel College. The Ravens would “lose” money by not holding camp in Carroll County, but it wasn’t enough revenue to offset the other logistical, tactical and practical matters that affected virtually everyone inside the organization during the ramp up to playing football games in early September.
Then there was the issue of the newly negotiated collective bargaining agreement that severely restricted the ability of coaches to get field time. The NFLPA didn’t win a lot of battles or concessions in their nasty 2011 war with the owners, but less practice was a theme of their victory and this mandate of no more than 14 padded practices during summer camp eliminated the traditional afternoon session, affectionately known as “two a days.”
8No NFL head coach or staff would want to have practices eliminated by thunderstorms or foul weather of any kind, but the Ravens continued to debate the merits – pros and cons – of returning to Westminster and other than appeasing the fans, no one in the building could make an argument that it was in the best interests of the team or their ultimate goal of winning a championship.
Sleeping on tiny, old beds in a two-star hotel in Westminster sounded sexy, but it wasn’t conducive to the proper rest for the athletes. The fields and locker rooms were built to house a Division III football team, not an NFL franchise. Many were angered when Terrell Suggs suffered a slight injury in 2010 after slipping on the wet Bair Stadium field.
In addition, virtually every piece of furniture, video equipment, training equipment and football gear would all be transported annually, causing a manpower and mobility issue for the franchise. Then, while in Westminster, many times it was difficult to make wireless equipment and cell phones work with inadequate connectivity into what is essentially a pasture the other 11 months of the year.
“The only reason to do it was the fans and for Carroll County,” Cass said. “Steve remembered it so fondly as a boy and it was paramount to him. We tried to find a way, but in the end we just couldn’t do it. And really, there’s no way to replicate Westminster. It was special place for the fans and for the players to touch the fans.”
Bisciotti was even more contrite: “Dick was in the middle,” he said. “He understood the logistics were becoming prohibitive. There was the history, the fans, the interaction. And I loved all of it.
“Moving it was an assault on our brand and Dick cared about me. I knew this would come back to me and we didn’t want this to be construed as insensitive to the fans. I knew it was becoming a logistical nightmare. The CBA changed how much they could practice. If there hadn’t have been a lockout, we might still be in Westminster today. They wouldn’t have been able to prove to me that they it was better for the team to be in Owings Mills. Even when I saw it with my own eyes, I still didn’t want to do it. I thought the pain was worth the tradition. But deep down, I knew it was not good a business decision.”
But, as he’s said many times, you take the good with the bad when you own an NFL team. Not every decision will make the fans happy, but in the end the No. 1 reason given was for competitive reasons and to make the team on the field as good as it can be.
8Just six months after dealing with a heap of fan complaints about the team not practicing in Westminster, Harbaugh and the Ravens won Super Bowl XLVII.
With the big-time expenditure comes the expectation to also be profitable amidst rising costs and a sea of competition. There are few other parallels to look to when judging the NFL’s meteoric growth over the past 25 years vs. any other industry – sports or otherwise – in America. It seems that there’s no end to the thirst for the product and the passion continues to grow.
From a business platform, the Baltimore Ravens were the last franchise to arrive in the East Coast corridor by almost 50 years and are squeezed into a small hole in the map of the USA and all of the same reasons the expansion committees of Paul Tagliabue in the early 1990’s didn’t like Baltimore as a prime destination still exist today.
But, somehow, Baltimore was different, with its rich heritage in the NFL via support for the Colts, the rare taste of having had a substantial franchise disappear from the community from 1984 through 1995 and the success on the field has transcended. It’s almost a modern-day Green Bay Packers story in one sense when you consider the small geographic and demographic availability of sports fans physically near Baltimore.
Drive 15 miles south of the Inner Harbor and you’re in prime Washington Redskins country in Howard County. Drive an hour west on I-70 past a Redskins-dominated Frederick toward Hagerstown and it’s Steelers Country. Drive just over the Susquehanna River into Cecil County on I-95 and you’ll start seeing Philadelphia Eagles gear and flags. Meanwhile the Eastern Shore of Maryland is a virtual melting pot of all of the above.
The Baltimore Ravens really can’t “grow” much beyond the smallest of land masses. They must now serve the fans they have and hope that winning breeds a geographic sprawl into neighboring states and across the USA and the world as the regional flavor of the franchise as a local obsession and constant interest soars. Winning is a big part of that.
One way Cass has fought to grow the Ravens base seems very simplistic and common sense in its approach, but it’s also one of the many issues inherent in being the last team into the marketplace after 50 years of entrenched football in Washington, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The local cable television market in Washington, D.C. doesn’t carry Baltimore local stations, and when the Ravens play on the same day or the same time as the Redskins, anyone who wants to watch the Ravens is left out. Cass worked very hard to change that because the Ravens believe that a Baltimore kid who is going to college 40 miles away in College Park should be able to get the game on television via his dorm.
8Of course, the biggest challenge for Cass, Bisciotti, and the entire business of the NFL in the future will be the distribution of digital content and how mobile devices will increase demand for live action that falls outside the boundary of traditional television. All of the media that used to be considered “shoulder programming” is now “exclusive content” and the boundaries of privacy, strategy, and profit will all continue to collide inside franchises and at the league level with the NFL’s insistence on making the NFL Network a viable entity and an offseason destination for information.
But make no mistake about Bisciotti’s intentions. As much as it’s fun to be involved in owning an NFL franchise, he wants to win. Badly. And he knows that’s the real barometer for growing the Ravens fan base and ability to remain profitable — along with being good citizens as well. Moving into his second decade as President, Cass had his eyes set on ways to grow the Ravens brand and keep focus on serving the fans an experience beyond just what happens on Sunday.
But there are many issues and demands that fall on Cass’ desk on behalf of Bisciotti.
The profound impact of concussions on the NFL and pending litigation is something that Cass thinks about often. New ways to leverage the changing media environment and ways to keep the stadium filled on Sundays. For many fans, watching the NFL at home in their family caves with HD television, cheaper beer, food, and a quality experience from the networks and the league, makes not going to the game a more attractive option for many. Cass has spoken at length on that topic and the threat it poses to the league. Imagine that? The product being so good on TV that no one would want to come to the games? Believe it or not, in 2013, it’s among the biggest concerns the NFL owners have each season – selling tickets in many markets like Jacksonville, Miami, Arizona, San Diego and other good weather areas where there are plenty of other distractions on a sunny Sunday. Plus, it’s clear the NFL wants a team in Los Angeles sooner than later.
But despite the global issues that concern Bisciotti and Cass at the league level, it’s the team inside The Castle in Owings Mills that they are most responsible for on a daily basis.
“Team building is what we do here,” Harbaugh said. “That’s what we’re about, and we work on it every day. Steve [Bisciotti] is a big part of this. He is enormous with the advice he gives us in this area. His brilliance is in understanding people. He ‘gets’ people, how to get to know people better, how important we all are to each other. He’s outstanding at connecting people, making sure we communicate in different ways, making sure we work well together. When you talk with him, you find ‘ah-hah’ moments that direct you to another way of looking at something.”
And as hands on as a guy who spent almost $600 million in cash acquiring the team should be, he’s involved enough to be effective and does his best to not allow the courtside fan in him to come out in the management of the Ravens. On the football and personnel end, he learned early regarding leaving football thoughts to football people.
8Bisciotti loves to recall the 2002 NFL Draft when he was still studying the strategy Newsome was using in selecting players and what the ideology would be in weighing positions and War Room value.
The Ravens had the 24th pick in the draft, and as the pick grew closer it became clear that the team’s needs in the secondary following the departure of standout performers Rod Woodson, Duane Starks, and Kim Herring would warrant using the pick on the top corner or safety on Newsome’s board. The top two targets were cornerback Lito Sheppard from Florida and safety Ed Reed from Miami.
Bisciotti said to Newsome: “I don’t understand this. If they both have the same grade, why would you not take a corner over a safety? It seems like that’s a more important position.”
Newsome said: “Because I am true to my board.”
Newsome selected future Hall of Famer and Super Bowl XLVII champion Ed Reed, and Bisciotti learned why Ozzie is Ozzie.
Bisciotti relies on Newsome to run the football side of the building and Cass and Vice President of Community and Public Relations Kevin Byrne on most of the business dealings of the franchise.
After the Super Bowl XLVII victory, Bisciotti proudly pointed to the hiring of Harbaugh as the only key decision he was directly involved in and says it’s also been the best decision of his mostly-peaceful tenure as Ravens’ owner.
8“It’s easy to run it,” he said. “It doesn’t require a lot of my time. I have talented people, and it goes fairly smooth for me.”
He says the worst part of the job is the inevitable turnover of people and talent on the field. The salary cap coupled with the inevitable aging process and the speed and youth of the game always churns through players as numbers to some degree, and Bisciotti said it’s a high-wire act on emotions just like it is for the fans. “The joy is always coupled with the heartache,” he said. “It’s inevitable in a business where you lose games and you lose people. You accept the lows with the highs. But I love the highs.
“Losing these guys every year is tough. I talked to Todd Heap recently, and he was going to Pebble Beach and wanted to get on a certain course and he called me. We ended up speaking for 20 minutes. I hadn’t talked to him since Arizona came to Baltimore last year, and we talked when he was released (in 2011). He was a joy to talk to for 20 minutes and my wife said, “I love him.” You miss these people and these guys are all professionals. They know it’s a business. They know if I could spend the money and keep them all, I would. But you can’t – that damned salary cap.”
Once again, it’s those relationships that reward Bisciotti.
“What we built is what Steve wants,” Harbaugh said. “He wants relationships. In the NFL, it’s anti-relationship in a lot of ways because everyone is competing. It’s more business than getting to know people. You don’t get too close to people because it’s transient by its nature. But I always thought I was good at it – making friends and keeping friends. He taught me that I wasn’t as good at it as I thought and I thought that was a strength of mine when I left Philly. Really, I had so far to go and I’m still trying to get better.”
Ozzie Newsome on Bisciotti: “No. 1, he is a very humble person. He’s not afraid to challenge the issues, but he’s a very good listener. I tell you what, he has some unbelievable insight when you have a chance to sit and talk with him. I’ve had a chance to watch him grow. I talked to a lot of the other GMs in our business, and they always say that Steve (Bisciotti) had it done the right way. He was able to come in to be a minority owner to learn and watch and then become an owner. Some of these other guys aren’t having the opportunity, so therefore they make a lot of mistakes. I don’t know if there is a more humble, honest, sometimes fiery, guy then Steve Bisciotti. He enjoys it, but he also believes one thing – that he hires people to do their job. And then he lets them do their job.”
Being even-keeled is so important for an owner with the microscope of public opinion always percolating. Being steady is being smart. Fans tend to fly off the handle and make no mistake about it Steve Bisciotti is, at heart, a super fan. He was a vested, passionate, season ticket holder before he was an NFL franchise owner. Ask anyone who ever watched him blister the College Park floor at a Maryland Terps game and you’d see there’s plenty of fire for victory and competition from Steve Bisciotti. But he also knows he can’t be the owner flying off the handle.
8And sometimes being the leader isn’t always being a nice guy and making decisions that are judged by NFL fans won’t always win in the court of public perception or popularity.
Bisciotti, it’s quite clear, is a new age owner who reads the temperature of his fan base on the internet more than most. In January 2011, less than 72 hours removed from a brutal second-round playoff loss in Pittsburgh after squandering a 21-7 halftime lead, Bisciotti gave one of the more legendary press conference stand-up acts in Baltimore sports history.
Not only did he acknowledge hearing the fans complaints and frustrations with not going to the Super Bowl in the third consecutive trip to the playoffs under the Harbaugh/Flacco era. He also pledged a 100% effort from his staff and a commitment to winning every year and making Baltimore proud.
“You all (in the media) are accurate when assessing the team and so are our fans. They’re committed and they’re knowledgeable. We’re trying to put a good product on the field for you and it requires all of our employees here who give their heart and soul to it.”
Bisciotti said that he read 30 minutes worth of suggestions, observations and complaints in the ensuing hours after the sudden end to the Ravens’ Super Bowl hopes for Dallas.
He then itemized the “recommendations”:
“Re-sign Ngata, Bulger, Wilson, Koch, Cundiff, McClain, Yanda, Carr and T.J. Change the offense. Sign or draft a big left tackle and a fast wide receiver. Get a big shutdown corner and a dominant edge rusher for the defense. Get faster players. Get smarter players. Get more veterans, but get younger. Fire Ozzie, Cam, Mattison and Flacco. And don’t be a tool, Bisciotti — or ‘Biscotti’ as they said — get a deal done with the union!
8“And finally, don’t be meddlesome owner!”
And then, after a long pregnant pause and the laughter from the media died down, Bisciotti lowered his reading glasses, looked up from his sheet and deadpanned while mockingly thumping his fist on the table:
“I promise you we’ll get as many of those things done in the offseason as we possibly can!”
Clearly, Bisciotti also has a sense of humor to go along with his shiny new Super Bowl ring and Lombardi Trophy.
