“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.
The 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.
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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.
