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.
Bisciotti 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.
“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.”
