To understand the contrast between the two teams chasing football immortality on Sunday, the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals, look no further than their owners.
The Rams are the glitzy $4.8 billion crown jewel of billionaire Stan Kroenke’s $10.5 billion sports empire, set to play on Sunday in the palatial SoFi Stadium he built for his team. Kroenke—whose wife, Ann Walton, is an heir to the Walmart fortune—also owns the Denver Nuggets and Arsenal FC and is seen as one of the most powerful people in sports. Meanwhile, the Bengals—the NFL’s second-least-valuable franchise, at an estimated $2.3 billion—are a family business, cofounded by coaching legend Paul Brown half a century ago and tightly controlled by his 86-year-old son Mike, who is a relative unknown outside of football.
“The Brown family, as long as I’ve been around the league, has never been focused on making the most money,” says Marc Ganis, president of the consulting firm Sportscorp, who has worked with numerous NFL teams and owners. “They’ve been focused on operating in a professional, solid manner and trying to put a good product on the field.”
Even that standard has proved challenging for a franchise that has been mired in mediocrity for most of its 54-season history, reaching the postseason just 15 times and losing in its two previous Super Bowl appearances, in 1982 and 1989. The last time the Bengals won a playoff game was 1991, which has led to plenty of disgruntled fans lashing out at Brown over the years. Yet the NFL’s soaring popularity has pushed up revenues for all of its teams and minted the Brown family a fortune—Forbes values their stake in the team at $2.1 billion.
Win or lose, football has always been the family’s focus. Patriarch Paul Brown helped bring the team to Cincinnati in 1967. Mike, his middle son, who played quarterback at Dartmouth and graduated from Harvard Law School, worked alongside him from the outset. Mike’s brothers, Robin and Peter, were also involved with the team until their deaths in 1978 and 2017, respectively. Over time, other family members joined. Mike’s daughter Katie Blackburn is executive vice president of the team and the first woman to be named to the NFL’s Competition Committee. Son Paul H. Brown, son-in-law Troy Blackburn and even Mike’s granddaughters, Elizabeth and Caroline Blackburn, work for the Bengals as well. (The Browns declined to participate in this story.)