Mike Brown Revealed (from 2009)

[THE PISTONS]

(09-29-2017, 01:11 PM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/sports-3/inheritance/

Pay particular attention to shares and profits.

Add to that the epic tales of the franchise’s miserliness—charging players for breakfast at the stadium; taking agents out to lunch at Wendy’s when negotiating player contracts; providing such low-quality locker room towels that in the mid-’90s, running back Ki-Jana Carter paid out of his own pocket to replace the team linens—and limited charitable involvement in the community. The criticism never appeared to bother Mike Brown. This is the man who once chuckled after fans lowered a sign in front of the owner’s box at Riverfront Stadium that read, “If it’s Brown flush it down.” Worst of all, in the eyes of many, was the lopsided lease agreement the team struck with Hamilton County in 1996 to build Paul Brown Stadium. After cynically threatening to relocate the Bengals to a new city, launching an all-points PR campaign to simultaneously scare and cajole the voters, and hiring a legal team that ran circles around the county’s own counsel, they (and we) got what The Wall Street Journal famously dubbed “one of the worst professional sports deals ever struck by a local government.” In subsequent years, the Brown family’s reputation has not been burnished by their inflexibility in dealings with the county over various terms and covenants in the lease, despite substantial blows to the local economy that were beyond the county’s control.


That's crazy!