Do You Think the Brown Family Feels Embarrassed?

[*psychdoctor*]

The short answer is no. The Brown family do not feel humiliated or embarrassed probably due, in their eyes, to the rich heritage the Bengal franchise historically represents. In other words, they are proud.

They would point out that the Brown family patriarch, Paul Brown, is considered one of the greatest innovators of today's NFL. Ironically, the first coach to hire full time staff and developed play books for players. Basically turned meetings into a classroom and used film to scout and game plan. In 1981, Paul Brown approved the coolest helmets in the NFL. The franchise went to the Super Bowl twice and came close to winning in both games. The Brown family will point out that the Browns, Lions, Texans, and Jags have never even played in the Super Bowl. Mike Brown has stated that winning in the NFL is tough for 31 of the 32 teams, and there is only one champion team.

There was a time when the front office saw themselves as a small family owned business. The Brown children probably see themselves as underdogs of sorts going up against BIG corporations types in the NFL in big market cities. If this is the case, it is more of a Red Herring than truth. Bidwell, Rooney, Halas, and others have been family owned since 1930s or so. The CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) in 2011 was huge because teams now have salary cap minimums, requiring clubs to spend an average of at least 89% of the salary cap (if my understanding is correct). It also ended "two-a-days" by the way. The cap in theory provides opportunity for small market teams to compete with the big boys. Again, in theory. Using the "small family owned business" going up against big market cities is no longer an excuse. Mike Brown has publicly stated that something to the effect that the fans deserves a winner, a championship. Yet you cannot fire GM who is the owner of a team. Even if Katie is now in charge and wanted things to change, to modernized the team, she cannot fire her father. Quite frankly, the Brown Family excuses over the last 30 years are void. When Paul Brown died in 1991, part of the franchise died with him; at least the football aspects.

If you had a business, lets say selling shoes. And that business was guaranteed to make money, would things need to change?

Even if you were horrible at sales, and produced inferior quality shoes that made your business the laughingstock of all shoe retails yet your bottom line would not change. Would things need to change? It sure would make some complacent, even if they had some pride, especially if you ignored all social media and negative reviews of your product.