March 25, 2024

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March Madness has delivered plenty of drama and excitement, with a record [[link removed]] average of 8.3 million viewers tuning in to watch the action unfold in the first round. … NFL owners begin their annual spring meeting today, and we have Dan Kaplan in Orlando covering the pending votes on ownership and rule changes. … Peter Angelos leaves an ‘indelible mark’ on Baltimore. … And we look back on the anniversary of a pivotal name change in professional sports.

— Eric Fisher [[link removed]] and David Rumsey [[link removed]]

The NFL’s Power Summit: Ownership, Private Equity, DEI Top Agenda [[link removed]]

Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

Hundreds of NFL staff, team owners, executives, and head coaches, many with families in tow, descended on the swanky Ritz-Carlton in Orlando on Sunday to attend the league annual meeting for three days of business and luxury.

Hang out in the marble-tiled lobby with its four thick pillars, arrays of pink roses and adjacent bar area, and one could do a double take at some familiar faces; over there might be a well-known broadcaster, nearby one might spot hard-to-miss coach Andy Reid, and walking through could be Patriots owner Robert Kraft bending Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’s ear.

Agenda Rundown

Serious business does get done at these resort meetings, which largely rotate among Orlando, the Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., and the Biltmore in Scottsdale, Ariz. Here, league staff will brief owners and their execs on the NFL’s businesses, with a heavy focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); flag football; and international efforts. NFL owners meet as a group without staff Monday afternoon, where they are free to discuss matters not on the agenda, such as allowing private equity investments in teams or whether to approve Tom Brady’s agreement to invest in the Raiders. In fact, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam confirmed to Front Office Sports that private equity would be discussed, though he was non-committal to whether he supported loosening the league prohibition of institutional investment in teams. And Raiders owner Mark Davis briefed the finance committee on where the Brady situation stands, The Washington Post reported.

They also are scheduled to vote on switching principal ownership of the Texans from Janice McNair to her son, Cal McNair, and they may vote on a new sideline headset sponsor shared between Verizon and Sony, though the deal is still being finalized, a source says.

Football’s annual meeting is its largest and most important confab of the year, where the commissioner orates a state-of-the-league address, and owners also vote on rule changes (some, like the proposed new kickoff, are sometimes pushed to the smaller May meeting). It was here in Orlando in 2010 that owners altered the overtime rules to give both teams possession, but only after comically scheduling the head coaches to golf at the time of the vote as the conservative bunch was not thrilled with more strategy and decision-making. It was this meeting, too, where commissioner Roger Goodell challenged the league to reach $25 billion in revenue by ’27.

Media Matters

The media gaggles (maybe call them swarms) are part of the decorations of these exclusive getaways. Roughly 400 media credentials were distributed to cover the meeting, the NFL said. Media surging around owners in posh lobbies, TV lights glaring, are frequent spectacles (especially when Jones decides to stop and pontificate). Before he passed, colorful Raiders owner Al Davis’s annual media scrum was dubbed in the press room “The state of the Al,” in reference to Davis himself.

Adding to the theater, most if not all the 32 head coaches are there. Each conference hosts a media breakfast where beat reporters sit-down with the coaches.

This meeting, which ends Tuesday, is actually a day short of the typical length, a nod to the fact that the NFL, with long-term labor and TV deals in place, and perched atop American entertainment, can wrap its business early.

A Brief History

That’s a far cry from yesteryear when meetings ate five days, says Jim Steeg, who joined the NFL in 1976 and ran events for more than two decades. Back then the meetings were often in Hawai‘i or Palm Springs. The last resolution voted on by George Halas, the legendary coach and owner of the Bears, before his ’83 death was to put the Biltmore in the annual meeting rotation, Steeg says.

The annual meeting’s biggest challenge, he said, was divvying up posh hotel rooms to owners and their families when supply could be short. He often got berated, Steeg recalls, because so many demanded the president’s suite.

Joe Browne, who ran communications for decades at the NFL, comparing past meetings with today’s version, recalls a simpler time with the late commissioner Pete Rozelle.

“[R]ozelle would lead off those mtgs [sic] on Monday morning with his state of [the] league remarks,” Browne writes in an email. “He gave them while sitting down, smoking a cigarette and drinking a coke at the head table. Those remarks did not last more than 10 or 15 minutes and there usually were no questions after he finished.”

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Peter Angelos Leaves ‘Indelible Mark’ on Baseball, Baltimore [[link removed]]

Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

An era in Baltimore baseball—one filled with hope, disappointment, and controversy—ended Saturday when Orioles owner Peter Angelos died at the age of 94.

The famously feisty Angelos had been unwell for several years, and he had previously transferred day-to-day control of the MLB franchise to his son, John, in 2020. But since acquiring the Orioles in 1993, Angelos firmly put his stamp on his hometown team, as well as the neighboring Nationals and MLB as a whole.

Notably, Angelos’s death arrives as the family’s sale [[link removed]] of the Orioles to billionaire private equity executive David Rubenstein, valuing the team at $1.725 billion, is perhaps days away from completion and approval by the full group of MLB team owners. The transaction has already cleared the league’s ownership committee, and last week received further support from the Maryland Stadium Authority.

“Peter made an indelible mark, first in business and then in baseball,” Rubenstein said. “The city of Baltimore owes him a debt of gratitude for his stewardship of the Orioles across three decades and for positioning the team for great success.”

Lasting Legacy

Among the key touchstones of Angelos’s tenure as Orioles owner:

A Baltimore native from working-class roots who amassed great wealth as a lawyer, particularly by suing companies who had exposed their workers to asbestos, Angelos purchased the Orioles for a then-sports industry record $173 million. He supplemented his ownership group with a series of partners with deep Maryland ties, including broadcaster Jim McKay, writer Tom Clancy, and filmmaker Barry Levinson. The early years of the Angelos era were marked by a hands-on style and a willingness to spend on players, as well as a penchant to cycle frequently through managers and GMs. During the 1995–98 seasons, the Orioles regularly jockeyed with the Yankees for the top two payroll rankings in the league. Ultimately, Baltimore was not able to keep up, and the team had a bottom-five payroll each season between 2019–23. Though ailing, Angelos was still alive as the Orioles last year enjoyed a large-scale renaissance [[link removed]]. Angelos’s worker-first mentality reached a particular prominence during the players’ strike of 1994–95. As owners began to implement a plan to use replacement, non-union players, Angelos steadfastly refused, and a heightening standoff between the owner and the league was averted as a new labor deal was reached. His extensive background in workplace-related issues helped lead to his placement on MLB’s labor committee, and he helped negotiate collective bargaining agreements with the players. Angelos’s firm opposition to the placement of a franchise in Washington led to the creation of the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which controls the local media rights of both the Orioles and Nationals, and significantly impacts the state of both franchises to this day. Angelos was also at the center of a bitter legal dispute over the local media rights fees for the two clubs that lasted for more than a decade, and only now is beginning to reach [[link removed]] a more peaceful situation.

“Peter was an important figure in our city’s rich sports history,” said Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti. “He was a smart businessman who wasn’t afraid to stand up to issues he felt were important.”

FRONT OFFICE SPORTS TODAY March Madness: A ‘Tryout for NIL’

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

When former Nebraska linebacker Blake Lawrence had his playing career cut short by injury, he had to figure out the rest of his life fast. The idea he and a business partner landed on was Opendorse, now one of the top name, image, and likeness marketplace platforms. Lawrence joins the pod today to talk about why collective bargaining may be bad for college athletes, his company’s collaborative effort to give every woman playing in March Madness $500, and how the tournament impacts a player’s earning potential.

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Apple [[link removed]], Google [[link removed]], and Spotify [[link removed]].

TIME CAPSULE March 25, 1971: More Than a Name

Malcolm Emmons-USA TODAY NETWORK

On this day 53 years ago: The NFL’s Boston Patriots formally renamed themselves as the New England Patriots. The new moniker reflected the franchise’s shift that year to a new stadium in Foxborough, Mass., and, in turn, a more regionalized identity as the facility originally known as Schaefer Stadium sat nearly equidistant between Boston and Providence. The renaming, however, did not happen without its hiccups as for about a month before, owner Billy Sullivan intended for the team to be known as the Bay State Patriots. That name was not only unapproved by the league, but it also contained the unfortunate abbreviation of the B.S. Patriots.

Though the Patriots, under their New England branding, floundered on and off the field for much of the subsequent two decades, Robert Kraft’s arrival as team owner in 1994 began a transformation into one of the world’s leading sports franchises. Under Kraft, the Patriots have won six Super Bowls, built Gillette Stadium and the adjacent Patriot Place, and are now worth [[link removed]] $7 billion, second best in the NFL behind only the Cowboys.

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AWARDS

Every year, Front Office Sports’ awards program recognizes the best and most accomplished in the business of sports.

The 2024 Best Venues Award celebrates the venues that have met and exceeded the evolving demands of fans and that set the new industry standard for success.

🏆 Nominations are open through April 8. Submit your venue [[link removed]] now.

Conversation Starters In 2022, Ohio State claimed the Women’s Frozen Four Championship, but lost in 2023 against the only other team to have won since 2019: Wisconsin. On Sunday, in front of the third-largest crowd in women’s title game history, the Buckeyes triumphed over their rivals to clinch the championship once more. Check it out [[link removed]]. Get your popcorn: Actor Christopher McDonald, known for his role as Shooter McGavin, revealed [[link removed]] to a Cleveland sports radio station that Happy Gilmore 2 is in the works. Basketball should have you on the edge of your seat. Investing shouldn’t. Invesco QQQ [[link removed]] lets investors access the Nasdaq’s top 100 innovative companies—all in one ETF. Let’s Rethink Possibility. Invesco Distributors, Inc.*† Editors’ Picks The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Inside the Big East’s Bizarre Online Subculture [[link removed]]by Amanda Christovich [[link removed]]Peeling back the curtain on the ‘phenomenally weird’ Big East online ecosystem. Everything You Need to Know About the Ongoing ‘Sports Illustrated’ Saga [[link removed]]by A.J. Perez [[link removed]]Understanding the strange state of affairs for the nearly 70-year-old publication. At ESPN, She’s the Storyteller of the Women’s Tourney—and What a Year It Is for That [[link removed]]by Owen Poindexter [[link removed]]Sara Gaiero sees Caitlin Clark hype as an opportunity to hook people on two ESPN products: March Madness and, eventually, the WNBA. DISCLAIMER

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