| 05 September 2010
Silver absolutely takes Brown to task in the piece and really captures the frustrations of Bengals fans. He lobs grenade after grenade, exposing Brown for the fraud he is and letting us in on some anecdotes from behind the curtains.
The story's catchy headline is Owner Rankings: Brown makes ‘em laugh. Silver goes out of his way in the introduction to hammer Brown into oblivion (or into bolivian as Mike Tyson would say) and every one of his points were spot on. It appeared obvious that the son of a real football man - Paul Brown - was going to check in with the No. 32 (worst) ranking of all the NFL owners in Silver's opinion.
However, then the rankings were revealed and Silver surprisingly ranked Raiders' owner Al Davis 32nd and Brown 31st.
Listen, Mr. Silver, don't try and offend Bengal fans by telling us we don't have the worst owner in the NFL. We know we do. In fact, if it wasn't for Donald Sterling of the NBA's L.A. Clippers, Brown would be the worst owner in major pro sports, period.
No question Al Davis is loony at his age of 81 and the Raiders have been a complete laughing stock the last few years. However, Davis has also won three Super Bowl championships (1976, '80, '83) and that cannot be ignored.
Meanwhile, Brown has been clearly the worst owner in the league since taking over for his late father in 1991. The Bengals finally ended their playoff drought in 2005 with an AFC North title - and pulled off the same feat last year - but other than those two seasons they've been atrocious under Mike Brown.
Under Davis, the Raiders made the Super Bowl as recently as 2002. They got their asses handed to them by their former coach Jon Gruden and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Davis actually traded Gruden to the Bucs in an unprecedented move) but they were still AFC champs. Let me know when Mike Brown wins an AFC title. (The Bengals have appeared in two Super Bowls -- during the 1981 and '88 seasons -- but those came under Paul Brown.)
So, it's amazing to me that Mike Silver could be on the money with his points about Brown - go out of his way to blast him - and then somehow rank Davis as even worse than Brown.
Comparing the resumes of Davis and Brown is not even close. It's like comparing Facebook to MySpace. Again, Davis is a complete loon, but Brown has him trumped in that category. And at least Davis isn't a cheap-ass. The Raiders are definitely a joke right now, while the Bengals are relevant for a change, but let's not forget the years of 1991-2004 (that's kind of a long time period, ya know?) when Brown led the most-futile organization in the NFL.
Michael Silver: Your story was like a movie that starts off great, then has a horrible ending. Work on the ending! (You didn't happen to assist with the Sopranos finale, did you?) Davis is horribly bad and no one would argue with that. But unfortunately for us Bengal fans, Brown is even worse. Two good seasons in 19 years? It just doesn't get any worse than that.
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