The Rooney family are among the best NFL owners of all time AP Photo/Charles Sharapak
The thing about the NFL is when it comes to owners there is the Rooney family and there is everyone else. The Rooney family has been in control of the Pittsburg Steelers since their inception. Along their way they have won 6 Super Bowls, 7 conference titles, 19 division titles, and have appeared In the NFL playoffs 25 times. In each of these categories they lead the NFL.
With those stats in mind it is now wonder that SI.com had the Rooney family listed as the best owners in the NFL in their recently published list of the best sports owners broken down by each sport. A look at the rest of their list:
• The Rooney Family-Pittsburgh Steelers
• Robert Kraft- New England Patriots
• Mara/Tisch families- New York Giants
• Jeffrey Lurie- Philadelphia Eagles
• Steve Biscotti- Baltimore Ravens
The thing about these five ownership groups is that they each have developed a system of play and a system to mange their clubs and they have all been highly successful doing so.
Steve Biscotti took over the Ravens from one of the most hated men in football, at least in Cleveland, Art Model. Since then he has given the Baltimore football fans, who have suffered their many heartbreak due to poor ownership, a team that is a perennial playoff contender. Steve can be heavy handed in dealing with the team, firing Super Bowl winning Coach Brain Billick and his entire staff after a very disappointing 2007 season. Unlike many of the other ego maniac NFL owners Biscotti knows when to back off and let GM Ozzie Newsome do his job.
Meanwhile Jeffrey Lurie in Philadelphia has brought not only on the field success to a once troubled franchise. Under previous owners the Eagles were teetering on the brink on bankruptcy while another group tried to move the tem to Phoenix. Under Lurie the team has become self sustainable and have a new modern stadium that will insure the team financial stability in the years to come. Since Lurie took over the Eagles have reached 5 NFC Conference Championship games, while appearing in one Super Bowl.
One has to wonder how the New York Giants survived the founding partner’s deaths within weeks of each other in 2005. How they survived was by instilling in their children the basics of how to run a NFL team. By doing so the Mara and Tisch families are continuing to have success, the second generation of owners traded for Eli Manning and believed in him as a franchise QB, through the learning process of him becoming exactly that. This belief has already brought the second generation of Mara and Tisch’s a Super Bowl Championship.
That leaves us Robert Kraft who has beaten the NFL system of parity by building one of the finest modern day NFL dynasties. In one of the most successful 12 periods of a team in the NFL the Patriots went to five super bowls winning three of them. Kraft has done this by locking down big time star players for lengthy periods and rebuilding the parts around them, sometimes on a year to year basis.
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Comments
The Dallas Cowboys have eight (8) conference Championships. They lost to Pittsburgh twice and the Baltimore Colts once. They defeated Miami Dolphins, the Denver Broncos the Buffalo Bills twice, and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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