Before the 56th Super Bowl, the Rams provided a seven-page, 6,377-word media guide for boss Stan Kronko and three executives. The management introduction of the Tiger is only four lines and dozens of words:
CHAIR: Mike Brown
Executive Vice President: Katie Blackburn
Vice President - Personnel Management: Paul Brown Jr
Vice-President: Troy Blackburn
Over the past 35 years, Katie Blackburn's identity has gone from being the granddaughter of Tigers founder Paul Brown, to the daughter of owner Mike Brown, to a well-respected female executive, but since the Tigers are a team with low performance, it's hard to hear a word about this female executive.
Katie, 56, is a trained lawyer who has hammered out most of his player contracts for the Tigers over the past three decades. Although his father, now 86, is still the nominal owner of the team, he has long left real power to his beloved daughter.
Katie has basically dedicated her life to the Tigers, but who is she?
In the mid-1980s, Katie's teammate on dartmouth ice hockey team Nicky De Makis said, "We lived in the same dorm, we were friends, but she was always so quiet. As a freshman, I thought it was cool because we knew her grandfather was a big man in rugby. We just think Katie is different because she's humble. ”
Another former Dartmouth teammate, Karin Crowe, said: "I just remember her being very kind and very humble. I didn't pay much attention to rugby at the time, but I learned later that he was a special person. I think she does have that quiet, Midwestern demeanor, not showing off at all, not boasting at all. ”
De Marchis said: "You would never have imagined she came from a rugby family. ”
In 1942, Paul Brown coached the Ohio Grand Prix to win the National Championship; in 1946, he co-founded the Cleveland Browns with his colleagues and won the championship seven times in his first decade as manager, setting a precedent for repeatedly studying game footage for the study of opponents. In 1967, he left Brown to create the Cincinnati Tigers and coached the Tigers for eight seasons, ending with a 36-20 record in his last four years.
Revered by later generations as the greatest managers of all time: Don Schula, Bill Walsh, Chuck Knoll, Weber Ubank and Brandon Collier all studied under Paul Brown. Brown and Walsh teamed up to pioneer the West Coast offense, which is still one of the league's mainstream offenses. Brown invented the helmet mask and the fake fax run offense. He developed the first system for evaluating university players, the first to use classroom instruction, the first to hire year-round coaches, and the first to place players in a hotel on the night before the game. In 1978, Brown and the league's competition committee passed revolutionary rule changes that shaped the NFL into a pass-first league.
Katie said: "The similarities between my father and grandfather are deep down, and they are concerned first and foremost about the game of the whole league, not just what is best for the Tigers. They believe that in the long run, the rule changes will make the sport best for all. ”
49-man executive Parag-Marat also praised her family personality: "Before I met her, a lot of agents were talking about her, just talking about her as a great negotiator. She has always been a very far-sighted person, and she always thinks about the big picture. ”
In the 1980s, the Tigers reached the Super Bowl twice, with Paul Brown as general manager and son Mike as deputy general manager. In between those Super Bowls, Katie followed in her father's footsteps, registered at Dartmouth, and then went to law school.
Former Tigers coach Marvin Lewis said: "She's so smart. When I join the competition committee, they start discussing different rule changes regarding salary caps and how prize money is calculated. But, gosh, Katie had already explained it to me about two weeks in advance. ”
Katie was originally a winger on dartmouth ice hockey, but when assistant coach Bob Sepplikas asked who wanted to play goalkeeper, Katie was the only one who raised her hand voluntarily. To know that being a goalkeeper means being hit by a hockey ball hundreds of times a day just in training, is not an easy task for a girl with a peach and lee life.
Seplikas said: "God bless her, Katie is the one who bravely tied the pads. I say brave because the standard of women's hockey was already very high at that time, and the batting power was already quite extraordinary, but Katie was like a sponge, just focused on absorbing knowledge and experience. ”
Final statistics for the 1985–86 season: Katie made 199 saves, conceded 24 goals, and started 4-4.
Friend DeMagis said: "The goalkeeper stood in the net, although the whole body pads for self-defense, but the underarm and the inner thigh were empty, and the ice ball slammed into you at a speed of 100 miles per hour. Oh my God, I wasn't seeing a hockey goalkeeper, but Katie, a quiet and shy girl who lived under the same roof as me, was so brave that it was unbelievable! ”
In Katie's own words: "No one wanted to keep the goal at the time, so I volunteered." ”
Yes, in the early nineties, in a coalition where management was almost entirely male, Katie volunteered to take over the family business and become an NFL female executive.
Rugby managers don't just have to negotiate contracts, they also need to study the game footage, and Katie does the same because it was her grandfather who invented it.
Tigers hr director Duke Tobin, who has been with you since 1999, said: "At scouting sessions, she can sit here with you to scout players and then discuss salary caps in other roles, or get involved in any other job. She's so versatile. ”
The Tigers are an NFL team, but the core of the management team makes the team more like a family business, with Katie and her father Mike, husband Troy and brother Paul in charge of everything on the team. Sometimes senior team meetings can seem like family gatherings, and vice versa.
Before Coming to the Tigers as manager in 2003, Marvin Lewis had previously worked for two other "family businesses". They are The Crows of Arte-Moder and the Steelmen of the Rooney Family, which makes him more daring to join the Brown Family Tigers.
Lewis sometimes had heated discussions with Katie and Troy about some team decisions before turning to Mike for help. No matter who Mike supports, Katie will still be stubborn. Katie and Lewis are both this kind of stubborn personality that is not right for people, and find a balance in the run-in.
Under Lewis, the Tigers made seven playoffs in 16 seasons, which may not seem outstanding, but it was not easy to do so in the era when the Steel Ravens ruled the North. While the playoffs have always been unwinnable, luck accounts for a large part. In the 2005 season against the Steelers, Carson Palmer withdrew from the game with a knee injury, and in the 2015 season, Andy Dalton fractured his thumb, and the two outstanding Tigers failed to achieve a playoff victory.
Katie's Tigers picked Joe Burrow in 2020 and Jamal Chase in 2021 for the fifth, and the two youngsters not only led the team to win three consecutive playoff games, but also led the Tigers to the Super Bowl for the first time since the 1988 season.
Katie said: "It's special, I mean, you're very proud of the team, the players and the coaches. Obviously, because it's an honor for a family. You just feel like you have a responsibility to get Cincinnati excited. This, this is amazing. I don't know what else to say. ”
As Duque Tobin, head of personnel, puts it: "Rugby is all she is, it's the whole thing, and that's what her life is about." That's the great thing about this team, every manager sees rugby as a life, throughout. ”