There’s no place Mike Brown would rather be.

In the middle of the July dead period of the NFL cycle, the rest of the league enjoys views off Pebble Beach or panoramas off the Irish Coast.

Mike prefers his corner office overlooking the Ohio River at Paul Brown Stadium. Relaxation means lifting his feet up on the desk, propped under a green square of old field turf.

It was suggested by a former staff member that of the 365 days a year, for all but about five of them the thing Mike would most like to do is drive to the stadium and monitor his team.

“If there is five I’m surprised the number is that high,” Mike’s son, Paul, said with a chuckle.

President and owner still sit in front of Mike’s name, though he admits the title is just that and little else these days. The vast majority of day-to-day operations aren’t on his radar anymore. They fall to daughter and Executive Vice President Katie Blackburn, her husband, Vice President Troy Blackburn, along with Paul, Vice President of Player Personnel. Mike’s brother Pete is still Executive VP of Player Personnel.

Less responsibility doesn’t mean less activity.

“Every day I sit in this chair and I don’t have to have an agenda,” Mike says, then pointing to the hallway, “it just walks through the door.”

Over the last 50 years, the evolution of the Bengals franchise kept walking through the door. Some days a contract dispute. Others a roster decision. For too long a stadium issue.

As every development piles into a historical blur of wins, losses and infinite practices observed from the seat of a golf cart, one memory still pierces through clearer than Hear That Bengal Growlin’ on game day.

It comes from the day in January 1963 his father and NFL legend, Paul Brown, was jettisoned out of Cleveland by Art Modell and into NFL exile.

“He called me on the phone and he said that his team had been taken away from him,” said Mike, who will turn 82 in August. “That was the phrase he used. His voice broke. That was something that had never really happened with him talking to me. It was the sky falling in on him. My goal came to be to try to help him re-establish himself.”

Mike was a lawyer working in Cleveland. Life changed. Five years later, Mike accomplished his goal in what he dubs “a thousand-to-one shot” in Cincinnati.

“My father was grateful in his heart,” Mike said. “While he never patted me on the head for it, I sensed it. That mattered to me.”

Fast forward half a century and it matters more than ever. The true football family means everything to Mike and there’s an undeniable pride in his children leading the charge into the next half century. It’s their way of life.

Yet, in the growing business mogul paradise that is the NFL, the old football family model draws closer and closer to extinction.

“It’s been a tsunami,” Mike said.

As in every era of challenges for the Brown family, they approach these new-age problems the same way as the old ones. They practice loyalty to each other and those welcomed into their circle. And with the shadow of Paul Brown’s fedora and devotion to this team still as prominent as it was in 1968, they demand the football team stand as the top priority in every decision.

“We’ve treated the football team like it’s a person,” Katie said. “You want to make sure it’s healthy and strong. And it’s all we do.”

‘WE WON’T BE ABLE TO MAINTAIN OURSELVES'

Nobody will be feeling sorry for a family which owns a team valued by Forbes last September at $1.675 billion. Not a soul. Particularly one helped afloat by a stadium deal paid for by taxpayers that keep tens of millions in debt service off their back. Ten especially not one that benefits from the richest television deals in the history of sports dumping millions upon millions into their laps.

The family can pick up a check.

By the dynamic of the NFL is changing dramatically.

There are more or less eight old-school football families left in the league.

Arizona: The Bidwells

Chicago: The McCaskeys

Cincinnati: The Browns

Detroit: The Fords

Kansas City: The Hunts

New York Giants: The Maras

Oakland: The Davis’

Pittsburgh: The Rooneys

Mike fought to bring this football family into existence for his father. He professes a unique pride in keeping it a family business all these years. Many others across the league have failed, whether due to finances or in-fighting.

“They can be a frothy mix,” Mike said.

Football families who fell by the wayside of late include The Wilsons in Buffalo, The Modells in Baltimore and The Smiths in Atlanta. The Adams family in Tennessee is in an ownership mess following the passing of Bud Adams.

Even the Bengals football family wasn’t always solely the Browns. Paul Brown made a deal to sell every dime of profit from 1984 to 1993 to shareholders, mostly John Sawyer and Austin Knowlton, who helped fund the Bengals’ arrival in Cincinnati.

That assured the family business would go to Mike.

In the last 15 years, 10 NFL teams were purchased by new ownership. Those owners arrived as a new breed in the exclusive, lucrative NFL circle. Arthur Blank in Atlanta owned Home Depot. Jimmy Haslem in Cleveland owns Pilot/Flying J. Shad Kahn in Jacksonville is worth nearly $7 billion.

Stan Kroenke made billions in real estate before buying the Rams and moving them from St. Louis to what will be a massive, state-of-the-art facility in Los Angeles.

As revenue in the NFL skyrocketed, these franchises made its owners billions and for some doubled the valuation of their investment within five years.

In Forbes’ most recent rankings, all but three NFL franchises ranked in the top 50 valued sports franchises in the world. The three? Cincinnati, Detroit, Buffalo.

The Bengals rank 30th of 32 in the league.

It's hard not to see the difference at the annual owners’ meetings when the Bengals settle into the same spot they have for half a century in the front, left corner of the room. With their differing opinion defending small markets and core values of the game, other owners would always know where the Browns were. Joe Browne, former NFL executive under Cmrs. Pete Rozelle, Paul Tagliabue and Goodell, dubbed it The Brown Corner.

The Rooneys have long held their own spot as well and owner Art Rooney II can't help but sneak a laugh when pointing out Mike is "never bashful" speaking his mind. There's no official caucus among remaining football families, but a respect and appreciation Mike doesn't shy away from dissenting.

"I know Mike's always on guard," Rooney said. "The bottom line is we have a great game and we better not screw it up."

Over the years, a perception of the Bengals from inside NFL circles gradually shifted on the spectrum. As more business moguls enter wheeling and dealing with cash at the forefront of every decision, The Brown Corner serves as a necessary offset.

“Initially everyone was poo-pooing the things that (Mike) said,” said Sporting News and SiriusXM NFL insider Alex Marvez, who covered the Bengals from 1995-96. “And it was, ‘Mike is old-fashioned and a fuddy-duddy.’ Now, he’s regarded as a voice of reason and a voice of wisdom.”

Many owners have other prominent business interests, a few even own teams in other sports. Around a quarter don't even live in their team's cities. The Brown family has the Bengals. It’s their business. Always has been. That’s it.

“We are not flying in for the games,” Troy said, telling stories of other owners who he sees take charters into Lunken Airport on a Sunday morning and occasionally leave before it ends. “We are here every day. We try to have the heaviest voice in the room be ‘what is the proper football outcome’ but it is interesting that so many teams have a lighter connection between their ownership group and their community. We love Cincinnati.”

As much as they love Cincinnati, the family also admits being hindered by its dwindling size. The city was once in the teens but now is the 36th largest TV market, according to 2017 Nielson research. It is now the smallest market to have both professional football and baseball. It’s the fourth smallest market in the NFL, ahead of Jacksonville, New Orleans and Buffalo (technically Green Bay is smaller, but their base spans nearly all of Wisconsin including Milwaukee at 35th).

Meanwhile, there are now two teams snatched from smaller markets in San Diego and St. Louis playing in Los Angeles. Talk of London eventually landing a team looms on the horizon.

Forbes’ 2016 research estimates the smallest market teams in the NFL make about $330 million in revenue. The average team had an operating profit of $91 million and every team but Buffalo banked an operating profit of at least $60 million.

But of the top 10 teams in overall valuation, they all come from top 10 TV markets. Of the bottom nine, six of them play in TV markets ranked 29 or lower.

Again, nobody is starving. For the Browns, this isn’t about starving, it’s about shrinking.

The concern voiced for years by the family is that large market revenue pushes the salary cap and floor higher for all teams. Meanwhile, the small-market revenues stay the same and, in the case of the Bengals whose revenue is upwards of $150 million less than the top teams, an annually growing chasm. The arrows for player salaries and revenue point in the wrong direction for small market clubs.

This is their primary concern, No. 1A.

“Market size is determinative in the prosperity of NFL teams,” Mike said. “When I first started out, teams had money problems. There have always been money problems but there was never before a money problem of the type we have now where some teams are so much wealthier than others that they can threaten the existence of the smaller teams.”

No matter how large the market, new owners in the league must be mindful of how equal playing field for every city built the foundation of this astronomical revenue growth.

"Mike is 100 percent right on that issue," Rooney said. "It’s something you do get concerned from time to time there are people in this league that don’t have the proper level of respect and understanding for that."

Leigh Steinberg, the sports agent whose life was the basis of the movie "Jerry Maguire," has dealt with every team in the NFL but knows the Brown family especially well from negotiations for Dan Wilkinson, David Klinger, Ki-Jana Carter, Akili Smith and many other top picks, specifically in the 1980s and '90s.

“Today, most of the owners have made their fortune in the rough and tumble free enterprise system, and they’ve aggregated enough money to be a billionaire,” Steinberg said. “And while they certainly want to run the club at a profit, and they certainly are aggressive businessmen, they’re already wealthy. They come out of a world of competitive business, marketing, a whole different set of business concepts. So you take the Bidwills or take the Browns, that team is what they owned. That was their source of making a living. The consequence of running a loss was that it would impair their ability to keep the team. Which is not going to happen with Pat Bowlen or Dan Snyder or Bob Kraft.”

Or Jerry Jones. The Cowboys owner makes more than anyone and revolutionized NFL revenue. He considers Mike one of his great friends in the league but as the face of large markets, he also disagrees with Mike on this point.

"When I came in the league the Cowboys were losing $1,000 a month," Jones said. "Every team is viable now and has been viable."

Future viability for the family will fall on Katie, Troy and Paul.

Katie says she marvels at her father’s ability to see developments down range when assessing an issue. Mike sees the trend lines and wonders what down range of the next 50 years will look like for his daughter and this family.

“When money becomes the determining factor at some point we won’t be able to maintain ourselves,” Mike said. “I don’t know that you’ll be able to maintain an NFL team in Cincinnati at some point. We fight within the league on a constant basis to try to avoid that predicament.”

‘YOU WANT TO LIVE UP TO THE HISTORY OF IT’

The league doesn’t divvy up chair positions to their committees lightly. And there are few issues of more importance within league circles than workplace diversity.

The NFL appointed Katie to the Workplace Diversity Committee. If larger signs of respect exist among owners in the NFL, there aren’t many.

Her role connects full circle. People often forget a year before Jackie Robinson broke the baseball color barrier, it was Paul Brown who smashed the professional sports color barrier in 1946 by bringing in Marion Motley and Bill Willis, the first black players to sign with the All-America Football Conference.

“Paul Brown’s granddaughter is chairing the diversity committee,” Troy said. “Katie’s grandfather, Katie’s father and Katie have always been strong advocates that we are a business about human talent and human talent comes from a lot of different areas and shame on you if you aren’t keeping your eyes open to find the best talent wherever you can. There is something of a poetic appropriateness.”

Katie also chairs the Super Bowl Advisory Committee. So, at the tip of the game’s biggest stage and one of the most important issues, Katie sits at the head of the table.

“She’s incredibly well respected,” said Robert Gulliver, NFL VP in charge of human resources and the league liaison on the diversity committee. “She’s been impactful. She’s somebody who brings not only vast business knowledge but tremendous football knowledge as well. She’s incredibly insightful for what she brings to the committee.”

In a league which made publicized strides in the hiring of the first female official and first female assistant coach in recent years, she stands as arguably the most powerful woman in the NFL nobody talks about.

Of course, she prefers it that way. Despite these ultimate signs of respect within ownership, she shies away from trumpeting her achievements and her notable breakthrough of this old boy’s network.

Katie, 51, is the chair of a diversity committee otherwise filled with all men. But she doesn’t view her role through the gender prism. She sees herself as someone who cares about football tasked with growing the game.

“I have not found myself in a situation where I’m thinking about that,” Katie said. “I try to be sensitive to it. I’m proud to be a woman, I’m not ignoring it, but America has changed. You talk about 50 years, the number of women doing things I’m just in the middle of it. It’s changed everywhere.”

Not entirely correct. It hasn’t changed in the eyes of her father. In this business, Katie’s the unofficially appointed heir.

But the family will work together as caretaker of the franchise. They agree they’ve struck a balance in how to attack an issue. While many would think family attempting to hash out challenging financial issues would only lead to problems, they suggest the opposite effect.

They claim nobody cuts quicker to the core of an issue as Paul. Katie calls him the best negotiator among them – which is saying something in a room full of lawyers.

“He doesn’t get bothered by the stuff the rest of us say, ‘Oh my gosh, can’t believe they did this,” Katie said. “We get more reactive, whereas he stays level-headed and cool and gives us a good perspective at the end of the day because he doesn’t get distraught by other things the rest of us are pulling our hair out about.”

Troy earns the title of best communicator stemming from his background as a litigator. Pete and Mike bring a wealth of football experience unlike anyone in the league. More importantly than understanding the personality traits in the room, in their eyes, there’s no secret alliances or personal agendas, unlike most corporate environments. All cards are on the table and have been forever.

“You begin the discussion with a high level of comfort and confidence that you know what people want,” Troy said. “And what they want is the right outcome for the football team and everything else flows from there.”

It’s all Mike has ever known.

“It’s like watching the sun rise,” Mike said. “You just assume it’s going to be that way every day. I don’t pause to reflect that much beyond that. I am grateful for it. I have a situation in life that is special.”

Katie would agree this is special. In the same way, Mike never misses a practice you’ll almost always see Katie within eyeshot as well, whether alone in the second level of seats inside Paul Brown Stadium or standing nearby on the sideline.

The passion for this football team didn’t miss a generation.

“I take a lot of pride in the fact I come from a football family and the history of my grandfather in coaching, his experience in Cleveland,” Katie said. “I see how much that means to my dad and how affected by it he was and really the way I look at it is sort of something I’m proud of and therefore take it probably more personally than I would if I were in another business because there is that tie you have. You want to live up to the history of it and keep it going.”

Outside of NFL circles, not much is known about Katie. She works quietly and purposely avoids the public eye. Though, those close to her claim she’s far more a consensus-builder than an autocrat.

A desire exists to embrace the big picture and understand the role the brand can play in that. She matured professionally watching her father continually fall under heavy criticism for decisions made and deal with ramifications from the eyesore decade of the 90s.

Lessons were learned.

“My dad always had good principles which is part of why regardless of what was said if you understood the principles you had to feel good about the way he approached things,” Katie said. “That’s probably a little bit why I’m more of a consensus builder.

“At the end of the day, my dad is absolutely more about ‘I’m going to do the right thing for the right reason regardless of how it is going to be portrayed’ even if it isn’t portrayed exactly how it’s put together in his mind. Probably, I’m a little more of a ‘let’s step back and think about how this will be (portrayed) and step back and include that piece.’ For him, he wasn’t’ afraid of that part of it.”

‘THAT’S JUST THE WAY WE ARE’

Former Bengals coach Sam Wyche came within 34 seconds of delivering the first and only championship in team history in 1988. The details of that day in Miami are impossible to forget. In discussing Bengals history, however, just as clear three decades later are memories from the final days of team patriarch Paul Brown.

Brown passed away on Aug. 6, 1991, during training camp. Wyche recalls visiting not long before.

“I went to his home,” Wyche said. “Paul was very weak. He had the oxygen in the nostrils and you could tell he was very low. The first thing he says to me is, ‘Now, Sam, you make sure you tell the team to do this, do this and do that.’ All football. He wasn’t worried about any sympathy from anybody. He didn’t bring up his health. He was worried about his football team to the very last.”

The spirit and essence of Paul Brown permeate every single day for the family. They live this legacy. Football means everything.

It even determines the annual circle of events and holidays.

“My summer vacations were going to Wilmington College,” Paul said of the Bengals old training camp home. “I looked forward to that as much as I would have looked forward to doing anything at that point in my life. We get to spend our lives with each other and our family doing something that at the end of the day is a fun, exciting business. It’s something that has consumed our family.”

Critics may not like the like methods used to build the roster. Those complaints are nearly universal across NFL cities, especially those lacking in playoff victories. Investment in continuity and draft capital the Bengals utilize doesn’t exactly sizzle the skillet of fans looking for an offseason meal.

Others will claim the family is frugal. In some situations, they wouldn’t give you an argument. There are areas where they are far from the normal NFL club. They are the northernmost NFL team without an indoor practice facility. They usually choose not to advertise their community outreach. When struggling to make direct flights work to the owners' meetings in Arizona this year, Mike flew Frontier instead of chartering a private jet as many owners do.

Mike admits some wealthy owners spend in ways the Bengals wouldn’t even think about. “You cut the cloth according to need,” he said. Not among cutbacks is spending on personnel.

Marvin Lewis calls this the biggest myth about Mike and the family, that Mike cares about money when it comes to the football team.

“Whatever it takes for the football team to win he is 100 percent,” Lewis said. “The NFL has changed. He’s adapted. He’s given us the ability to adapt and change.”

The Bengals rank in the top 10 in cash paid to players over the last segment measured within the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Lewis points to an investment in a sports science initiative that’s proven a model for teams across the league.

“Football first,” Troy said.

Maybe as a fan you hate the stadium deal. Maybe you will never forgive for the 90s. Maybe you wish they’d move on from Lewis.

The family will happily engage in debate about those topics. Just ask. They love talking football and this city.

Yet, in a league flooded with some owners who don’t live in their team’s city and who can go years without speaking to players while cuts automate like deleting numbers off an Excel spreadsheet, nobody can say the Brown family ownership doesn’t care about the football team and players which comprise it.

They are there. Every day.

“We wouldn’t want to miss anything,” Katie said. “That’s just the way we are.”

You’ll also find them discussing the future and how to assure this team never goes away as Cleveland did from Paul Brown more than 50 years ago.

Mike can stare out the window of his office at the banks where Riverfront Stadium once stood and relish that’s one decision he doesn’t have to worry about walking through the door.

“I want it to still be a family operation as it has from the beginning,” Mike said when asked about the next half century. “A hundred sounds like a good number but who can forecast that kind of thing? There are so many things that can intervene. It’s very hard to project next week let alone the next 50 years. I wish I could tell you. I’m not going to have to answer that question. They are. And I wish them well with it.”