President Greg Crawford
You ready?

Mike Brown
This is my first experience with a podcast. So I've done 1000s of television interviews over the years, but a podcast is a younger generation thing

President Greg Crawford
I don't know about that one. I'm still knew at this too.

President Greg Crawford
Greg. Hello. I'm Greg Crawford, president of Miami University, and welcome to "In Such a Place." The Podcast where we explore the future of higher education and the vital role colleges and universities play in shaping our world. Some legacies shape more than just history. They inspire community leadership and innovation across generations. Today, we're joined by Mike Brown, owner of the Cincinnati Bengals, a team deeply connected to both the region and to Miami University through the legacy of his father, Paul Brown, founder of the franchise and Miami alumnus. Mike, brings decades of experience leading one of the NFL's most storied organizations. Together, we'll explore how the Bengals and Miami University are building a legacy that bridges sports, leadership, education, and community impact. Mike, it's wonderful to have you here at Paycor today.

Mike Brown
Well, thank you for having me.

President Greg Crawford
You grew up watching your father, Paul Brown, build a football enterprise into what it is today, and now you've carried that legacy forward for decades. What lessons from your father, still guide you in your leadership today?

Mike Brown
Oh, I was, I think, a good son, but I was also a very obedient son. I kept my ears open. I soaked in a lot of information. I watched him as he lived his life and some of the things that I came to take from that would be he had a clear mind, and he could reduce issues that seemed complicated to really what was at stake and present it in a way to others that was succinct and clear and persuasive. He had a style of his own that I think was admirable and one that was worth emulation. I don't claim to be an exact copy, far from it. But I try, in my limited way, to keep things succinct when I talk, and I work at trying to make them clear as he could. He was a very able man, and things came easily to him, a push to get things done, but I follow his pattern anyway.

President Greg Crawford
That's great. And leadership, being able to be distinct and succinct is super important.

Mike Brown
I've always thought it was, it's persuasive, and they respect you for it. You don't waste their time. He was very clear about that point. He never wished to waste his players time, his coach's time, anybody's time. Have your say. Do it as well as you can, and then shut up.

President Greg Crawford
That's good advice. So Paul Brown's legacy is deeply intertwined with both Miami and the bangles. How does his story influence the vision and the goals of the partnership with the University today?

Mike Brown
Well, my father was a university man through and through. He loved Miami. When he went there, he would often tell this story. He was on a bus that was taking the students back to Miami's campus, and when they got in sight of the university, they began to sing. The song they sang was a Miami song. He was so taken by that it indicated to him that the students loved the school and were grateful for it, appreciated it, and that's how he became from the very start, and that's how he saw the school. He later was a trustee in old age, and he had different experiences with the school as it was changing. Modern Times brought all sorts of issues, such as, where students could park cars, how the dorms were set up whether they were going to be as they always had been, exclusively male or female, but he grew to go along with it, and he just had a love for Miami that was part of him from the time he was a young man to the day he died.

President Greg Crawford
So football has a deep history in Ohio and Miami University is known as the Cradle of Coaches. How do you see that shared history shaping the future of sports and education in the region?

Mike Brown
Well, that's a hard one. The one thing I would say the Cradle of Coaches. That's the phrase they use for the history at Miami, where you started with the old army coach--

President Greg Crawford
Red Blaik.

Mike Brown
--was the first one. And then my dad and Weeb Ewbank, the Woody (Hayes) and the Bo (Schembechler), Parseghian, Ara, played for my father's team up at the Browns, that's where I first met him. And these people were quality people, and so were the ones that came on subsequently. It is a question that I have pondered on occasions, why was Miami so successful in producing people who were dominant in the world of football? I don't have a sure answer to that. I just think that Miami helped people be practical, to focus on their jobs, to be intense. That's what a football coaching job requires. You have to be smarter than people think. Maybe not as smart as a physicist, but smart enough, and they are, were rather smart people. I knew a lot of them. I respected all of them. They lived the football life, and that's a strange, different life. It makes you a public figure. You have a lot to contend with, and they were all, in their different ways, capable of doing that as well as anyone in their eras. It's a wonderful story.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah.

Mike Brown
And I think Miami is proud of it, and I'm proud of it.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, no, it's great. It's also just fantastic to see all those names down there. I often run in the mornings at the stadium, and I go by the Cradle of Coaches all the time and just reflect upon them. And one of the things that stands out when you know the history of all these different coaches, including your father, is that they stuck together. You know, they hired each other, they mentored each other. They were really a family. In addition to being great coaches.

Mike Brown
They were connected. My father had connections with all the people I just mentioned, in for example, with Woody. Woody was at Ohio State, and my dad was at Ohio State taking some kind of graduate courses. Woody's room was next to my father's room, and Woody would try to work out in the room, and he would shadow box. And my father, I don't think, thought much of that recited in later years as just a story about Woody and he, but they had these connections. They knew each other, and they didn't work against each other, except on the field, if they were competing. Weeb even my dad competed on the field, but earlier, Weeb and my dad worked together. They did that at Great Lakes. They were teammates on the baseball team at Miami. Weeb was an outfielder. My dad was an outfielder, and you guys probably don't know Weeb anymore. He's gone now, but Weeb was had great success. He coached the Jets and my dad and he competed when they were coaches, but they had a bond that was strained from time to time, but never broken. And they remained friends, close friends, all their lives.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, that's a great story. So looking back, what moments or turning points in Bengal's history stand out as more transformative or innovative for the team and the Cincinnati community?

Mike Brown
I would guess it was how we played a role in bringing the franchise to Cincinnati, building the stadiums that are here on the Riverfront, or were in the case of old Riverfront Stadium, and now Paycor Stadium here. The result of all that was the development of the whole Riverfront. There was a lot that went into all of this. You had seek the support of the politicians of the community. Went to a vote to raise taxes to build this stadium, Paycor Stadium, where we are today, the Riverfront Stadium cost $50 million that seemed like a thunderous amount of money, and today it doesn't seem as it well of course inflation, I don't know. Maybe it would be 10 times that cost or more today, but the cost of these buildings is considerable, keeping them going over a long term is difficult. I could get into the detail, but that'd take this whole thing, so leave it at that.

President Greg Crawford
No, but the Bengals franchise just did an enormous job here with economic development and bringing the Riverfront back, and it's really an exciting time for the city, and kudos to the Bengals for all the effort and input and initiatives that you've done for the City of Cincinnati.

President Greg Crawford
So you shared many stories about your father over the years, but is there one that stands out to you as especially revealing of who he was behind the scenes?

Mike Brown
Well, there are many, and one thing that would show how he was behind the scenes was at league meetings, NFL meetings, they were in those days, held in New York in a small room at the league office where all the owners sat in school chairs, which annoyed them, so that one of them brought in a big old comfortable chair and he wasn't allowed to sit in it. But it was good, because it kept the attendance at the meetings, limited to two per club. You didn't have more family members or others crowding the scene at those meetings. They often had time to gather outside the meeting room. And my father, Edward Bennett Williams, who was a very famous lawyer, one of the old players that was a general manager, would tell stories, and they had different ways of telling their stories. Edward Bennett Williams would impress because he was connected to very prominent people, and sometimes those would be intertwined in the stories. And my dad would just tell his stories very plain, but his way, which was succinct and well presented. And these other owners would all gather around them, and they would be a show, if you would. And it is not a piece of him that you would think was there, but it was. He had a great sense of humor, and he could remember these stories. Very seldom did he repeat one. I don't know how long he could remember all of them or where they came from, but they were there, and people liked him because he was easy to be around. People enjoyed his company, and I had a different relationship. It was Father and Son. Always. He was the boss, and everything was cleared by him before I took the next step. But I'm very grateful for him and having had the opportunity to watch a good part of his life unfold.

President Greg Crawford
That's a great story. So you've had a front row seat to your father's career and the evolution of football. When you think back on those early days, what moments feel the most surreal or meaningful to you?

Mike Brown
Probably what was most meaningful was when we won big games, and we had our share of them. When you talk about surreal, that's a word that I don't use very often. It is hard for me to think of what we were doing as surreal. I thought of it as just winning and losing, being successful or not, but meaningful was when I can get my arms around perhaps a meaningful moment was when my father started the Browns at their first training camp at Bowling Green. He invited Bill Willis to stop by, and he signed bill to play for the old Browns. Bill had played for my dad at Ohio State. And he also, a week later or so, brought in Marion Motley. Marion had played for my dad at at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center during World War II. And they were Black men. That meant nothing to him. All that mattered to him was if you were the best guy, you should get the opportunity to play, and if you were better than the others you would be the starter. That's how it worked in his mind, and that's how he saw those two guys. He knew they were better players, and he knew them both as people. They were good people. He wanted them on his team for that reason too. Well, that broke the color barrier in pro football. It was not something that he thought about as Branch Rickey did with Jackie Robinson, who signed with the Dodgers the following year. Branch Rickey was hugely conscious of the color barrier. My dad thought more in terms of every man has a equal chance at a job. Every man is treated the same as others, not differently. He didn't make much of it beyond that. He didn't promote it as some sort of exceptional activity or difference maker. He just thought that's the way it should be, and that's the way it was going to be for him and his people, and that's what he did. Jim Brown, years later, when my dad was criticized for signing Motley and Bill Willis, for reasons that were did not have to do with racial differences. Said no, that was the exact right reason to sign them. Sign them on the same basis you would do anyone else. Sign them because they were the best people for that job. And that's something that I always have carried in the back of my mind.

President Greg Crawford
It's a great story. So your father was known for being ahead of his time. Was there a particular moment when you sensed he understood he was shaping the future of football?

Mike Brown
He knew he was probably ahead of his rivals. He brought so many things that were new to the game, probably the one that was most meaningful no one ever comments on. He brought the classroom to football. He taught his players off the field in classroom settings and had them take notes, which later evolved into the playbook for football. He was involved in other things, he kept his coaches year round in the off season. Unlike other coaches with other pro teams who would go home or do whatever they did in the off season, his stayed and they broke down plays. What made a play work? What made it not work? Which plays had more success than others? Why? The players the same way every player was judged for every play he played in a game, and that was used not only for player personnel reasons, but he paid players in those days every year. Annually, they were paid based on how they had performed the year before, and it was a system that today would be frowned on, but quite honestly, it paid the players more fairly than any system we've ever had. They were. Paid strictly on performance. And yes, there was a restricted market for them, but the teams paid out money at a rate, at a percentage of their income, comparable or in excess of what they have done with the new system later on.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, so the is there an innovation that your father did in pro football that that that you're most fond of? Is it the draw play? Is it the radio in the helmets? Is there something those famous stories about your father that really, that really, you really warm up to?

Mike Brown
Well, all those are good stories, but let me tell you one that they don't talk about, which was one where he did not succeed. When instant replay came along, Tex Schramm was the one who introduced it at the league meetings, and my father did not agree with it. He thought football was a game played by humans, officiated by humans. They made mistakes. They probably could be corrected in some instances, but in some other instances, the corrections would be wrong. And his view of it was, let the human beings play this game, try to keep the mechanisms that could change it out of the game. And I think he was, in some very real senses, correct, because there's almost too much of this today, instant replay. Did he have control of the ball, or didn't he have control of the ball? Well, you can look, and often you don't know after looking whether he did or he didn't, but they seem to know. Well, good for them, but that's one that always interested me, because of his feelings about that issue.

President Greg Crawford
So university and professional sports teams are both anchor institutions in our communities. How has the Bengals presence influenced Cincinnati's growth, culture, identity, or helped bring the city together beyond the game?

Mike Brown
Well, when we have very good years, of course, there's enthusiasm here in town. The people get involved. They welcome us back if we go to a Super Bowl, and they're all excited about the team. And sometimes I'm struck by how extensive that interest is locally, and it isn't just the people from the suburbs. It's the inner city people, it's everybody, and they all get together, they all celebrate the same thing. Their team succeeded and did well. They were proud of their team. They were proud of their city, and it tends to bring the city together. I enjoy those times quite a bit. The presence of our team in the city has been important in that we played the part I mentioned earlier that resulted in the development of the whole Riverfront. That was back when we needed get a new stadium to keep up with the NFL standards. The new stadium was Paul Brown Stadium, now Paycor Stadium, and it's 25 years old, but the planning took much longer, and stadiums, in my opinion, should be able to last a lot longer than 25 years. We are not a big town. We're a small town by NFL standards. I don't know that this would be the proper town to build a covered dome stadium and have other events. There's competition for that already around the country. There will be more, but I like the fact that we have a fine football stadium. It's good for that purpose, and I'm proud of the stadium and proud of our part in the development of it.

President Greg Crawford
So running a professional football team comes with immense pressure and visibility, much like leading a university. So what parallels do you see in leadership and challenges and opportunities?

Mike Brown
Well, you have. To keep in mind, I was never a university president. I do know that you have your problems too. We do have some parallel things. We have to keep various constituencies supporting our endeavors, and those constituencies range. We have some that are in common. We have the general public that we have to keep informed and supportive. In your case, you have university professors to deal with. You have a board of trustees. Well, we have a board of directors. We solve that one by essentially buying out everybody but family members. You can't do that, but there are things that are, I'm sure, the same. We deal with people. These are institutions that are people, and that's what makes them you have to keep the thinking in line, in the sense that, yes, there are differences, but you can't go too far, and you have to work at trying to keep people focused on what matters most and drive the thing forward in a way that you think is best, if in the long run. That's what I do. I guess it's pretty much what you do.

President Greg Crawford
Exactly, and you've led this franchise for over 50 years, a remarkable tenure in the NFL. What has it taught you about resilience and patience and having a long term perspective?

Mike Brown
We tried to do what's right in the long haul, in as far as patience and resilience. Yes, we're criticized, especially when things don't go well on the field. Well when that happens, part of my job and part of your job is yes, you listen, but you don't get overly sensitive. These people are either emotional and that's understandable, or they're criticizing you because that's part of their job as media people. Accept it, and be patient with it. Keep at what matters, what changes the future for the team as you see it, and don't develop hostility. Try to keep in mind that the good times will come if you just stay at it and be patient. I think there's always criticism in a job like this, just as there is with a university, that not everyone's going to agree with the result, not everyone's going to like you particularly. But you've got your job. Your job is to do it the way you understand it, what you think is right and not be resentful about the thoughts that are critical.

President Greg Crawford
That's great leadership advice. How do you see the connection between athletics and academics in shaping leadership skills in students and in young professionals, both on and off the field?

Mike Brown
Well, athletics are special, in my mind, because they are an activity that you can bring to the campus that is most like what adult life is after you leave school. You're working and competing, trying to make something succeed. And in that effort, you compete internally. You try to succeed internally. You want to eventually be the boss, if you will. You work together, all of you, and not all of you, can be the boss. And yes, I do it this way, he might want to do it that way, but we're going to do it together in a way that we think is best overall. And it's both working together to make the team work as well as it can in working together, but competing internally and competing externally. That's an experience that you don't have in the classroom, really, you do have it in athletics, and I think that's one reason why athletics are helpful. I learn more playing football about people that I learned in the classroom, about people. You saw people under stress. You were under stress. How did they react? All that was in front of you and part of your day. It was a good experience, and I think for that reason, athletics are a wonderful activity. There are other advantages to it as well, but that's one that people don't often focus on.

President Greg Crawford
In Miami and the Bengals have had to adapt to rapidly changing times, from technology and player health to fan and in student engagement. How do you balance innovation with staying true to your organizational core values?

Mike Brown
Well, in my mind, innovation is part of our core value. I love it, we treasure it, and we want to be involved with it. We want to make it work for us and fit it in or fit us in with it. It's always changing. New things come along. It's changing on the football front, how you operate on the field, the different plays. It changes with mechanical things, how they impact the overall way you work. It's never the same over time, and you have to accept that. You have to be glad for it, really. I think we try to do that, and I think it's a way to go about it.

President Greg Crawford
What role do the Bengals play in supporting the next generation, not just athletics, but in education, opportunity, and leadership development?

Mike Brown
One thing we've done that has vanished over time, and people aren't aware of it anymore, if they ever were. There was a time when we pushed the league to provide financing for players to finish their education, to get their degree, to get advanced degrees. We thought that this was an area where we could help guys and fund their that part of their education. Well, that was an idea that was taken over by the league and made part of our collective bargaining agreement with the union, the players union, and today that's where it's embedded. And I think that is a good thing. It gives our guys that are interested in furthering their education financial support to do that. Other examples, Tommy Casanova was a safety for us, a wonderful guy. He wanted to be a doctor. Well, you couldn't be a doctor and play pro football, they said. We said, well, we think we can get that done. And we got him into school. He went to his medical school up at University of Cincinnati, and he took his courses up there, and we allowed him to carve out time from what he was doing in football practice and otherwise to work at his medical degree. he was a successful doctor later in life, and was a very fine citizen down in Louisiana, but that's just an example of how we view that question.

President Greg Crawford
Paul Brown believed football was life's ultimate embodiment of teamwork and competition. How do these values inform the way universities and communities work together today?

Mike Brown
Well, we are all part of our communities, and we want our organization, whatever it be, whether it's a school or a football team, to do something that makes the community better. We probably do different things that we think make the community better than a university does, but the basic goal is the same, and it's something to be conscious of to make your town a better town, a better place to live. And that goes beyond just football in our case, and it goes beyond just classroom work at Miami. It's how we view it well.

President Greg Crawford
Thank you so much, Mike. This was great, and what you have built here in Cincinnati is great. You and the franchise means so much to the state of Ohio, to Cincinnati, and to Miami University. Thank you for your partnerships, and thank you for spending so much time with us today.

Mike Brown
Well, I enjoyed it, and thank you for having me.

President Greg Crawford
Thanks for listening to this episode of "In Such a Place" from Miami University. Stay tuned for more great episodes with more great guests wherever podcasts are found.