Mike Brown Even Worse Than We Thought

Kimball Perry has published an article that shows Mike Brown is even worse than we thought.  Even while running this site, I always thought he was completely incompetent, but I personally did not buy into the evil Mr. Burns image of Brown.  Not anymore.  This fantastic article puts all of that to rest.  Mike Brown is simply unbelievable. 

This article has so many juicy bits, that there is no way I can form a coherent thought to publish right now.  Please read the article on your own right now.  Like right now.  If your boss tells you to get back to work, tell him or her to read the article.  When you are done with the article read Mike Browns testimony then read Edward Vondenbrink's  testimony.  WDR will have much much more in the coming weeks.  But I will leave you with this, according to the Enqurier's investigation, Mike Brown has made "millions" in "General Manager Bonuses."  Seriously, Mike Brown gets paid a GENERAL MANAGER BONUS. For those of you still not on board with WDR, this better be the final straw and now is the time to join the Revolution, and cancel your season tickets. 

Update:  The Enqurier has another article up addressing the specific issue of Mike Browing receiving a "GM" bonus.  One final point, things like this are the reason why newspapers can not fail.  Detailed investigative journalism of serious local issues is something than can not be done by the national media, "new" media, or anyone else.  WDR salutes Kimball Perry, and the staff at the Enqurier for their fine work.  I have a feeling this story has legs, serious legs.

Comments

[Comrade Robert]

Just when we think this team has run out of ways to shock they manage to do it again.
A GM bonus after a 4 win and a 6 win season.
If that doesn't take a steel pair I don't know what does.

Once again I thank the foolish fan who paid actual cash for my COAs. Sucker.

[Cincyaw14]

Are you doing the billboards again? I think we need more of them and am willing to donate my money to make it happen. God I hate this man

[Inkstained.]

If he were one-third or even one-quarter competent as an owner, I wouldn't mind the money-grubbing and the GM 'bonuses.' Seriously. It would be fine if the team were just occasionally competitive. But this is too much.

There is no one in professional sports who deserves less support. No one.

[Comrade 33]

I would also like to see another billboard campaign this season...however, I think the message should address how Mikey boy is robbing the city. We need to get the attention of all the city, not just the fans, its the only way changes will actually happen. Looking at the numbers, why would Mikey boy change his ways unless he is forced too?

[bobestes]

Pick a new team to root for, or skip the NFL.

These court documents prove that the team exists for one reason only: to employ family members and pay them way way way more money than they'd ever make doing anything else.

Translation: ain't no way, no reason, whatever, for them to sell the team - ever. Shoot, even Pete Brown makes 700k a year in salary. Since they muscled out all of the minority owners, they have no coporate responsibility to run the franchise any differently.

What's particularly galling is that Mike's big bonuses start the year after PB dies. Uh. Yeah. Gross.

[Screw Mike]

GO BEARS!

[Ejm1]

This is why a GM will never be hired, the word is out!! All this time it has just been free money for Mikey!! I thought maybe it was he was just a stuborn asshole but he is a stuborn asshole and a thief!!WOW! We need divine intervention.

[bobestes]

He's not a thief, because it's his franchise. People are giving him that money, willfully.

[Capt. Steve-O]

my fucking head exploded when I read that article. You'd think it would be too outrageous to actually be true. But then again we are dealing with Mikey Boy here.

[TigerJ@w]

MFB will always be a SCUM BAG to the day he dies! Claiming he carried 2 positions and then having the gull to get paid twice just shows you how low this man really will go. When will Cincy fans wake up and quit paying this SCUM BAG??? I could not believe the Judge did not uphold the Lawyer tampering issue since he was hired by the Bengals. Who do you think paid off the judge? That is an easy answer.

[BenzooPeesOnMikeBrown]

Mike Brown is evil but sheep who attend games are idiots. It's better to be a rich evil man that an idiot out several hundred bucks to watch the Bungles get destroyed again.

[ludavince]

i thought the newspaper article was bad, and then i read just a few pages of the court transcripts

'flabbergasted' doesn't give justice to how i feel right now. i'm considering a new team. at this point, i don't care what people think of that either.

[Mockenrue]

I actually spent the last few hours reading not only the article, but the entire transcripts of the court proceedings. I realize that probably very few people other than LeeRoy have done this, so let me sum up the horrors to be found from really piecing the court proceedings together:

Dutch Knowlton owned the second most shares in the company, after the Brown family (which received its majority shares in a shady deal in the early 90s). Knowlton had a charitable foundation to his name, to which he willed his shares (the idea being that when he died, the shares would be passed on charitably). Charles Lindberg was executor of this will, and helped form it. He was also the head of the law firm that the Bengals attorneys come from, and the same law firm that Troy and Katie went to school.

Knowlton was the sole member on the board of trustees before his death who represented his own interests. The Brown family had multiple members on the board. Shareholders in the Bengals receive a certain amount of income on a per-share basis, but this valuation is determined AFTER company expenses are totaled. Salaries and bonuses are some such expenses, and administrative salaries were voted upon by the board of trustees. Which was essentially the Brown family.

The Brown family paid themselves millions of dollars in salaries and millions more in bonuses every single year, to Knowlton's fury. They were then able to pocket this money and call it a company expense, and adjust stock income appropriately. Of course, the Brown family would also receive this income per-stock, essentially earning two salaries. The more they paid themselves in salary and bonuses, the less they would have to value the stock, and thus they would keep more of the money for themselves, and pay less to Knowlton.

This dropped Knowlton's income significantly, even by $5 million between 2001 and 2002, to the point at which he was in danger of losing his charitable foundation. He began to make terrible business/financial decisions of the sort that didn't make any sense for someone who had always been a prudent businessman. These decisions were encouraged by Lindberg. When Knowlton died, his shares in the Bengals went into his charitable foundation, which Lindberg then controlled. Lindberg then could give or sell the shares to anyone at any price, and so sold them to the Brown family at vastly below market value to give them a super-majority of shares in the Bengals. The Brown family then called a board meeting (read: Brown family hoo-hah) and voted to exclude all non-Brown family members from the board of trustees, preventing any opposition votes whatsoever, and allowing them to increase their own salaries at will to the detriment of minority shareholders.

Lindberg presumably is well-paid by the Bengals for his association with their legal issues, and I'd imagine pissing off Mike Brown isn't a good idea in that situation. Knowlton's family has received nothing whatsoever of his once 42% of the Bengals.

Note also that when the article said Mike Brown refused to answer questions about his or the Bengals' finances, he was actually claiming ignorance. He claimed to not remember much of anything when it was convenient, citing that these events were a decade ago. He'd then start to tell a story with crystal-clear memory about what it was like in the 60s. The lawyer present (representing Lindberg, I believe, and not Brown or the Bengals directly) was adamant in attempting to dismiss any and all questioning into the Bengals management of finances or that of the Brown family.

Super-duper short version:

-Mike Brown pays himself and his progeny whatever he wants to
-Other shareholders get boned
-Mike Brown's lawyers swindled the shares he owns now
-Mike Brown will pretend he doesn't know a thing about any of this, even under oath
-That stadium deal sucked some cockadooky

[Vladidouche Lenin]

It's been about 5 months since I've posted here, but law school has taken its toll.

I've learned three things:

1.) I hate civil procedure

2.) Palsgraff is the ultimate Torts case

3.) Judge Bill Young should be appointed to the SCOTUS and Charles Lindberg should be disbarred.

viva.

[Leeroy Jenkins]

Mockenrue:

Fantastic summary. One thing I want to point out, Dutch Knowlton's kids lost at trial and on appeal. I am not sure I buy their story and that Lindbergh helped swindle them away from Knowlton's estate. But I do know that the amount of money the Brown's made while claiming poverty in order to extort voters to pass the sales tax is unethical. I do know that if the Bengals decided not to pay themselves 5 million dollars a year in salary they could afford to pay REAL FOOTBALL PEOPLE salaries, and then would probably make MORE MONEY in profits.

I feel like I am taking crazy pills when I read this. The Browns are so secretive about who does what, and how much money they make. No one cares if they make money. We just want them to put forth an honest effort. I think everyone agrees, that if Mike Brown put out Super Bowl caliber teams ever year, we would be happy with him making huge profits.

Vladidouche: I personally prefer the Wagon Mound cases in torts. Judge Bill Young is a hero and a patriot.

[bobestes]

All together, now. The Cincinnati Bengals' first priority is to make money for the Brown family. Second priority is to win games. These transcripts prove that #2 will be sacrificed for #1 every single time.

What infuriates me, is that I still see the same number of jerseys, the same number of stories of fans renewing their PSLs. The beat goes on.

Oh, and Hamilton county is close to bankrupt. Whee.

[bobestes]

Oh, remember folks, Mike Brown didn't get rich (GM bonuses) until after his dad passed away. He wasn't even cold in the ground before MB jumped all over that to pay himself millions of dollars.

[KTRB]

I've seen the man's house and although he lives in Indian Hill, he still has window units for A/C and drives a free '85 Buick Century. What the fuck is he doing with all the loot?
Hopefully, soon we'll find out he lost it all in the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme. That would make my year.

[Vladidouche Lenin]

either Mike Brown is committing perjury or he is unbelievably stupid.

how does he not "think in terms of titles"

how does he not know whether you can buy a bengals t-shirt on the internet, my 93 year old grandfather checks his checking account online.

[Delta5243]

lets please bring the billboards back !!! with quotes from this case !!!

[Ejm1]

He must be stopped.

[BenzooPeesOnMikeBrown]

There should be a party when he finally kicks the bucket.

[Mockenrue]

"either Mike Brown is committing perjury or he is unbelievably stupid."

I think the former. I'm sure he realizes that at his age in a situation in which he is a witness but not a defendant, he can feign ignorance to anything he wants and not be charged. How can you prove he is committing perjury?

I don't believe Mike Brown is unbelievably stupid in regards to anything other than running an NFL football team. He knows what he's doing and he knows he's got taxpayers by the balls. And he loves it. God help us if Katie inherited the supervillain gene.

[BMN]

Billboards are definitely an order and I will pay my share.

The fans need to be educated on this. This isn't the typical sports fan whining about being bitter that some guys in their hometown uniforms don't win games. This is about fans paying a lot of money to watch a product that is WILLFULLY run incorrectly. Not accidentally, willfully.

The next series of billboards needs to go beyond "oh, isn't Mike Brown terrible as a GM (which we can now all safely call him)," they need to clearly articulate: MIKE BROWN IS A CHARLATAN. No more and no less. There is no point in treating him as a decent guy who happens to fail. He is a charlatan. Period.

[mikeinmi]

Where is the update on the stories of the day? They didn't pan over the crowd on the draft and I couldn't hear the "Draft a GM" chant, did it happen?
And I think the picks were great and addressed two huge needs. Could this team actually have some of the pieces to accidentally start winning again?

[WCH]

If you have an vestments in the Bengals, you are ok with anything that Mikey Boy Brown is doing as he has taken over a team valued at 100 million or so when his old man bowed out and brought its worth up (through very little action of his own -- and perhapes more importantly, not doing much to screw it up either) 900%+.

Can't argue that. Winning for MBB is profiting, not trophies.

[Matthew Heck]

Here is a post that I replied to on Cincinnati.com on this article.

[QUOTE]1. I support the Bengals the owner is Mike Brown He pays himself a salary. Who wouldn't wants to work for free? 2. If anyone one of you owned your own business and had a bad year/s would you turn back your salary I don't think so! Please[/QUOTE]

I have no qualms about Mr. Brown paying himself a salary. It beats having to withdraw capital that would not be deductable. However, the bigger problem is the bonus the Mr. Brown gave himself after the two worst seasons in Bengals history. The bonuses the Brown family recieved are greater than their salaries for the entire year. A bonus should be a reward for good performance of the organization. To Mr. Brown, a good performance is having more revenue year after year. To fans that are offended with the bonuses, a good performance is having a winning season (with or without playoffs that year) or obtaining more wins than the prior season.

I'll pay double for a billboard next year. Photoshop a picture of Mikey boy with Madoff.

[BMN]

One idea would be to total the estimate of bonuses Mikey drew as GM and enter it on the billboard, something like:

"$___ million in BONUSES? GIVE IT BACK!!!"

[Mockenrue]

"Where is the update on the stories of the day? They didn't pan over the crowd on the draft and I couldn't hear the "Draft a GM" chant, did it happen?
And I think the picks were great and addressed two huge needs. Could this team actually have some of the pieces to accidentally start winning again?"

mikeinmi -

The WDR boys haven't posted about Day 1 of the draft presumably because they were there. I know if I had been present in New York for draft day and the whole affair that went with it, I would be unlikely to get a thoughtful analysis of the Bengals' draft so far up by the end of the day. Also, the crowd wasn't really shown for anything other than the Jets deal. Anything that happened with the Bengals at number 6 (taking who everyone thought they would) would have seemed tame by comparison. I think if Mike Brown had drafted Beanie Wells or, you know, Darrius Heyward-Bey in the top 10, you might have heard something.

As for grading the picks, I think there are some question marks for sure. There was even a brief piece on NFL Total Access immediately after the conclusion of round 2 called "Bengals character issues?" With Eugene Monroe still on the board, the Bengals took the bigger but riskier guy in Andre Smith. Ok, sure, he could turn out to be great. But he could also be the next Levi Jones - possessing the tools but too lazy and undisciplined to use them. As for Maualuga, I was as surprised as anyone to see him fall to the Bengals. On paper it looks like a great deal. But according to Steve Wyche, who'd talked to the war rooms of many teams, Rey Maualuga fell because there were "non-medical red flags that teams saw."

So we took a guy who dropped on other teams' draft boards because of character issues. When have you heard that before? Every other team knew to stay away despite the potential, but not Our Redeemer. And of course, by taking Maualuga, we missed out on a guy like Max Unger (who would fill the need at center but could also easily be shifted to guard). Also, who is Maualuga going to replace? Keith Rivers is obviously going to be starting. The Bengals seem really high on Rashad Jeanty, though I'm not sure I see it. Dhani Jones is aging, yes, but is actually very productive. Can Maualuga match that production from day one? If not, then you have to look at it as a missed pick, I think.

Of course, time will tell on all of this. Again though, while it looks like they got a couple good picks in, a little investigation reveals that it is just the same old dance of drafting guys with concerns. This could be looked at as one of the Bengals' best drafts. It could also be 2005 redux. Cross your fingers for Day 2.

[Zeek]

resending the letters may be a good idea with this new evidence

[Brian]

this is news? people are surprised by this? if the headline was: "Mike Brown is responsible for all the evil in the world. And he rapes puppies." then i would be surprised. but this is just an article about how he is a selfish prick. WDR may as well start posting the weather because that article shouldn't have been news to anyone.

we are all suckers.