Mike Brown – “The Cheapest Man” – Carswellfamilyfoundation

CINCINNATI — Just inside Nancy and Mike Brown’s modest Indian Hill home sits a plate of cookies.

“I didn’t make them,” Mrs. Brown says, giggling, and offers them to me and my photographer, Rob Piper. She admits that she doesn’t really like cooking, but she wants us to have a snack.

Petite and vivacious Nancy Brown greets us and reveals the first of many secrets: she didn’t tell anyone in her family that she agreed to do this interview. When I called her back a few weeks later and asked if she had confessed, she smiled and said, “No. But they probably know.”

The Bengals’ owners have been married for 60 years. How did she do it?

“You’re missing out on a lot,” she said with a smile.

If you do an online search for Nancy Brown, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a photo of her. She doesn’t do interviews (other than this one) and can’t be found in the owner’s box for games. You’ll find her at any number of tailgates around Pacore Stadium.

“I just love interacting with the fans,” Nancy said as she strolled through the last tailgate where we joined her. “I became friends with many of them.”

Nancy says she likes the food and the fanfare. She started walking through the back gate 30 years ago, without security and without an entourage; just her friend Sylvia and everything orange and black on her body.

She quickly goes looking for her friends, the Bengal Twins, the End Zone gang and many others. She met one group many years ago when she walked past their back door and overheard them talking unkindly about her husband.

“I walked by and they were swearing at Mike and not saying anything good about him,” Nancy recalls. “So I went over and said, ‘You’re talking about my husband,’ and tried to convince him that he was a good guy.”

As she did so, she knocked over their pot of chili and said she felt terrible about it.

“I thought, well, this isn’t going to help anything. The next week I came back and brought them gift cards.” Since then they have been friends.

Identical twins Steve and Jeff Nagel, known as the Bengal Twins, love that Nancy joins in on the fun.

“It’s just amazing that she’s here as a regular person, just enjoying other fans, which is fantastic,” Gemini said.

Nancy says she doesn’t think of herself as a team owner when she’s at the tailgate.

“And I almost forgot it was like that,” she said with a smile.

For some away games, she doesn’t board the team plane: she gets on the bus and rides with her teammates.

“One day we went to Chicago. And we won the game, and after we won the game, they picked me up and carried me through the crowd. I don’t think anyone in my family knows about this!” – said Nancy.

And she remembers a trip to Charlotte that she calls a total downpour. “Our bus parked about two miles away and we were walking through the pouring rain to get to the stadium and we were wet and when I got up to the seats with this group,” Ms Brown recalled. “Katie (Brown Blackburn) called me and said, ‘Mom, would you like to stay in our room?’ And I said, “No, unless you want another hundred and twenty-five people to come with me!” I can’t leave these people sitting in the room.” So Mrs. Brown sat in the pouring rain with her friends in the back seat, enjoying the game.

In fact, Nancy says, she very rarely sits in the owner’s box.

“I enjoy spending time outside with the fans,” she said. When I asked her why, she replied, “I don’t want to be special.”

At autograph signings with the team, she stands at the back of the line to get autographs. Even when she is asked to go first, she refuses, saying that she prefers to wait like everyone else.

She told me that she gets very nervous watching games and when they are away she turns off the TV if they lose. She said she watched the AFC Championship Game victory that sent the Bengals to the Super Bowl 500 times.

“It was just such a good feeling,” Nancy said.

When players are nominated for awards voted on by fans, Nancy Brown gets excited.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we’re on the phone and minding our own business, and we vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. I mean, we all vote to try to get them. In fact, one day it was like 2:30 in the morning, I was voting, I don’t know if it could have been Joe Burrow or one of our players that we voted for. I’ll call my people in Wisconsin. I’ll call my people in Arizona, I’ll call my people in Columbus, and they’ll all vote to try to bring in our guy. And we have really, really good results.” – said Nancy.

What does her husband think about this?

“Well, he’s worried about me voting. He says you shouldn’t do this. You’re going to get in trouble,” Nancy said.

Nance spends time each season learning the names and numbers of all the players and holds a special place in her hearts for many, including former running back Joe Mixon.

“Yeah, I cut it out of cardboard in the hallway,” Nancy said, pointing toward the hall outside her dining room. She says the clipping was given to her for her 80th birthday by her granddaughters Elizabeth and Caroline, who now work in the Bengals organization.

She said she was very close to Elizabeth and Caroline.

“I was kind of like a third parent,” she said.

Their mother, Katie Brown Blackburn, and father Troy Blackburn were busy helping run the Bengals franchise, and she joked that “the three of us put together two really great kids.”

She is also close to her two grandchildren from her son Paul and his wife, Michael and Nancy.

“Our whole family is very loving,” Nancy said. “I mean truly and sincerely, we just have a loving family.”

Being married to the owner of the Bengals means that Nancy tolerates negativity towards her husband. She would like to say that it doesn’t hurt, but she admits that it does.

“I can remember some players who did certain things. And you know, their wives said, “Oh, don’t take it personally.” I said, “Well, I’m sorry, I’m taking it personally and it hurts.” ‘”

She said her husband wants nothing more than a Super Bowl for the city.

“What I want most in life: I want to win a Super Bowl for Mike. It would be good for the whole city. It would be good for so many people, and we’ve already lived through it once, this Super Bowl experience, and we know what it does to a city. He brings it to life and if we won, I mean this town would go crazy.”

She says her husband is the most devoted man she knows.

“He is loyal to this city. He is faithful to me. He’s loyal to his family… He’s just a very loyal person. Sometimes this devotion can hurt him.” – said Nancy. I asked her, “But you wouldn’t change it?” Her answer: “No, no, not at all.”

What she wants Bengals fans and Cincinnati residents to know most about her husband is that the Bengals franchise is in Cincinnati because of his behind-the-scenes work.

“Mike likes to protect his father, and I would protect his father too, but I know who did the job. I was there. He wanted his father to return to football. And so he worked on (bringing the team to Cincinnati), and that’s what he did. And that’s why it hurts me so much when I hear people say bad things about him, and then you’re like, “Oh, he’s cheap.” Trust me, he is the cheapest man on the planet. He just does everything anonymously. He doesn’t tell people that he doesn’t want to look important. But you know, we don’t live like that. bright”. – said Nancy.

Secret interview with Bengals owner Nancy Brown