6-Feb-2012 - Three Football Families, Linked by Philosophies

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When Kraft moved home to Boston for graduate school, the nascent Patriots were blacked out. So he and his wife, Myra, pregnant with their first child, Jonathan, settled in for a long, happy marriage and more Giants games, watching great teams and unsightly ones. But by the time Kraft, having changed his allegiance and become a Patriots season-ticket holder, was ready to buy the foundering franchise more than NFL jerseys china three decades later, he studied two teams: the San Francisco 49ers, who dominated the 1980s and early 1990s, and the Giants. Bob Tisch, a Kraft family friend who bought 50 percent of the Giants in 1991 to join with the Mara family as equal partners, advised Kraft not to take on limited partners if he could avoid it. Kraft listened, but he was also intrigued by the way the Giants had created an intense fan loyalty and a deep base of season-ticket holders. On Sunday, 50 years after the Giants first entertained a young Kraft, the Giants and the Patriots — their entanglement stretching through generations and championships, shared philosophy and similar results — will be together again, facing off in the Super Bowl. The winner will take home the fourth Lombardi Trophy in its franchise’s history. On the field, the game is a rematch of the 2008 Super Bowl, with the potential for revenge for the Giants’ stunning upset of the undefeated Patriots. But off the field, it is a demonstration of how three families — the Krafts in New England, the Maras and the Tisches in New York — close enough to share celebrations and sorrows, have shown again that the most successful way to run a team is by providing continuity. “We’re all trying to emulate the Patriots,” said John Mara, the president of the Giants, during a 40-minute conversation Thursday with Steve Tisch, the Giants’ chairman, and Robert and Jonathan Kraft. “They have solid ownership and a solid organization underneath that owner. The franchises that impulsively make changes year after year don’t succeed in the long run. You have to hire the right people and give them a chance to do their jobs and stay with them. And ride the ups and downs. They haven’t had many downs. We’ve had a few.” “We had one pretty big down,” Kraft interrupted, alluding to the Super Bowl loss. “18-1 is not so bad,” Mara replied. “I would have taken 17-3,” Kraft said, sighing, his questionable math not masking that he would have traded a few regular-season defeats for a Super NFL JERSEYS Bowl victory. The N.F.L. is designed to promote family ownership. Its rules prohibit corporations from purchasing teams and encourage the passage of franchises from one generation to the next. Robert Kraft bought his team in 1994, and Jonathan has been a Patriots executive since. The Maras have owned the Giants since 1925, when Tim Mara paid — according to legend — 500 for a team in the budding N.F.L. In 1991, Preston Robert Tisch, a hotel magnate and former United States postmaster general, bought 50 percent of the team, forming a rare partnership with his friend Wellington Mara. They died within weeks of each other in 2005, and when Tisch’s son Steve began attending owners’ meetings, Kraft told him: “I love your dad. I love your family. I’m going to be your guy here.” The relationship between John Mara and Steve Tisch and his brother, Jonathan, like that between their fathers, has been so free of conflict that Mara said he never once had to refer to the operating agreement that was hammered out in 1991. “That’s great,” Kraft said. Of Steve Tisch, Mara said: “The nfl headset only conflict we had was when he came in, he promised me a part in one of his movies. He has not delivered on that yet.” “But we offered it to Tom Hanks,” replied Tisch, who won an Academy Award as the producer of “Forrest Gump.” Family ownership has been so successful because as Commissioner Roger Goodell said: “It represents the total commitment of the family in that business — and in many cases, the single purpose: football. I think that has been terrific for the league over the years, and you see that kind of continuity and that kind of partnership in this game. The Kraft family, the Mara family, the Tisch family — they’re competitors on the field and partners off the field.”

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