This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/bassnbrats on 2026-01-20 12:35:08+00:00.
With Sean McDermot getting fired from the Buffalo Bills yesterday, the NFL will now see 10 novel head coaches-team pairings in the 2026 season. Four of the head coach openings have been filled as of this post (NY Giants - John Harbaugh, Atlanta Falcons - Kevin Stefanski, Miami Dolphins - Jeff Hafley, Tennessee Titans - Robert Saleh).
Journalism concerning coaching searches leads us to believe that the owners of NFL teams almost always play a significant role in the process, and their personal preferences for candidates may override those of the personnel that spearhead their organizations’ administration of the search. Moreover, head coaches’ roles go well beyond X’s and O’s: they are managers of players, coaches, communications, non-football personnel, etc., it seems useful then to critically look at whether the owners of NFL teams wield the necessary resume to evaluate employees such as Head Coaches.
In this sense, evaluating the backgrounds of the owners themselves is a worthy enterprise, at the very least to determine whether their professional background lends themselves to choosing high-level managers. Owners are the highest-authority decision makers for their organizations, and it is informative to know how they obtained this authority as well as whether their previous professional experiences contribute to them being able to effectively evaluate management personnel like head coaches. An underlying premise of such a study is that while the owners’ billions of dollars of assets allows them power over their franchises, many of them earned this power in different ways. (None of the above implies that the owners are dumb - their different education profiles vary greatly and are worthy of attention beyond this Reddit post, ideally by someone else more interested in the topic). Understanding how individual owners acquired their power may also lend insight into their willingness to risk investing financial resources on coaching staff (again, there are caveats to this assumption - Mark Davis gave Chip Kelley the highest salary for any Offensive coordinator last year, for example, thanks to a surge of recent outside financial investment in the Raiders organization).
The below analysis serves as a general comparison of the 32 different owners, specifically as to how they managed to become owners. They are divided into 3 categories that correspond to how they obtained final authority over decisions about their respective franchises:
- NOT A NEPO BABY: These owners amassed the financial capital necessary to own an NFL team from relatively modest means in which they did not inherit massive wealth. For example, starting a company with limited outside investment.
- NEPO BABY: These owners inherited the massive financial capital necessary to own an NFL team.
- NFL NEPO BABY: These owners inherited the NFL teams from their parents who previously served as owner.
The biographies of each owner are pulled from Wikipedia - mostly copied and pasted, with some minor changes to make the prose more legible. The lengths of the biographies differ according to the relevance of their categorization; they are consequently longer for “NOT A NEPO BABY” versus “NFL NEPO BABY”, since the latter category is relatively easy to explain (that is to say, I imposed a necessary amount of editorial discretion with the biographies).
[If you see some important context that may be missing, let me know in the comments - I will try to edit any issues as I see them.]
Final Results:
NOT A NEPO BABY: 11 owners
NEPO BABY: 7 owners
NFL NEPO BABY: 14 owners
AFC EAST:
Buffalo Bills: After working for a time for Getty Oil and Felmont Oil Co., Terry Pegula founded East Resources, a natural gas drilling company, with $7,500 from family and friends in 1983. It profited heavily upon discovery of deep layers of natural gas in the Marcellus Formation and application of the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) recovery process.
Analysis: NOT A NEPO BABY
New England Patriots: Robert Kraft began his professional career with the Rand-Whitney Group, a Worcester-based packaging company run by his father-in-law Jacob Hiatt. In 1968, he gained control of the company through a leveraged buyout, In 1988, Kraft had amassed enough capital to outbid several competitors to buy the stadium out of bankruptcy court from Sullivan for $22 million. In 1994, Kraft launched what amounted to a hostile takeover, offering $172 million for an outright purchase.
Analysis: NOT A NEPO BABY (Even though he inherited his first job from family at the beginning of his professional career).
Miami Dolphins: Stephen Ross began his career as a tax attorney at Coopers & Lybrand in Detroit. In 1968, he moved to New York City and accepted a position as an assistant vice president in the real estate subsidiary of Laird Inc., then worked in the corporate finance department of Bear Stearns. In 1972, he was fired from that company after clashing with a superior; living off $10,000 ($67,000 in 2021 dollars) lent to him by his mother, he utilized his federal tax law knowledge to organize deals for wealthy investors, allowing them to shelter income with the generous incentives granted by the federal government to promote the construction of federally subsidized affordable housing.
Ross was very successful, earning $150,000 in his first year, and he was soon arranging more complicated transactions.
In February 2008, Ross bought 50% of the Miami Dolphins franchise, Dolphin Stadium (now known as Hard Rock Stadium), and surrounding land from then-owner Wayne Huizenga for $550 million, with an agreement to later become the Dolphins’ managing general partner. On January 20, 2009, Ross closed on the purchase of an additional 45% of the team from Huizenga. The total value of the deal was $1.1 billion.
Analysis: Received extraordinary financial help from family at the beginning of his professional career, but ultimately NOT A NEPO BABY.
New York Jets: Robert Wood Johnson was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the son of Betty Johnson and Robert Wood Johnson III, and the great-grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I, who founded the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company, along with his brothers James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson.
In January 2000, Woody Johnson purchased the New York Jets from the estate of Leon Hess for $635 million.
Analysis: NEPO BABY
AFC NORTH
Baltimore Ravens: Steve Bisciotti was born on April 10, 1960, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the youngest of three children in a middle class Italian-American family. In 1961, his parents, Bernard and Patricia Bisciotti, moved the family to Severna Park, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, for his father’s job as a construction sales executive.
In 1983, he and his cousin Jim Davis started Aerotek, a staffing company in the aerospace and technology sectors. Running the company out of a basement office with secondhand equipment, Bisciotti and Davis produced $1.5 million in sales in the first year. Aerotek grew into the Allegis Group, which is now the largest privately held staffing firm in the world.
Analysis: NOT A NEPO BABY
Cincinnati Bengals: Mike Brown is the only living son of Paul Brown, who co-founded the team in 1968.
Analysis: NFL NEPO BABY
Cleveland Browns: James Arthur Haslam III’s father Jim Haslam founded the Pilot Corporation in 1958 as the Pilot Oil Corporation. Haslam began his career at Pilot Corporation in 1976. In 1980, Haslam was named vice president of sales, development and operations. In 2012, he reached an agreement with Browns owner Randy Lerner to purchase the franchise for $1 billion.
Analysis: NEPO BABY
Pittsburgh Steelers: The Steelers, whose history may be traced to a regional pro team that was established in the early 1920s, joined the NFL as the Pittsburgh Pirates on July 8, 1933. The team was owned by Art Rooney and took its original name from the baseball team of the same name, as was common practice for NFL teams at the time. To distinguish them from the baseball team, local media took to calling the football team the Rooneymen, an unofficial nickname that persisted for decades after the team had adopted its current nickname. The ownership of the Steelers has remained within the Rooney family since the organization’s founding. Art Rooney’s son, Dan Rooney, owned the team from 1988 until his death in 2017. Much control of the franchise has been given to Dan Rooney’s son, Art Rooney II.
Analysis: NFL NEPO BABY
AFC SOUTH
Houston Texans: Cal McNair was born in Houston, Texas, on October 24, 1961, to Bob McNair and Janice McNair. After Bob McNair died in November 2018, Janice succeeded her husband as principal owner, while Cal took over the franchise’s day-to-day operations. He was officially made chief executive officer in January 2019.On March 26, 2024, McNair succeeded his mother as principal owner of the Texans.
Analysis: NFL NEPO BABY
Indianapolis Colts: Carlie Irsay-Gordon first worked for the Colts in the ticket office and was subsequently involved in the marketing department and the strategies used by the sales team and ticket office. Irsay-Gordon has represented the team at ownership meetings since 2004, and inherited ownership of the Colts from her father Jim Irsay in 2024.
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