Talk About Overpaid: Mike Brown Paid More Than Dan Rooney

If the Bengals needed any more evidence that Mike Brown is lining his pockets at the expense of the team's success, here it is.

Mike Brown is one of the worst owners in the NFL. Dan Rooney is one of the best, but guess which one gets paid more?

As has been reported for a while, Mike Brown has made a bonus of at least $1 million in each of the past 18 years on top of his salary. Brown and four other members of his family earn salaries of at least $700,000 a year. Altogether the family received $50 million from 1994-2000.

Those salaries are for running one of the most inept franchises in football. The Bengals have had one winning season in Brown's 18 years of running the club. On the other hand, Rooney has made $2.2 million over the past year and a half, which became public when he accepted the ambassador post to Ireland. To break that into a yearly salary it's $1.5 million. He will get a little less than $1 million as severance as he heads overseas.

It's hard not to feel for Bengals' fans. They're stuck with an owner much more concerned with cashing checks and running a jobs program for his family than with winning football games. There are other Rooneys who work in the Steelers front office as well (Art Rooney II and Art Rooney Jr. both work on the staff), but the team's football operations are run by Kevin Colbert and contracts are negotiated by Omar Kahn. With the Bengals, most decisions are kept all in the family.