NEW ORLEANS — Steve Bisciotti is wearing a plaid sports jacket, crisp checkered shirt and multicolored pocket square. Sunglasses hang from the jacket pocket, and the Super Bowl ring he earned 12 years earlier sits heavily and prominently on his right hand.
Bisciotti, the 52-year-old owner of the Baltimore Ravens, doesn’t like to talk about himself and is rarely seen around the team complex. Yet on Thursday, three days before one of the most important days of his life, he agreed to an interview with several reporters.
When the Ravens won their only Super Bowl in 2001, majority owner Art Modell proudly thrust the trophy into the air to celebrate. Bisciotti, who had purchased a small portion of the team a few months earlier, had little involvement in the formal proceedings.
He was more of a fan. He rented a tent, hired a band and arranged to take 250 friends with him to Tampa.
Bisciotti gained majority ownership in 2004 and has since been doing his best to get Baltimore back in the Super Bowl. The moment has arrived, and if the Ravens beat the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, Bisciotti will be on the podium as the confetti falls from the roof of the Superdome.
“The last time, I was kind of a fly on the wall for the whole experience. It was still Art’s team,” Bisciotti said. “It’s a lot different this time. (Senior vice president) Kevin Byrne wasn’t dragging me around making me do interviews 12 years ago.”
After the Ravens beat the New York Giants 34-7 in that Super Bowl long ago, Bisciotti figured it would only be a short while before more titles.
“It was a great thrill,” he said, “but like Cal Ripken in his second year, you think, ‘Boy, this is pretty cool.’ Then, here we are 12 years later before we’ve got a chance to do it again, and all we’ve done is gotten here. The last time, we won it. It’s certainly not going to be fulfilled if we don’t win it.”
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