He’ll be just one of two Black team presidents in the entire league!
The Baltimore Ravens have named their new team president, Hampton University alumnus Sashi Brown, The Baltimore Sun reports.
Brown holds an undergraduate degree from Hampton, going on to graduate from Harvard Law School before getting his start as an attorney in 2002 at Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr, a Washington law firm run by former Ravens president Dick Cass. There, Brown represented clients in sports-related transactions, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital and private-equity deals, among other things. Cass would continue to help Brown over the years, recommending him for a senior VP and general counsel job with the Jacksonville Jaguars, where he served for eight years. Now, Cass has announced his retirement as Ravens team president, after a remarkable 18-year run. The team recently announced that Brown will take his place.
After his stint with the Jaguars, Brown was hired by the Cleveland Browns in 2013 as executive vice president and general counsel, where he worked on the football and business side, overseeing the roster and salary cap, directing the team’s football admin functions and negotiating contracts among other things. In 2016, he was promoted to executive vp of football operations, a position Cass thought he was a good fit for.
“He’s always had good judgment. He’s easy to get along with and he’s a consensus builder. Good temperament. Doesn’t fly off the handle. He’s well-suited for the Browns’ job, I think – all of those qualities will serve him well,” Cass previously told NFL.com in an interview.
The Browns would unfortunately have a dismal 1-27 season, Brown being fired in December 2017. However, Brown was critical in helping transform the team’s personnel, stockpiling picks and creating more salary cap space than any other team in the league, decisions that the Browns are still benefiting from, the team going 32-32-1 in the four seasons since he was fired, securing their first playoff appearance since 2002, and winning the team’s first playoff game since 1994.
Former Browns safety Jabrill Peppers spoke about Brown’s contributions to the team when he was there, saying, “[Sashi] definitely did a good job of getting the picks, getting the cap to where he got it to, to where you can go out and get any player you want…It takes a lot of patience that I don’t think a lot of people have. But they are reaping the fruits of his labor now, even though they don’t want to attribute it to him. He definitely has a big part of what’s going on there.”
Brown would go on to expand his footprint to basketball, taking a position with The Washington Wizards as president of Monumental Basketball and special advisor to Wizards owner Ted Leonsis, handling operations for the Wizards, WNBA’s Mystics, and Capital City Go-Go, the NBA’s G League affiliate. Just three months ago, Brown was offered a multiyear extension from Monumental, the Boston native turning that down for his new position with the Ravens.
In his new role as team president, he will oversee all business affairs for the team, including finances, budgeting, non-football personnel, corporate sales, operations, communications and possible business ventures. Brown is set to take over as president this March.
Photo Courtesy of Ron Schwane/Associated Press