Dolphins Owner Stephen Ross has “hit a comfortable stride as an NFL owner,” according to Armando Salguero of the MIAMI HERALD. Ross’ true agenda and feelings “are showing more clearly now,” and they “reflect an owner who has learned some hard lessons and now is doing a good job.” It “wasn’t that long ago that Dolphins fans would cringe at the idea of Ross being the team’s owner.” Dolphins CEO Mike Dee said, “If fans knew him, they’d know he wants what they want.” Salguero notes Ross, after hiring head coach Joe Philbin in March, “called the coach, general manager Jeff Ireland, Dee and Matt Higgins, who is starting a sports company for Ross, to his house in Palm Beach.” Ross “convened what some fondly call the Berlin Wall meeting.” He “told everyone he didn’t like the way the Dolphins had been doing business.” He said that the “Kremlin mentality of secrecy at all costs had to cease.” Ross wanted the Dolphins to be “as transparent with fans as possible as long as it didn’t hinder the team’s competitive edge.” This meeting is where the “so-called transparency the Dolphins embraced this season was born.” Ross “decided that if he was asking employees to be more transparent, he should do his part and also connect more.” So when unhappy fans “picketed outside the team’s training facility, he called some of them on the phone.” When the Dolphins opened the season at home and offered every fan a commemorative cap, Ross "stood at one of the gates and personally handed out hats.” He did this “even when people who work for him told him it might be a bad idea to expose himself to the public and to criticism” (MIAMI HERALD, 11/9).
