Moag

The Maryland Stadium Authority withdrew a request yesterday that the state pay $253,000 for a 40-foot-tall raven that is to perch above the Ravens' new downtown football stadium.The authority approved the contract with a Rhode Island firm last week but withdrew it before the state Board of Public Works considered it at its meeting yesterday.John Moag, chairman of the stadium authority, said the Ravens are working to find a corporation to pay for the statue."The Ravens haven't lined up their sponsorship yet," Moag said.

John Andrew Moag Sr., a retired CSX executive who volunteered at St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church and the Franciscan Sisters, died Tuesday from complications of a stroke at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The Blakehurst retirement community resident was 80. Born in Detroit and raised in Chicago, Mr. Moag was a 1949 graduate of St. Norbert High School in DePere, Wis. He served in the Army in Heidelberg, Germany, in internal affairs and, after being discharged in 1954, went to work in the mailroom of the Illinois Central Railroad in Chicago.

In Annapolis yesterday, Gov. Parris N. Glendening named two new members to the Maryland Stadium Authority, including its new chairman. He also made it clear that he and the Stadium Authority members fully back Orioles owner Peter Angelos' opposition to fielding replacement players if the major league baseball strike continues."

Joan C. Moag, a family matriarch who started a successful home wallpapering business on a whim, died of complications of cancer and Alzheimer's disease Monday at the Blakehurst Retirement Community. She was 78 and had lived in Tuscany-Canterbury. Born Joan Swanson in Chicago, she attended Aquinas High School and Loyola University of Chicago. She married John Andrew Moag, a neighbor who lived on the same block, in 1953. They spent their honeymoon in Paris and lived for a year in Heidelberg, Germany, where he was stationed with the Army.

Although he acknowledged contact with both the Chicago Bears and Houston Oilers in recent months, Maryland Stadium Authority chairman John Moag said he does not consider either team a likely candidate for relocation to Baltimore.Both teams have said they need to improve their stadiums and would consider moving if necessary. Bears officials have said their first choice is the Chicago area, but they have considered two other cities they would not name.Oilers owner Bud Adams has signed an exclusive negotiating agreement with Nashville, Tenn.

He was hired to do a job.John Moag did it too well.Get a football team, that was his mission. Get a football team, the best one available. Get a football team, no questions asked.Moag got a football team, all right.Not a team with a sorry history.Not a team with a despicable owner.No, John Moag got the Cleveland Browns.He didn't anticipate the local uproar, or the national uproar, but the furor will pass, and his stature will only rise.Imagine if the Browns make the Super Bowl in five or 10 years.

You want to bet against him, bet against him. The new football stadium at Camden Yards is testament to John Moag's fighting spirit. And this time, he is not alone.Moag is merely one of the heavy hitters trying to secure the 2012 Olympics for Baltimore and Washington. Chances are it will never happen. But the last time people bet against Moag, he stole the Cleveland Browns."Objectively, in a lot of respects, I'm more confident about this," said Moag, one of the Baltimore board members appointed by Mayor Schmoke to join the consolidated organizing committee preparing the Olympic bid."

CHICAGO -- It's over, we're getting a team, but right to the end, the NFL tried to stick it to us. As late as yesterday, league officials wanted Baltimore to wait for an expansion team so the Browns could remain in Cleveland.John Moag just said no."It didn't get heated," said Moag, chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority, "but I was pretty adamant that the team would play in Baltimore, that we weren't going to wait."Moag was leaning against a wall outside a ballroom at the O'Hare Hilton last night, looking tired and worn while Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White stood at a podium inside, proclaiming victory for his city.

The man who negotiated the deal that brought the Browns to Baltimore told Pennsylvania lawmakers this week that the NFL's new television contracts mean teams should pay more of the cost of stadium construction."

John Moag was eating lunch at a downtown Baltimore restaurant yesterday when he was asked about his relationship with the Modells."I'm a fan of the Ravens," Moag said, looking away, declining to elaborate on Ravens owner Art Modell and his son, team president David Modell.Moag, former chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority, forged a seemingly impenetrable bond with the Modells when he orchestrated the Browns' move from Cleveland to Baltimore after the 1995 season.But four years later, the Ravens have lost 33 of 50 games, while two other teams that Moag pursued, the Arizona Cardinals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, have made the playoffs.

After 11 straight losing seasons, the Orioles might struggle to fill Camden Yards in any economy. This year, they'll try to sell a struggling product in the bleakest financial climate since the Great Depression. "If you don't have a strong-performing team, you're in a really vulnerable situation," said John Moag, chairman of Moag & Co., a Baltimore-based investment banking firm that focuses on sports. "That hasn't been the case in past recessions." Orioles officials say that with the season opening today at Camden Yards, it's too early to know how much they'll be hurt by the recession.

Can a women's professional basketball team make it in Baltimore? "Absolutely," said Brenda Frese, coach of the University of Maryland women's basketball team. "Won't happen," said John Moag, former Maryland Stadium Authority chairman. Frese and Moag represent divergent opinions in the wake of Thursday's announcement by Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon that the WNBA has told her a franchise could settle here if the city builds an arena. Get in line, Baltimore. "I'm really encouraged by all of the cities we are currently engaged with that really have serious interest in the WNBA," league president Donna Orender told ESPN on Thursday night.

As baseball moves toward the World Series, the Orioles are mere spectators again after completing a 10th straight losing season and finishing with the second-worst average attendance in their 16 years at Camden Yards. But if you think those failures on the field and at the box office have diminished the franchise's value, think again. Because of the excellent fiscal health of Major League Baseball, the creation of the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network by Orioles owner Peter Angelos and the league, and the continuing adoration for Camden Yards, the Orioles are worth more than ever before, investment bankers and financial analysts say. The team is valued at about $400 million, says John A. Moag, president of Moag and Co., a Baltimore-based investment banking firm that specializes in sports transactions.

When potential ownership groups travel to New York to inspect the financial records of the Washington Nationals, they will be confronted with reams of documents and mountains of figures. But it's the figure they won't see - can't see because it doesn't exist yet - that may be the most important of all. How much revenue the Nationals will get from their local television deal remains a huge question mark. And negotiations between Major League Baseball and Peter Angelos over how the Orioles will be financially protected from competition in the market for the first time in 34 years are dragging toward their fourth month.

After four years heading the Maryland Stadium Authority, John Brown is on the way out, and personnel company executive Carl Wright is expected to replace him as chairman. Wright, 48, chaired the Ehrlich-Steele Inaugural Committee and was nominated last month by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. for the unpaid, patronage post. Federal Hill resident Bob McKinney, 52, will join Wright as the other newcomer to the agency's board, replacing F. Vernon Boozer. The appointments got preliminary approval earlier this week from a Senate committee.

John Moag, who in 1995 persuaded the Cleveland Browns to move to Baltimore, where they were renamed the Ravens, has left Legg Mason Wood Walker to start his own firm. "This is something I've always wanted to do, to own my own company," said Moag, 47, whose eight-employee Moag and Co., devoted to sports finance, was to open today. As the volunteer chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority from 1995 to 1998, Moag negotiated the relocation of the NFL Browns franchise and oversaw the construction of PSINet Stadium.

In Annapolis yesterday, Gov. Parris N. Glendening named two new members to the Maryland Stadium Authority, including its new chairman. He also made it clear that he and the Stadium Authority members fully back Orioles owner Peter Angelos' opposition to fielding replacement players if the major league baseball strike continues."

If John Moag has a signed document in his back pocket that will bring an NFL team to Baltimore, he's not spreading the good news, but is classifying it top secret and keeping it under the cover of confidentiality -- presumably until the season is over.It's a case of another lawyer maintaining his own counsel. Moag, chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority, is right in not showing his hand.Reports have circulated that a deal has been put in writing that will lead to an existing NFL franchise coming to Baltimore.

When Casper R. Taylor Jr. was attending a meeting in February 1996 on state police helicopters at Martin State Airport, he had more pressing issues on his mind. Inside a modest office in a cavernous hangar in Middle River, the powerful speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates delivered an ultimatum to John A. Moag Jr., chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority. Opposition in Annapolis was swelling against the $200 million football stadium that Moag had promised Arthur B. Modell to lure him and his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore three months earlier.