Bruins Boss Bidding For Browns

Jeremy Jacobs, the owner of the NHL's Boston Bruins, will be among seven candidates making pitches to buy the new Cleveland Browns on Wednesday at a meeting of NFL owners.

The owners are meeting in Atlanta to hear 30-minute presentations from each of the groups vying to purchase they Browns expansion franchise that will begin play next year.

A new Browns owner will likely be chosen in September. Estimates of the franchise's price have ranged from about $300 million all the way up to $1 billion. The old Browns moved to Baltimore after the 1995 season.

Jeremy Jacobs, chairman and chief executive officer of the Buffalo, N.Y.-based Delaware North Companies Inc., has decided to make a run at owning the Cleveland team, according to The New York Times, Boston Globe and The Buffalo News.

The decision was confirmed to The Associated Press by a source close to the situation.

Brenda Fullmer, a spokeswoman for Delaware North, said today she didn't know whether Jacobs was bidding for the Browns. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league is not commenting on the ownership candidates.

Jacobs mounted unsuccessful drives to own the New England Patriots in 1974 and 1993.

His net worth is estimated at $600 million, The Buffalo News reported. That is far less than the $2.5 billion Browns ownership candidate and banker Al Lerner is said to be worth.

The other ownership candidates are Cleveland Indians owner Richard Jacobs (no relation to Jeremy); New York real estate developer Howard Milstein; suburban Cleveland developer Bart Wolstein; Streetsboro toy manufacturer Thomas Murdough; and Cleveland area lawyer Larry Dolan and his brother Charles Dolan, chairman of Cablevision Systems.

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