Co-authoring the owners' guide to success

HOUSTON -- Last time, when the speed was set at fast-forward, there barely was time to look around. The Patriots came, saw and conquered, all in less than a week.

"Two years ago, it happened in such a whirlwind, we never got to savor it," owner Robert Kraft said yesterday morning, as he watched a mob of Super Bowl chroniclers swarm his team during Media Day at Reliant Stadium. "We had to play the AFC Championship game on the road in Pittsburgh, come home and get organized, then go down to New Orleans."

This time, the Patriots will have had a full fortnight before Sunday's date with Carolina to prepare and ponder. What Kraft has discovered is that playing for the league title doesn't get repetitive the third time around. "The first time was so special," he said. "But I've realized it gets addictive."

So does the treatment accorded the owner of a frequent Super Bowl participant. When Kraft arrived here, he'd found that the manager of the team hotel had set aside the presidential suite for him and that a pair of custom-made ostrich-skin cowboy boots was on order.

Kraft is happy to receive the boots: "I've never worn boots or ostrich." But since he isn't staying with the team, he turned over his room to coach Bill Belichick. "He deserves the presidential suite," Kraft said.

Still, Kraft has been accorded VIP treatment in an oilman's town that appreciates a man who'll spend millions drilling holes with no guaranteed gusher at the bottom. By now, anybody who follows the NFL knows that Kraft paid a record price for a fixer-upper franchise, built a stadium with borrowed money, and hired a coach he'd been warned about.

"The NFL can be a cruel and unforgiving business," said Kraft, who bought the Patriots a decade ago this month. "You can't be fainthearted or timid. You have to be ready to do things that sometimes put you at great risk. But if you don't do them, then you'll never have a chance to succeed."

If Kraft was considered a hands-on owner at the beginning, he says, it's because it was his nine-figure ante on the table. "When you invest a lot of money -- $200 million in debt -- you want to follow what's going on in your business," he says.

Yet Kraft's riskiest move, as some people saw it, was parting with a first-round draft choice to get Belichick, who'd had four losing records in five seasons in Cleveland and dropped 14 of his first 20 games in Foxborough. "I listened to all the naysayers tell me I shouldn't do it," said Kraft, "but in the end, I made my own decision."

It didn't matter to him that Belichick had had a prickly relationship with the media during his Browns days. "We chatted about that," Kraft said. "I'm not into lipstick and powder. I'm into substance, and substance is winning football games."

The Patriots have won 14 in a row, Belichick is NFL Coach of the Year, and Kraft is being hailed as a semi-visionary in a city that loves risky business.

"Going outside the box is necessary in any business if you want to differentiate yourself and be excellent," Kraft said. "You make errors on the way, but you can't be afraid to step up and take chances."