While Blackburn followed her grandfather and mother to Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., it was actually the first place she had ever been where no one knew her as the kid that could wind up running the Bengals one day. She was just the freshman girl from Cincinnati standing up at a frat party to defend Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton.
An Economics and Engineering double major, Blackburn first finished off her economics degree with a paper comparing NFL ticketing data to the economic tradeoffs between the 85 percent blackout rule and secondary pricing market. Then she capped her engineering degree inventing an app that offered a second screen during a live game to teach new NFL fans the rules and positions that her great grandfather all but invented.
When she went to San Francisco to work for the management consulting firm Bain & Co., she became drawn to co-workers from Midwest towns like Indianapolis.
Peter Ruocco , an NFL senior vice president for all things labor and salary cap, hosted her in a three-month internship while she was working at Bain. Blackburn also put in three months in Chris Halpin’s fledgling strategy and development office, but it was the Management Council that named her program that she developed “The Burn System,” after her.
Ruocco says Blackburn used her “extensive computer skills” to allow them to value every number or dollar amount related to collective bargaining with the push of a button.