Houston ? The face of the NFL is changing.

Since 1991, 14 new owners have joined the league, and Steve Bisciotti has an option to buy the Baltimore Ravens from Art Modell in 2004.

Owning an NFL team used to be a family business. Now, it’s big business.

“It’s so big now,” said Ralph Wilson, who paid $30,000 to found the AFL’s Buffalo Bills in 1959. “I don’t really know the owners as well as I did years ago because I don’t see them except at the (NFL owners’) meetings. Now it’s, ‘Hi, Bob. Which way is this meeting?”’

Bob McNair spent $700 million in 1999 to return the NFL to Houston, and the expansion Texans opened their first training camp on Saturday.

The Atlanta Falcons recently changed hands after Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank agreed to pay $545 million to Taylor Smith, whose father paid $8.5 million to establish an expansion team in 1965.

McNair and Blank are in the game to win on the field and off.

“It’s a sports business,” said McNair, who sold three of Cogen Technologies’ five power plants to Enron for $1.4 billion in 1999. “I think with the kind of money that we have invested (in the Texans), you have to treat it as a business. But it’s a different kind of business.

“Our goal is to win the Super Bowl. At the same time, in the process of doing that, we have to maintain our financial strength, and the way we can do that is to make money.”

With so much invested, most new owners aren’t willing to sit on the sidelines and wait. They change coaches, general managers and players at the drop of a helmet.

The Cowboys had only one coach in their first 29 seasons before Jerry Jones bought the team for $150 million in 1989. Since then, Jones has had four coaches, but three of the Cowboys’ five Super Bowl championships were won under his ownership.

Businessman Daniel Snyder, who paid $800 million for the Washington Redskins and Jack Kent Cooke Stadium in 1999, has had four coaches since the start of the 2000 season.

And the Redskins will enter 2002 with their fourth starting quarterback in three seasons.

Washington is 16-16 the past two seasons and has missed the playoffs eight of the past nine seasons, teaching Snyder an expensive lesson.

“Owning a team takes patience, and it takes some learning curve, and the rest sort of comes together,” Snyder said. “Mine has been a little while, but it’s coming.”

Bob Kraft, who paid $158 million for the New England Patriots in 1994, saw his team win Super Bowl XXXVI this year. But it was anything but easy.

“I think to be a good owner you have to have common sense and judgment, and you have to be able to handle adversity,” Kraft said.

The NFL is an investment like no other, something owners accept.

Wilson recently approved a trade that sent his 2003 first-round draft choice to New England for quarterback Drew Bledsoe, whose 10-year, $103 million contract made him an expensive backup for the Patriots. Now, Bledsoe is an expensive starter for the Bills.

“It’s not a real business,” Wilson said, “and you can’t treat it like a real business. You set up a budget and when some player comes along you really want, you exceed the budget.”

It’s money for something and, as all NFL owners hope, championships for a fee.