Thank you Art for firing Paul Brown, thus allowing NFL football to be brought to the Queen City
As a Browns fan, I never forgave him for the way he handled that mess.
My dad got to enjoy 3 Reds World Championships by the time he was my age. So far, I've only gotten to enjoy one. Step it up Redlegs!
I think that if he ever just admitted his fault in the Cleveland situation, he might have been forgiven, but instead he passed the buck to the end. In reality, he had a sweetheart lease with the city to operate Cleveland Municipal Stadium and charged the Indians a pretty penny to play there. He let the stadium go to seed while making bad deals in free agency. Then he wanted Cleveland to either renovate the old stadium and keep the Indians there or build a new one for both teams. But the Indians wanted out from under Modell's thumb and got a new stadium. Modell got upset that he was losing the Indians' rent and never made serious negotiations with the city after the Jake was built. The mayor actually had to pass a stadium proposal through a fence to a security guard because Modell wouldn't meet with them when the Baltimore money came onto the table.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
I also don't get why he acted as though moving to Baltimore was the ONLY solution as opposed to, you know, selling the team.
He did a lot for pro football though.
“I don’t care,” Votto said of passing his friend and former teammate. “He’s in the past. Bye-bye, Jay.”
Ironic that he didn't want to sell to Al Lerner in 1995 because he wanted to keep the team in the family, moved them, burned through the money and had to sell anyway.
I think what gets me the most is how he played the leaving of the Browns history in Cleveland as a magnanimous gesture. He originally announced the team as the Baltimore Browns and only gave it up to avoid lawsuits to enforce his lease in Cleveland.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
Something that isn't mentioned regarding the Browns move is that it lead to a number of kids just getting into football at the time becoming Steelers fans because Cleveland had no team and the local station kept showing the Steelers instead of the much reviled Ravens and the moribund Bengals.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
I think one of the best books on the Modell-Brown "relationship" and firing is....
"In my day you had musicians who experimented with drugs. Now it's druggies experimenting with music" - Alfred G Clark (circa 1972)
Haven't read that one. Read the Curse of Rocky Colavito. Pluto is a good writer but lets his emotions get in the way of rational thought and has a tendency to follow conspiracy theories that involve Cleveland sports owners acting with ill intent to make Cleveland sports fans miserable.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
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