By almost every account, Ted Marchibroda was a great guy.
And a notable one, too, in the world of pro football.
Marchibroda, who died 10 days ago at the age of 84, was head coach of the Baltimore Colts, Indianapolis Colts and Baltimore Ravens. He’s also the man who gave a fledgling, wet-behind-the-ears, 23-year-old coaching wannabe by the name of Bill Belichick his coaching start in 1975.
But Marchibroda made an insensitive, ill-advised comment one time regarding Cleveland for which I never really forgave him. It rankled me a lot then, and it still does me now. I know he didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did, but that’s no excuse.
Marchibroda actually spent some time in Cleveland – more specifically, Berea. When team owner Art Modell fired Belichick as head coach of the original Browns franchise following that last season in Cleveland in 1995, he replaced him with, ironically, Marchibroda. Before a team headquarters could be put together for the transplanted Browns in Baltimore, they operated out of Browns Headquarters in Berea for several months in the late winter and early spring of 1996.
Marchibroda turned down numerous interview requests by the Cleveland media during that time, choosing instead to just lay low and not say much of anything to anybody. It was not a good time to be one of Modell’s top lieutenants and still be back working in Cleveland. It would be like the Japanese consulate continuing to operate in the United States well after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Just a bad idea.
Even with those tight constraints and a “mum’s-the-word” philosophy, he still managed to open his mouth and say something stupid.
In talking about going through the roster and trying to figure out which players to keep and which ones to send packing, Marchibroda quipped, “We’ve got to get the Cleveland out of this team.”
What?! He had “to get the Cleveland out of this team”?!
Really?!
How ignorant! How stupid! How insensitive! How moronic!
Cleveland had just lost its beloved Browns not because of anything it did but rather because of the poor business practices of his greedy boss, Modell, and Marchibroda had the gall to sit inside their training headquarters and pontificate about getting “the Cleveland out of this team”?
What if someone from Indianapolis had said that about the Colts just after they moved from Baltimore in late winter 1984? How would Marchibroda have liked that?
Actually, maybe he wouldn’t have cared at all because he sold his soul to the devil and was a turncoat to the people of Baltimore when he coached the Colts in Indianapolis.
In present vernacular, it would be like someone in Los Angeles saying that they have to “get the St. Louis out of the Rams.”
You just don’t do that.
So while Marchibroda may have been looked upon as this gentle, grandfatherly soul, I could never feel that way about him after what he said on that day 20 years ago. It was a lesson on how not to act in such a situation. He was a smart man, so he should have known better.
