Man, I would love to know what it would be like.

 

And I know they would, too.

 

But before we get to that conversation, we’ve got to get through another one.

 

How about that University of Connecticut women’s basketball team?

 

The Huskies won their fourth consecutive national championship with a 84-51 rout of Syracuse on Tuesday night. It is their 11th title overall, all under Gino Auriemma, giving him the college basketball record for the most championships by a head coach. Former UCLA men’s coach John Wooden had held the mark with 10.

 

The Huskies have captured seven of those titles in the last nine years. In the two seasons when they didn’t win, they still made it to the Final Four. In the last 15 years, they have earned nine crowns.

 

Auriemma was hired in 1985, taking over a struggling program that had posted just one winning record – a modest 16-14 — in its 12 years of existence, and had recorded only nine victories in each of the previous four seasons. He was 12-15 in that first year and hasn’t had a losing record since.

 

It was the 1988-89 season when Auriemma really got the Huskies going with a 24-6 record and their first NCAA Tournament appearance. The Huskies have made the tourney in every season since, giving them 29 consecutive trips, and their “worst” mark during that time was 18-11 in 1992-93. And in the 23 seasons since then, they have failed to win 30 games only twice, with one of them being when they had 29 victories.

 

And in the last three years, they are – get this – 116-1. That’s almost unfathomable.

 

Whew! What a run!

 

Whether you follow women’s basketball or not, you’ve got to tip your hat – greatly so — to the Huskies. They have been not only the undisputed dominant program in the country since the turn of the century, but they are doing things that few teams in any sport – male or female, college or pro – have ever done.

 

I tend to follow women’s basketball, but I have to admit that it’s far from a top-tier sport. It’s still growing – and growing fast – but it has a long, long way to go before it can be mentioned in the same breath with the top sports.

 

Football – especially the pro variety – is the top sport of the top sports. It is clearly the No. 1 sport in the country. Nothing else is even remotely close.

 

So, with that having been said, then, what if those first Browns teams were playing today? What would the fanfare – the media attention – around them be like?

 

As I said, I would love to know. And there’s no question that the members of those teams would also love to know if they were still alive. Sadly, only a scant few remain with us.

 

These are the first 10 Browns teams from 1946-55. Coached by the legendary Paul Brown and stacked with a slew of legendary players such as Otto Graham, Lou Groza, Bill Willis, Marion Motley and Dante Lavelli, the Browns played in 10 straight league championship games in 10 seasons in first the All-America Football Conference and then the NFL, winning seven titles.

 

And before you say it, the AAFC was indeed every bit as good – and even better in many regards – than the NFL, as evidenced by the way the Browns played once they got to the NFL in 1950 after capturing all four crowns in the AAFC in the short existence of that league.

 

It is the best run ever in pro football, and one of the best in the history of any sport.

 

It is incredible to think what the coverage would be like in a world where there is ESPN and a whole barrage of 24/7 media attention in which even the most minute accomplishments are ballyhooed  as if the most miraculous feat in the history of the sports had just been pulled off.

 

Like what the Browns did, it would be off the charts.

 

But we’ll never know for sure just how much off the charts.

 

And that’s unfortunate. But it’s the reality. It was so long ago, between 60 and 70 years, that it has almost been lost in time.

 

How surprised would those back-in-the-day Browns be to learn that a spotlight is now shining into the past, illuminating their unbelievable accomplishments and the discussions associated with it, because of the unbelievable exploits of a college women’s basketball team? Consider that Title IX, which launched women’s college and high school sports toward what we know them as today, was not enacted until 1972, 17 years after the Browns’ run ended, and 46 years ago.