EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the first in a series of how basketball — yes, basketball — saved the 1980 Browns’ Kardiac Kids season.

The 1980 Browns’ Kardiac Kids season was just the best.

Oh, my, was it ever!

Was it the most successful season in Browns history? No, not even close. The Browns have won eight league championships in their nearly 80 years of existence. And 1980 was not one of them.

However, it was certainly successful — and then some.

The Browns finished the regular season 11-5, recording their most wins since 1965 when the then defending NFL champions went 11-3, won the Eastern Conference and lost to the Green Bay Packers 23–12 in the NFL title game. The 1980 Browns captured the AFC Central crown for the first time in nine seasons, and made it to the playoffs for the first time in eight years. To be sure, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

But just as notable was the way they achieved all this. It was how the games went. It was the fact the Browns had never had a season quite like that, haven’t had one like it since then and almost certainly never will have again. It was just too special, too incredible. You had to see it to believe it, and even when you saw it, you almost didn’t think it was real.

Of their 17 games covering the entire year, including the 16 in the regular season and one in the AFC divisional playoffs, 14 were not decided until the final two minutes.

It was theater on the football field. They called them the Kardiac Kids because for the Browns, no lead was too big to be squandered, and no deficit was too big to be overcome. They played everything right down to the end, and it was thrilling, and sometimes emotionally draining.

When the game each week would invariablyget close, Browns iconic radio play-by-play announcer Gib Shanley would look at his color analyst and say, “Buckle your seatbelt, Jim Mueller, here we go again.”

It was exciting beyond any definition of the word, even when you were all buckled in tightly.

Steve King