Here’s some more on the early Browns teams not getting their due, a subject I touched on in my last post.
In lieu of the Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors meeting in the NBA Finals for the third straight season (Game 2, of course, was played Sunday night), a list was put together of teams from the four major pro sports leagues – the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball – that have played for a league championship in at least four consecutive years.
The Browns from 1950-55 are in third place on that list of 15 teams with six trips to the NFL Championship Game in their first six seasons in that league. That came after they had played in the All-America Football Conference during their first four years of existence from 1946-49. They played in all four AAFC title games – winning each one of them – but those years weren’t included in this list, nor are they ever included anywhere.
As I said in that last post, it’s as if the AAFC never existed.
So instead of getting credit for having made 10 straight trips to play for a league title from 1946-55, which would have tied them for first place on that list with the Boston Celtics from 1957-66 and the Montreal Canadiens from 1951-60, they are left looking up at those teams.
The people making these decisions – whomever they are – do so because they disregard the AAFC as a minor league. At the same time, they include the records of all 10 AFL years in the NFL statistics.
How those early AFL years somehow pass muster and the AAFC seasons don’t is one of pro football’s great mysteries.
For starters, keep in mind that the AFL teams, first the Kansas City Chiefs and then the Oakland Raiders, were routed by the Green Bay Packers in the first two Super Bowls by a combined score of 68-24.
Ouch!
In addition, in the first two seasons, 1970 and ’71, after interconference play began with the completion of the AFL-NFL merger, the NFC, made up almost exclusively of the old NFL teams, had records of 27-12-2 and 23-15-2 against the AFC, made up almost exclusively of the old AFL clubs. That adds up to a 50-27-4 (.642) advantage for the NFC.
Double-ouch!
Also, the first Super Bowl after the merger had two old NFL teams playing in it, with the Baltimore Colts, who had moved with the Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers to the AFC to balance up the conferences at 13 teams each, defeating the Dallas Cowboys 16-13 on a last-play field goal.
Triple-ouch!
Meanwhile, the early Browns continued their dominance when they moved to the NFL, winning the league title that first season of 1950.
In fact, the Browns blasted the defending NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles 35-10 – on the road, no less, and it wasn’t even that close — in the opener. Eagles head coach Greasy Neale had complained that the Browns used their outstanding passing attack – Otto Graham threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns — to finesse their way to the win. He intimated they couldn’t have manned up and played real football with the running game and beaten his team, even though the Browns had rushed for 141 yards and two scores and averaged 5.9 yards per carry in the game.
So in the rematch three months later, the Browns proved a point by winning again 13-7 by running the football on every single offensive play. No passes whatsoever.
Take that, ol’ Greasy.
Considering all that, then, which league proved to be inferior when its teams met the NFL for the first time?
And as such, shouldn’t the AAFC records be incorporated into the NFL statistics as well? Shouldn’t the AAFC get the same respect as the AFL?
It’s a subject with which I have concerned myself for years, but to no avail. Nothing has changed, and it still bothers me greatly.
And it bothered those AAFC-era Browns players, too.
More in my next post.
