Bo Knows Browns PR - Browns Daily Dose

BO KNOWS BROWNS PR

By STEVE KING

If you’re a regular visitor to our website, then we thank you. And if you’re not – yet – then we hope you become one.

But if you visit us a lot, then you’re well aware of what I think of Sports Illustrated’s website, si.com. On the site now is a great story that inspired this Bo Knows Browns PR article. Bo Pelini, who was hired right after the end of last season to become – for the second time – the defensive coordinator at defending national champion LSU.

Pelini, who has that “vim and vigor,” as my mother used to call an active and passionate exuberance – or possibly over-exuberance – for something, is a polarizing figure. As the article states, people either love him for who he really is, what he really is and what he really stands for, or they hate him for the very same reasons.

There is very little of the in-between stuff – that you like him but just wish he would calm down a little bit and lose, like the bad habit that it has turned out to be with him, some of that vim and vigor. I am in that betwixt and between area.

Pelini, of course, has a lot of Ohio connections. Everybody knows that he grew up in the Youngstown area and played his high school football at Cardinal Mooney there. He went on to play safety at Ohio State and from there transitioned to a coaching career that included assistant coaching stints at Mooney and then with three different NFL teams, and head-coaching stops at Nebraska and, until resigning after last season to go to LSU, Youngstown State.

What you may not know – and probably don’t know, because I am the only one who noticed it at the time, wrote about it at the time and has written about it in succeeding years – is that Pelini has Browns connections, too.

Say what?

Yes, he has ties to the Browns. Really. Definitely. No lie.

Pelini was a public relations intern in Browns training camp 28 years ago, in 1992, the same year that he earned a master’s degree in sports administration from Ohio University.

I was covering the Buckeyes for the Medina County Gazette during Pelini’s senior season of 1990, when he served as one of the team’s captains. So I had interviewed him. He was very accessible and a good quote.

I saw Pelini at Browns training camp and couldn’t believe my eyes. Surely, that wasn’t him. That couldn’t be him. After all, what would he be doing working as a PR intern? As such, then, I didn’t dare approach him for a while. We’ve all had those embarrassing times when we thought someone was such and such, but then when we approached them, we found out that they weren’t. I have done that numerous times, and didn’t want to add to the list.

At the same time, though, the more I looked at him, the more I was sure that he really was Bo Pelini. He had to be, or perhaps Pelini was a twin.

So I approached him sheepishly and said, “Excuse me, but I covered the Ohio State football team a couple of years ago, and I have to ask you, ‘Are you Bo Pelini?’ ”

He said he was indeed and that he was interested in working in sports public relations and wanted to see how he liked it, which is why he applied to work as a PR intern.

Hmmm.

Two years later, of course, in 1994, future Cleveland head coach Eric Mangini was the public relations intern at Browns training camp. So, in that span, the Browns had what would turn out to be one of the most well-known sets of PR interns in NFL history. Who knew?

At the same time, the early 1990s Browns had:

*A defensive coordinator by the name of Nick Saban, who had been a head coach for exactly one season, in 1990 at Toledo when the Rockets went 9-2.

*An eventual Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end by the name of Ozzie Newsome, who was working as pro personnel director and would go on to be a Hall of Fame-worthy NFL general manager.

*An obscure offensive line coach by the name of Kirk Ferentz, who is now a longtime and highly successful head coach at Iowa.

*Three obscure scouts by the names of Phil Savage (future Browns general manager and director of the Senior Bowl), Scott Pioli (future right-hand man for New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and then Kansas City Chiefs general manager) and Jim Schwartz (future Detroit Lions head coach and now defensive coordinator of the Philadelphia Eagles, working under former Browns quarterback Doug Pederson, including when they won the Super Bowl following the 2017 season over Belichick’s Patriots).

*An obscure cornerback by the name of Scott Frost, who has followed Pelini as head coach at Nebraska.

*An obscure assistant coach by the name of Pat Hill, who would go on to be a successful head coach at Fresno State.

*And a head coach by the last name of Belichick, who, when he was fired after struggling in Cleveland, was thought to be finished as a head coach, but has now gone on to become possibly the greatest head coach in pro football history.

Wow. Unbelievable.

Who could have seen any of that – much less all of that – coming?

Certainly not some Browns beat writer at the time, and a Browns public relations intern during training camp named Bo Pelini.

Cleveland Browns:

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