Saturday night’s all right for fighting
Those are the words to a well-known song from back in the day, and it’s also the way it was in the fierce Browns-Pittsburgh Steelers rivalry for eight seasons from 1963-70.
 
That’s when the two teams, who have traded blows any number of times on the field while their die-hard fans have done the same in the stands, played their annual games in Cleveland on Saturday nights.
 
It was then new Browns owner Art Modell’s idea to spice up an already spicy rivalry, and it worked. The attendance for the first game in 1963 of 84,684 was 31,000 better than it had been the previous year in Cleveland.
 
And It was on this date in 1970, Oct. 3, that the last of these Saturday night get-togethers at Cleveland Stadium was held. In what was – appropriately so – a tough defensive struggle, the Browns battled their way to a 15-7 victory before 84,349 fans.
 
It was just the opposite story in 1969 when 84,078 watched a wild offensive display won by the Browns, 42-31.
 
A lot of points were scored again in 1968 as quarterback Bill Nelsen, getting his first start of the season for a struggling Frank Ryan, led the Browns past his former team 31-24 in front of 81,865.
 
The Cleveland defense did its job in victories the previous two seasons, 21-10 before 82,949 in 1967 and 41-10 in front of 82,867 in ’66.
 
The Browns needed a last-second Ryan-to-Gary Collins touchdown pass to win 24-19 in 1965 as 80,187 watched.
 
The Steelers got their lone victory in the series in 1964, with John Henry Johnson rushing for 200 yards in a 23-7 decision before 80,530. It was one of the few low points for the Browns that season as they won the NFL championship.
 
And in that first season of 1963, the Browns won 35-23 in an offensive affair, increasing their record to 4-0 under new head coach Blanton Collier.
 
The series died in the early 1970s as the NFL was undergoing dramatic changes. The merger between the NFL and AFL had just been completed, and with that, there was now Monday Night Football and a need for a full slate of games on Sunday afternoons to maximize the TV viewership and as such, the TV revenue.
 
Saturday night was still all right for fighting, but just not anymore in the NFL, even for a rivalry as physical and passionate as Browns-Steelers.