When you look at the history of the Browns, there are, in fact, really four different and distinct histories.

 

Those histories have a lot of rough edges. In fact, none of them mesh with each other. That makes for enough drama and crazy storylines to choke an elephant.

 

Indeed, if you tried to explain all these histories to someone who knows nothing about football, they would think you’re making it up.

 

No, no, you can’t make this stuff up.

 

The first history is the Paul Brown era from 1946 until he was fired in January 1963.

 

The second is the era of the man who fired him, Art Modell. It lasted all the way through November 1995, when Modell announced he was moving the Browns to Baltimore following that season.

 

There is also a nether world of a history. It was launched in February 1996 as the NFL announced that a new Browns team — an expansion one – would start play in 1999, and lasted until the beginning of the 1999 calendar year, when the club began to take shape.

 

The last period – the expansion era — picked up then and has lasted to now.

 

Today is a good day to talk about this and wrap up this impromptu series on how the early Browns – those teams that played in the All-America Football Conference from 1946-49 – have been so disrespected in so many different ways by so many different people for so many years. It was 64 years ago Saturday, on June 10, 1953, that Browns founding owner Arthur “Mickey” McBride sold the club to a syndicate headed by Dave Jones. It was Jones who then sold the franchise to Modell just short of eight years later.

 

McBride and Jones were both businessmen. They didn’t pretend to be football guys. As such, they let head coach and Genera l Manager Paul Brown do his thing pretty much unchecked. We all know how well that worked out.

 

Modell was also a businessman – an advertising executive, really – from New York, but he thought he was a football guy and an expert on the Browns from having sat in Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds and watched Cleveland play the New York Giants several times over the years.

 

Whereas, as mentioned, McBride and Jones just signed checks and smartly stayed out of Brown’s way, Modell wanted to be involved in every decision. Brown resented that, and Modell resented that Brown resented it. Their relationship, then, was like that of oil and water.

 

Once Modell sent Brown packing, he distanced the franchise from all of its history from the old days. It was if that glorious 17-season span, producing seven league titles and 11 championship game appearances, never happened.

 

When Modell moved the Browns, he, of course, became a hated figure in Cleveland and everywhere else there were fans of the club. The fans, who faced the prospect of no team on the field from 1996-98, latched onto all the players from both the early days and the Modell era to get their football fix. Those former players kept the team’s flame lit at countless celebrations and other functions.

 

The expansion-era Browns initially tapped into that history as well. Conjuring up the mostly positive 50-year history of the original Browns was how the new regime, led by owner Al Lerner, who had helped Modell move the original Browns, and CEO Carmen Policy sold the re-born club.

 

But it wasn’t long thereafter that they distanced themselves from that history, acting as if the original franchise had never existed. Remember how Lerner and Policy, during their days as one of several prospective ownership groups vying for the right to buy the team, used Bernie Kosar to win favor with the fans, who were skeptical of Lerner, and then tossed the iconic former Browns quarterback aside as soon as they were selected by NFL owners to get the rights to franchise and as such didn’t need him any longer?

 

And that feeling that this is an entirely new team – not the re-start of one that had already existed for a half-century while the new Browns were still buying shoulder pads and footballs — has done nothing but pick up steam now that Jimmy Haslam is sitting in the owner’s suite.

 

One of the most recent examples of that can be found in the Browns 2016 media guide. In it, appropriately so near the back of the 428-page book, on page 381, is a team photo of the 1950 Browns, who, in their first year in the NFL, won the league championship.

 

Yea!

 

It’s great – and I honestly meant it — that the current Browns regime threw the memory of those players and coaches, almost all of whom are no longer with us, a bone.

 

There’s just one problem, though. The team that’s pictured, while it’s the Browns, isn’t from 1950. It’s the 1954 club, which also captured the league title.

 

How can it be determined that it’s definitely not the 1950 team?

 

Because in 1952, the NFL changed the system for players’ jersey numbers to the one that is still used today. In the photo, quarterback Otto Graham, for instance, is wearing No. 14. From 1946-51, he wore No. 60. Kicker-left tackle Lou Groza is wearing No. 76. Previously, he had No. 46. Wide receiver Dante Lavelli is shown in No. 86. He was formerly No. 56.

 

What’s worse, that the mistake was made? Or that there’s no one working for the team now who has any idea at all of the numbers change in 1952, which is a pretty big deal, especially in trying to identify old photos?

Or. worse yet, that the Browns simply don’t care?

 

And this is not the first time that the year of a vintage team photo in the Browns media guide was misidentified.

 

Enough said.

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