Pro football is like any other profession in that there are some good people, and some not-so-good people.
This, then, is about people on both sides of that spectrum.
We talked in our last post about Dino Lucarelli, the former longtime public relations staffer for three Cleveland sports teams, including the Browns. The story was about his having watched the first Browns regular-season game in history almost exactly 80 years ago, on Sept. 6, 1946.
All that is pretty cool. No, actually, it’s really cool. But what’s even better is that at least from me and the people that I have run across in the business, he is the best person in the history of pro sports, especially in this town. There’s a reason why the media room at Brown’s headquarters in Berea is named for him. He’s iconic. He’s the GOAT.
Having just turned 92 years young, he continues to be just a wonderful man. And anyone who ever covered this team would tell you that. He is beloved. He would do anything for you, and has for almost everyone who ever wrote a word or spoken a word about the Browns.
I’ll never forget the time before a Browns game in Philadelphia when my glasses broke, the stem coming apart from the rest of the frane. I didn’t know what to do, because I needed those glasses to see the field. Dino was made aware of what was going on, came down to where I was sitting nervously in the press box at Veterans Stadium, grabbed my glasses and took them down to Browns trainer Bill Tessendorf in the locker room. Though it was only about a half-hour before kickoff, Tessendorf, just a second trainer in Browns history, found time to take some medical tape and fix my glasses so they would last for the game. It was all because of Dino. When he would ask anybody to do something for him, they were only too happy to do it because he was always doing something for somebody else.
Another good guy — in fact, a really good guy — is first-year Browns senior defensive assistant Dom Capers. Having turned 76 years young a month ago, he is an Ohio guy through and through, having been born in Cambridge, played at Byesville Meadowbrook High School and then at Mount Union. He was also an assistant coach at Kent State and Ohio State.
in the 1994 training, camp, Caoers, who had just been named head coach of the new Carolina Panthers team that would begin playing in 1995, and Tom Coughlin, who had been hired as the head coach of the new Jacksonville Jaguars club that would begin playing the same year, toured all the team facilities in the NFL to check out what was going on.
When they came to Cleveland, Browns beat writers gathered around Capers and talked to him about the opportunity with the Panthers, his background in Ohio and just all kinds of things. He was very accommodating, very gracious and just a really great guy.
Coughlin, on the other hand, was out and out mean. There’s no other way to put it. He was disparaging, angry and just a horrible person to be around. We called him Coach Sourpuss, and he continue to live up to that reputation during his time in the league.
Yes, Dino and Dom, two real keepers, on and off the football field.
Terrible Tom? Ah, not so much.
Steve King
