Not all Browns fans who are old enough to remember the team’s 27-0 NFL Championship Game victory over the Baltimore Colts at Cleveland Stadium exactly 61 years ago Saturday, on Dec. 27, 1964, actually saw it.
The game was sold out almost instantly — a standing-room-only crowd of 79,544 watched in person — but it was still not televised locally because of what was known then simply as the league’s “blackout rule,” which stated that there would be no TV in the home market within 75 miles of that city, even if the game were sold out.
That forced fans to try to watch it on the nearest out-of-town CBS station (that network owned all NFL TV rights at the time) airing the contest, such as ones in Toledo and Steubenville. That was easier said than done, though, It took some real innovation — and, as it turned out, some luck — to pull in decent reception.
One Cleveland man was fiddling with his antenna when, all of a sudden, the picture became crystal clear for a short time before it got fuzzy again,
He noticed that this coincided with his wife pulling the car into the driveway while arriving back home following a trip to the grocery store. He asked her to back the car up
to the end of the driveway and then pull it back in again. When she did that — that is, when she kept driving back and forth — he had no problem picking up the game. She had to keep moving, though. She couldn’t stop.
So, mustering up all his courage, he asked her to keep driving back and fourth for the next hour and a half — NFL games, not weighed down with so many commercial breaks, were much shorter back then — to allow him to take in all the action. It is not known if the marriage was still intact by nightfall.
Another man, while also adjusting his antenna, noticed that the picture got clear when his daughter was swinging back-and-forth on the swingset in their back yard. When
the girl got cold and zipped up her coat on the chilly, gray, early-winter day, however, the static returned. It was clear only when the coat was unzipped. As such, he had the girl put on several sweatshirts underneath her unzipped coat so as to stay warm while she kept swinging.
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My family lived eight miles south of Akron, in southern Summit County, and took the occasion of our annual trip to deliver Christmas gifts to relatives in Bellaire, Ohio, located along the Ohio River in Belmont County, to watch the game on Channel 9 out of Steubenville. I got to eat my scrumptious turkey dinner in the living room with all the men, sitting on the floor with a big towel underneath my plate so as to not dirty the carpet. For a 9-year-old kid who loved food and the Browns, it didn’t get any better than that. And the fact that they won made it just that much greater.
After the game was over, I went outside and stood on the front porch as I looked across the elevated train tracks and up the big hill where Ohio 214 wound its way around houses to the top, and then disappeared out of sight. I just took
It all in. The world champion Browns had the best pro football team anywhere.
Wow! Really cool!
It was quite a moment and, lo these many decades later, it is still a wonderful memory.
I’d like to experience that feeling at least one more time, as would all of you.
Steve King
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