Happy 90th birthday, Coach Sam

By STEVE KING

It was, without question, at least to me and I think to many others as well, the most exciting season in Browns history, and, more importantly, the most fun season as well.

And the choreographer of it all – the conductor, the maestro – turns 90 years old on Thursday.

That’s Sam Rutigliano.

He was head coach of the Browns during the Kardiac Kids era, from 1978 until midway through ’84. But the one season for which he will forever be remembered is that fun season – that joyful, every-Sunday-was a big-ol’-party-of-a-season of 1980.

The Browns went 11-5 and captured the AFC Central title for the first time in nine years, making the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons. They lost their opening postseason game, 14-12, to the then Oakland Raiders in the bitter cold at Cleveland Stadium.

So, then, while it was indeed a very good season – there is absolutely, positively no question about that – it was not a great season, especially by the standards set by this tradition-rick Browns franchise. And while the ending was a painful kick in the stomach, the likes of which has been felt few times in Browns or even Cleveland pro sports history, the good memories that this team in that season provided – the fun that it conjured up – has never been even just equaled, let alone surpassed.

If you didn’t see it, don’t remember it and/or wasn’t born, then I can understand your disbelief of, and disagreement with, my claim about the way it topped the fun meter. Perhaps you had to see it to believe it – to believe that 14 of the 17 games, including the playoff, were not decided until the final two minutes, to believe that it was great theater wrapped around a football game, week after week after week for an entire season.

No lead was too big for the Browns to lose, and no deficit was too big for the Browns to rally back from, and that was the fun of it. You just didn’t know, from week to week, what was going to happen or who was going to end up being the hero, exactly, but you knew it was going to happen and that there would be a hero.

And Coach Sam was the reason for it all.

More on that in my next post, even my next several posts.