It’s funny — not ha, ha so, but interestingly so — how things work in this world.
It is another version of the age-old sayings, “What goes around, comes around,” or, “Be careful what you say, for it can come back to haunt you.”
Former Browns owner Art Modell was, among things, a visionary, especially when it came to the growth of the NFL through TV. He agreed, along with Pittsburgh Steelers owner Arthur Rooney Sr., to move their franchises along with the Baltimore Colts to the new AFC to balance out the conferences (also the NFC) at 13 teams each so the NFL-AFL merger could be completed for the 1970 season.
The other old-line NFL owners wanted nothing to do with teams from a league in the AFL that they perceived to be inferior. As such, there was no way they were going to the AFC. Modell, then, by convincing Rooney to go at the 11th hour, kept this promising new-look NFL from crashing and burning before it ever got off the ground.
But despite his much-needed heroics, Modell still had some of that pompously. It showed when he said at that time, “I don’t want the Denver Broncos in my stadium.”
Ouch!
These are the same Denver Broncos who entertain the Browns tonight on Monday NightFootball.
You could see his point to a degree because the Broncos then were a Sad-Sack bunch who were one of the worst franchises in the AFL. Still, you can’t say that in public. Not cool. Not in good sportsmanship, or in a good business sense. The NFL is a partnership of all the member teams, right?
It was a little over a decade and a half later when, in the 1986 AFC Championship Game, at that same Cleveland Stadium to which Modell had referred, came from behind to stun the Browns 23-20 in overtime. That horrific loss, followed by playoff defeats in each of the next three years, including two more to the Broncos in the AFC title game, started a chain of events that so frustrated the Browns in their failure to break through and get to the Super Bowl for the first time, ultimately led Modell to bolt Cleveland and move the team to Baltimore to fill the vacancy created by the departure of the Colts. A win over the Broncos in 1986, when it seemed for all the world that it would happen, and the resulting trip to the Super Bowl, would have quelled all that by creating an environment in Cleveland between city and county leaders and the Browns whereby they could have, and would have, come to an agreement on the building of a new stadium that Modell so desperately wanted, and needed.
Steve King
