Usually, it’s the NFL that’s way ahead of the other pro sports, especially Major League Baseball, when it comes to being modernized and forward-thinking.

But this time, it’s MLB leading the way with the news that it is integrating — what an appropriate word in this case, right? — the statistics from the Negro Leagues into its own statistics, in effect radically changing its record books.

Wow! So cool. So very cool.

It has taken legendary Negro League players such as Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell and Satchel Paige, who were on the outside looking in, into now legendary MLB players, which is exactly the way it should have been all along. It’s a wrong that should have corrected long ago. It’s a shame that it wasn’t. We can’t change history, though, so what we have to focus on — delightfully so — is that it has happened and will continue to evolve as more long-ago and long-forgotten information is discovered.

So, with all this, then, the NFL should take the opportunity to follow suit and integrate the statistics from the All-America Football Conference into its own statistics. That would drastically change the numbers of a lot of AAFC players who made it into the NFL after the league, which lasted for four years, disbanded following the 1949 season. And it would do the same for the AAFC’s top two teams, the Browns and San Francisco 49ers, which were absorbed wholly into the NFL and, of course, still exist today. The first version of the Baltimore Colts was the third and final AAFC club to join the NFL, but they lasted just one year before disbanding. A new Baltimore Colts franchise entered the NFL in 1953 and still exists today in Indianapolis.

The AAFC was, by far, the best of all the other pro football leagues, and the fact the Browns, after dominating the AAFC, dominated the NFL for its first six seasons there, adds tremendous street-cred to the AAFC.

What hurts that effort is the fact that the people running the current Browns franchise, particularly owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, care nothing about the AAFC or even those Browns players and teams that were a part of it. That is a real shame and a personal affront to those players, coaches and teams.

Oh, well?

No.

To be continued.

Steve King