OF BIRTHDAYS, BILL BELICHICK AND THE BROWNS

By STEVE KING

Happy Birthday, Bill Belichick!
A couple days or so late.
OK, Coach, I’m sorry for my tardiness. I’ll do pushups and run The Hill, or Belichick’s Hill, as it came to be known, at Browns Headquarters in Berea, to atone for my sins.
Anyway, the former head coach of the Browns and the longtime head coach of the New England Patriots — and the greatest head coach of the modern era and perhaps even the greatest of all-time —  turned 69 on Friday. He was born April 16, 1952 in Nashville, Tenn., where his father, Steve, a Struthers High School graduate who went on to play at Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve) University and coached at Hiram, was the backfield coach at Vanderbilt.
Bill Belichick was just 38 when he got the Cleveland job on Jan. 5, 1991.
That was just over 30 years ago — and perhaps that many, or more, pounds ago, judging from the images we see on the sideline.
It is an interesting group of people who celebrated birthdays with Belichick on Friday — some posthumously.
Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie in “A Christmas Story,” which, of course, was filmed in Cleveland, turned 50.
Comedian Martin Lawrence turned 56.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar turned 74.
Singer Bobby Vinton turned 86.
Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI turned 94.
Those who were also born on April 16 but are no longer with us include aviator Wilbur Wright, who lived in Dayton for most of his life, actor Charlie Chaplin, actor Peter Ustinov, composer — and Cleveland native — Henry Mancini and pro wrestler George “The Animal” Steele.
Belichick has never been shy about using The Big, Bad Word — you know the one. That’s interesting because Martin Lawrence is even less shy about using The Big, Bad Word in his routines, Then, of course, we all remember Raplhie using it when he let the lug nuts roll away into the darkness while he was helping his dad change a flat tire on the family car.
And then, there’s His Holiness, Emeritus Pope Benedict, who probably isn’t even saware there’s The Big Bad Word, but if he is, he’s never uttered it, of course.
Come to think of it, I saw Kareem very plainly and visibly — you didn’t need to be a lip reader to read his lips — scream at Larry Bird, “The Big Bad Word you!,” during an extraordinarily heated moment during those great — and extraordinarily heated — NBA Finals series between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics in the 1980s.
Anyway, back to Belichick — Bill, that is, although Steve, who used to frequent Browns training camp practices when his son was coaching here, was one of the nicest and, with his stories about young Bill growing up, also funniest guys you’d ever want to meet. What would have happened had the original Browns remained in Cleveland and Belichick had remained their coach (as it was, of course, he was fired  Feb. 14, 1996 — Happy Valentine’s Day, Bill — by Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell a week after the NFL approved the franchise’s move from Cleveland because Modell knew the incredibly negative perception of the coach at the time could not be marketed for the new team)?
That is, would the success Belichick has achieved in New England occurred instead in Cleveland with the Browns? Would all, or at least some, of those Super Bowl championship flags hanging at Gillette Stadium instead be hanging at FirstEnergy Stadium? Would Belichick somehow have found his Tom Brady in Cleveland to lead the team through a long run of success?
And would Bill Belichick now be preparing for his umpteenth NFL Draft as a member of the Browns, with the event being held in 2 1/2 weeks in the team’s back yard?
Good questions, all of them, and so interesting to ponder.