When I became the beat writer covering the Browns for the Medina Gazette and Elyria Chronicle-Telegram 30 years ago, the team headquarters in Berea looked a lot different than it does today.

There have been countless additions made to the building since then.

You used to be able to park about 40 feet from the building on the west side. All the beat riders had a parking spot in that area, and mine was in No. 44. I thought that was pretty cool, because I always joked that I was parking in Leroy Kelly’s spot. Kelly, of course, was a Pro Football Hall of Fame running back for the Browns who took over following Jim Brown’s retirement just before the start of the 1966 season.

Anyway, one day when I got to the facility, there was a car in my spot. It was a compact Chrysler LeBaron convertible. I marched right into the security desk and told the guard about the problem.

He laughed, which made me just all the more upset, and said that I needed to find another spot for that day. The person parking there was Leo Murphy, who had retired a few years before after serving nearly four decades as the trainer for the Browns. He would visit from time to time. I knew Leo, and he was indeed an iconic member of the organization. He had incredible stories of a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff dating back to the Browns’ first season in the NFL.

“Leo can park any “where he wants,” the guard said with another chuckle, “except maybe for Art’s (team owner Art Modell) spot.

“Come to think of it, Art might let him park in that spot. After all, it’s Leo.”

Whatever the case, I moved my car without any discussion. I bowed to Leo’s standing in the organization.

I tell this story because anytime we join an organization, whether it be in sports or somewhere else, we need to quickly realize the pecking order. We need to figure out who, and what, is cherished and can’t be disturbed.

With the Browns, one of those spots was, of course, held down by the aforementioned Jim Brown, who passed away recently at the age of 87. Brown could go where he wanted to go in Browns Headquarters, when he wanted to go and for how long he wanted to go, and no one would say anything because he was well . . . Jim Brown.

A great story recently reminded us that Mike Holmgren, who was working as the team president for the Browns a decade and a half ago, downgraded Brown’s role from a team advisor into basically that of a greeter. He dishonored and disparaged Brown as if he he were some two-bit bum.

I didn’t like Holmgren because, in part, he was lazy. In a building where everybody was working 15-hour days, he would come in at about 10 o’clock in the morning, sit at his desk for a couple hours doing who knows what, take an hour-and-a-half lunch and leave at about 2:30 in the afternoon. He would do that day after day after day despite the fact that team owner Randy Lerner was paying him millions of dollars to oversee the club. But Holmgren didn’t care, because, as I said, he was lazy and irresponsible.

When Lerner sold the team to Jimmy Haslam in 2012, it shocked everybody, even those high up in the organization, including Holmgren. The look on his face at training camp that day when the announcement was made was priceless. He knew the gravy train ride was over.

There has been talk that Holmgren belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for what he did as a head coach with the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks. I would debate that based on just that résumé, which is good but hardly great. However, the tipping point for him never getting into the Hall of Fame, for me at least, and probably for a lot of you, too, is how he treated Brown, the best player in the history of the game and someone who was known to everybody in the media as simply “The Greatest.”

It was so wrong, so ignorant and so demeaning. It was like watching a train wreck. If I had to, I would lock the door to the Hall of Fame as Holmgren was trying to enter it. He does not belong there, ever.

In a heartbeat, though, I would put Leo Murphy into the Hall of Fame as a contributor. Now there was a guy who epitomized all the good things of the game, especially the Browns. He was iconic.

If Mike Holmgren had ever parked in my spot at the team facility, I would’ve had his car towed, at his expense. That tells you all you need to know.

Steve King