Of camp and colors in the early days
By STEVE KING
Bowling Green State University is not only the site of the Browns’ first training camps.
It is also why the Browns got their seal brown and orange team colors.
It was 1946 and Browns General Manager and head coach Paul Brown was looking for a place to host training camp that summer for his new team in the start-up All-America Football Conference. His search took him to Bowling Green to take a tour of Bowling Green State University. The school checked all of the boxes on his list, possibly the most important of which was his desire to get the Browns far enough away from Cleveland to limit the “home” distractions, but still close enough so that it didn’t take an extraordinarily long time to return there when needed.
But something else occurred that was important. While in one of the athletic buildings on campus, a framed Falcons football jersey on the wall caught Brown’s eye. He really liked the brown and orange colors, which, incidentally, BGSU still uses.
He thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and made two historical decisions.
The first was to pick the school to be the site of camp. The Browns actually held their first six camps there, through 1951, during which time they made it to a league championship game every season, winning five titles. It was a nice combination, camp at BG and playing for a championship.
Brown also picked the school’s brown and orange colors to be that of the Browns.
They were very close to the black and orange colors of Massillon High School, which he built into a national power in his nine seasons there and launched his iconic career. He used that success to move on to Ohio State in 1941.
He loved Massillon, where he also played quarterback in the 1920s, but he knew he couldn’t use the Tigers’ colors. He needed to establish something else for the Browns, and by using brown and orange, he did just that and at the same time also got his Massillon fix.
It’s a decision that has lasted 75 years, and counting.
