Saturday, Sept. 5 (PM) – It’s good to get away for a while.

That goes for football teams as well as people.

Former Browns head coach Paul Brown, who was always way ahead of everybody else on the innovation curve, realized the value of getting out of Dodge, so to speak, and applied it to his teams.

So for the last decade of his stay in Cleveland, 1953-62, Brown took his clubs to the West Coast to play the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco in preseason games on back-to-back weekends.

In between the contests, Brown would keep the Browns out there to conduct a portion of training camp, getting his players – and coaches, including himself – out of the everyday hum-drum of a routine, and away from the distractions of being in Northeast Ohio. He felt it enabled his players to focus and get better, and to bond as a team.

It was on this date 56 years ago, Sept. 5, 1959, that one of these games was held as the Browns edged the Rams 27-24 at the Coliseum. A week earlier, Cleveland had been edged 17-14 by the 49ers at Kezar Stadium.

The idea worked so well that even after Brown was unceremoniously fired by the Browns following the 1962 season, his successors, Blanton Collier and Bellaire, Ohio’s own Nick Skorich, continued the practice through 1972. After that, the Browns abandoned it.

Is it just a coincidence that in the ensuing seven-year period from 1973-79, the Browns never made the playoffs and had just three winning records? Who knows?

You’re probably never going to see a team go to the opposite coast again for 20 straight years and spend an entire week practicing during training camp. But some teams, including the Browns, are re-thinking the routine of holding training camp at their year-round training facilities. It’s too boring. It’s not challenging enough. That’s exactly why the Browns are headed to Columbus, perhaps as soon as next season, to conduct the majority of their training camp.

And when that happens, somewhere Paul Brown will be smiling.

He was right.

Again.