Cavaliers-Golden State Warriors is the latest intense pro sports rivalry between Cleveland and the San Francisco area.
But it’s not the only one that has ever existed.
In the four-years existence of the All-America Football Conference from 1946-49, the Browns and San Francisco 49ers had a tremendous rivalry. It was easily the best rivalry in the league.
Indeed, long before there were rivalries with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens and Cincinnati Bengals, or ones with the Dallas Cowboys and St. Louis Football Cardinals in the 1960s, or even ones with the New York Football Giants, Detroit Lions and the first version of the Los Angeles Rams during the Browns’ early years in the NFL in the 1950s, they had one with the 49ers.
A real good one.
Despite the fact that the Browns defeated the New York Yankees 14-9 and 14-3, respectively, in the first two AAFC Championship Games in 1946 and ’47, it was the 49ers they had to focus on if they wanted to win the title. And it was the 49ers who gave them the most fits, although it’s hard to say with a straight face that anyone gave the Browns much trouble considering they were 52-4-3 overall in AAFC play, including a perfect 15-0 mark in 1948, and captured all four league championships.
The Browns won their first seven games as they and the league launched in 1946. And they did so convincingly, posting three shutouts, one of which was by 44-0, limiting each team to single-digits scoring and outscoring the opposition by a combined margin of 169-20.
Then they met the 49ers, who defeated them 34-20 – at Cleveland, no less, in front of what was then a pro football-record crowd of 70,385. It was, in fact, the first of two straight losses for the Browns, as they fell on the road a week later to the Los Angles Dons, 17-16.
The Browns edged the 49ers 14-7 in the rematch two weeks later at Kezar Stadium (it was their second-lowest point total of the year) en route to finishing the regular season 12-2, putting them three games ahead of San Francisco (9-5) and giving them the Western Division title.
Like all pro sports leagues then, the AAFC was filled almost exclusively with teams located east of the Mississippi River, which is why the Browns, though based in a city in the Eastern Time Zone, was in something called the “Western” Division.
By the way, the 49ers had the third-best record in the AAFC in 1946, behind also the Eastern Division champion Yankees (10-3-1), whom Cleveland beat 24-7 and 7-0 in the regular season.
In 1947, the Browns won the West with a 12-1-1 mark, putting them 3½ games ahead of the runner-up 49ers (8-4-2). The Browns were held to their second-lowest point total of the season in turning back the 49ers 14-7 at San Francisco before winning easily at Cleveland, 37-14, in front of another monstrous crowd of 76,504.
The Browns finished 14-0 in the regular season, and it’s good they did because the second-place 49ers went 12-2, losing both games – by close margins — to head coach Paul Brown’s team, 14-7 at Cleveland in front of 82,769 and 31-28 at Kezar in the next-to-last game as the Browns clinched the division title. It was Cleveland’s two closest calls of the year.
As the Yankees fell back to 6-8, the Buffalo Bills and Baltimore staggered to a first-place tie for the East title at 7-7. The Bills claimed the crown by virtue of a 28-17 playoff win over the Colts, but they were then crushed 49-7 by the Browns in the league title game.
Only 22,981 showed up at Cleveland for the championship contest. Browns fans were very smart even then. They knew who the Browns’ real rival was, and that after beating out the 49ers in the West, the club had virtually assured itself of another title. The Browns had routed Buffalo in both of the teams’ regular-season meetings, 42-13 and 31-14.
In the AAFC’s last season of 1949 and with the number of teams dwindling from eight to seven, the divisions were abolished and the clubs were thrown together into a single grouping. The 9-1-2 Browns edged out the 49ers (9-3) by just a game for the regular-season title. The 49ers handed the Browns their worst loss in their AAFC days – by far – with a double-up 56-28 decision at San Francisco (Cleeland wuld not lose another regular-season game by more than 28 points until it fell by 41 points, 48-7, to the Giants in 1959). The Browns won the rematch with the 49ers just 30-28 at Cleveland before 72,189.
With no divisions, the AAFC instituted a two-round playoff format for the first time. The Browns handed a 31-21 semifinal-round defeat to the Bills, who had finished fourth at 5-5-2. In a pro football rarity, the teams had tied in both of their regular-season meetings, 28-28 and 7-7.
Meanwhile, the 49ers advanced with a 28-17 win over the third-place Brooklyn-New York Yankees (8-4), who were a combination of the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers after the latter club ceased operations following the 1948 season.
That meant the Browns had to get past the 49ers in the rubber match of the season to earn their fourth title, and they did so by an impressive two-touchdown margin, 21-7, at Cleveland.
Including that lone regular-season meeting, the Browns were 7-2 against the 49ers in the AAFC. That’s very good.
More telling of the teams’ rivalry, though, is the fact, that the Browns outscored the 49ers by a combined total of just 21 points, 209-188, in those nine games. That comes to a combined score of 23.2 to 20.8, or just 2.4 points, the basic equivalent of a safety.
That fact, along with the NFL wanting to expand further to the wide-open, lucrative West Coast, thus giving the Rams, who had played in the 1949 NFL Championship Game, a geographical rival, are the reasons why the 49ers joined the Browns and Baltimore Colts in being the three teams to be absorbed by the NFL after the AAFC folded following the 1949 season.
And all these decades later – nearly seven – the cities of Cleveland and San Francisco are once again hot, hot, hot rivals in pro sports.
For those who will snidely point to the fact that the Warriors have actually played their home games in Oakland for 4½ decades, let me counter with a few facts of my own.
First, the Warriors moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco in 1962 and were known as the San Francisco Warriors through 1971, playing all of their home games there before hosting some games in Oakland beginning in 1966. They moved almost all of their home games to Oakland in 1971 and now play there exclusively.
But the Warriors never adopted the Oakland name, becoming known as the Golden State Warriors so as to signify they represent the entire San Francisco Bay area. It’s been a great marketing move. San Francisco is a wealthy area, and so are many of the surrounding communities.
Ground was broken in January in the Mission Bay portion of San Francisco for an arena whose main purpose will be for basketball and serving as the new home of the Warriors, who will likely continue to use Golden State as their home location.
