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Let’s hope and, more importantly, pray that things go well for the Browns this fall, if only in a relative sense in coming off a 3-14 finish.

Indeed, there are more holes on the team that can be filled in just one offseason, so 2025 will likely end up being the start of a rebuilding effort.

But no matter what happens good, bad or indifferent, it will be a great year for the Browns. I mean that with every fiber of my being.

Really.

Truly.

Fully.

Huh?!

Why, oh, why would that — can that — be the case?

Because the NFL recently announced that all the records and statistics, both individually and team-wise, from the four seasons (1946-49) of the existence of the All-America Football Conference, including those of the Browns, who were so off-the charts dominant in a historical sense that it rendered the league non-competitive, put it out of business and forced a merger of sorts with the NFL, have been absorbed into its own records.

Wow!

Double-wow!!

Triple-wow!!!

Yes, after all these years, even decades, the NFL and the AAFC are now one. They will live in harmony forever.

The news seemingly came out of nowhere. I did not know that such a measure was even being considered. When I saw it, my jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it. It was too good to be true. Was this some kind of early April Fool’s joke? I read it perhaps five times before I was able to grasp that it was real.

Let’s be very clear in saying that I had nothing — absolutely, positively nothing — to do with the NFL’s decision, but I had complained for years in countless articles on this site and others, about the fact that the AAFC was a non-factor in the minds of the NFL people. They simply didn’t care, even in the least bit.

And, for that matter, the current Browns didn’t seem to care, either, even in the least, because as far as the AAFC part of their history is concerned, they list only the scores of those games, and nothing else, in their own official team records.

Aside from that, though, the NFL ignoring the AAFC wasn’t right, or fair. The logic behind it could not be defended, for if the NFL thought enough of the American Football League to fully merge with it and incorporate not only its teams but also its records, 55 years ago, why couldn’t the NFL incorporate the AAFC’s records into its own after having already absorbed three of its teams (the Browns, the San Francisco 49ers and the original version of the Baltimore Colts) 75 years ago? It made no sense.

The Browns proved their worth, and that of the AAFC and its teams and what they did in going an eye-popping 52-4-3 and winning all four league titles, by storming into the NFL in 1950, blowing out the two-time defending champion Eagles in Philadelphia by a resounding 35-10 (it wasn’t even that close)  in their opener and then went on to win the league title. The Browns followed that by appearing in the next five NFL Chsmpionship Games, capturing three more titles, to complete an incredible stretch in which the club, in its first 10 years of existence, made it to the league title game 10 times, winning seven crowns in all. That’s the best run not just in pro football history, but also one of the best in the history of all pro sports.

Now, all fans of the Browns and the NFL will be able to see and understand it.

That is incredibly beautiful, even if it was a long time coming and with the fact, unfortunately so, that not a single member of those Browns AAFC teams lived to see it.

Steve King

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