The sad, untimely and surprising death of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay at the way-too-young age of 65 on Wednesday afternoonhas caused me to consider how intertwined the Browns and Cleveland are with the Colts and the history of pro football in both Baltimore and Indianapolis.
Let’s take a look:
*The Browns, the San Francisco 49ers and the original version of the Baltimore Colts were the three teams from the All-America Football Conference that were absorbed into the NFL in 1950 after the AAFC was dissolved following the 1949 season.
*The second version of the Colts — the one that still exists — won back-to-back NFL titles in 1958 and ‘59. Their head coach was Weeb Ewbank, a former Browns assistant under Paul Brown in the late 1940s. The Colts beat the New York Giants in both championship games. Had the Browns defeated the Giants in 1958 in a special playoff contest after the two clubs had finished the regular season tied for first place in the Eastern Conference, then it would have been Cleveland in that league title game. Baltimore ended up beating New York 23-17 in overtime in what has been dubbed “The Greatest Game Ever.” What if the Browns had played the Colts?
*The Browns beat the heavily-favored Colts 27-0 in the 1964 NFL Championship Game. The Browns have not won a league title since. The head coach of the Colts then was Don Shula, a product of Painesville Harvey High School and John Carroll University who played safety for the Browns in 1951 and ‘52 before being sent to the Colts in a multi-player trade.
*The Browns lost 23-12 to the Green Bay Packers in the 1965 NFL title game. But it was the Colts who almost ended up playing the Browns in that game. The Colts lost to the Packers in overtime in a special playoff game after the two teams finished the regular season tied for first place in the Western Conference. What if Baltimore and Cleveland had had a rematch?
*The Browns lost 34-0 to the Colts in the 1968 NFL Championship Game. Had the Browns won, then they would have qualified for Super Bowl 3 and faced the Ewbank-coached New York Jets. The Colts would have had a perfect record entering the Super Bowl had it not been for a regular-season loss to the Browns. The Jets upset Baltimore 16-7 to give the AFL its first Super Bowl title in three tries. Would the Jets have been favored against the Browns? Would the Browns have won?
*The Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers and Colts ended a stalemate and allowed the NFL-AFL merger to be finalized when, in 1970, they agreed to move from the newly-created NFC to the AFC to balance the conferences at 13 teams each.
*After failing to get a new stadium deal in Baltimore, then Colts owner Bob Irsay, Jim Irsay’s father, moved the team in the middle of the night in March 1984 to Indianapolis, where a new domed stadium was waiting for the team. Years later, it was learned that this move was what first put the idea of moving the Browns into the head of owner Art Modell, who was struggling to get a new stadium deal in Cleveland. As it turned out, he did move the Browns in 1995 to Baltimore to replace the Colts with the promise of a new stadium. Early in 1996, Modell fired head coach Bill Belichick, who had gotten his coaching start with the Baltimore Colts under Ted Marchibroda. Marchibroda was hired to replace Belichick as the head coach of the newly-named Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens were, for a short time before that, the Baltimore Browns until the city of Cleveland and the NFL brokered a deal with Modell in which Cleveland retained the Browns name, colors and history for an expansion team to begin play in 1999 in a new stadium.
*Browns owner Jimmy Haslam is planning to build a domed stadium in Brook Park, near Hopkins airport. I’m sure that Jim
Irsay, whose club is playing in its second domed stadium in Indianapolis, would have fully backed Haslam’s decisions.
Steve King
