Jersey numbers in football have suddenly become a really big deal — again — as evidenced by Jayden Daniels’ war of words with his former school, LSU, with his old number there, 5.
And jersey numbers were also soon going to become a really big deal when the Browns and Chicago Bears, who play Saturday at Soldier Field in the preseason opener for both teams, first opposed each other at the end of Thanksgiving weekend 75 years ago, on Nov. 25, 1951, at Cleveland Stadium.
The NFL’s standard numbering system — in essence the only system the league had ever used — would end a little over a month and a half later when the all-stars took the field at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the Pro Bowl. The switch would be made to, basically, the numbering system that is used today.
When the 1952 season was unveiled, so were a plethora of number changes for all teams, including the Browns, such as:
Quarterback Otto Graham — he went from 60 to 14.
Middle guard Bill Willis — from 30 to 60.
Left tackle/kicker Lou Groza — from 46 to 76.
Fullback Marion Motley — from 76 to 36.
Defensive end Len Ford — from 53 to 80.
Cornerback Warren Lahr — from 80 to 24.
Running back Rex Bumgardner — from 99 to 22.
Center Frank Gatski — from 22 to 52.
Defensive end George Young — from 52 to 82.
Cornerback Tommy James — from 82 to 42.
Wide receiver/running back Dub Jones, who scored six touchdowns in that 1951 game against Chicago to tie an NFL record — from 86 to
40.
Wide receiver Dante Lavelli — from 56 to 86.
Wide receiver Mac Speedie — from 58 to 88.
Cornerback Don Shula — from 96 to 44.
Left guard Abe Gibron — from 34 to 64.
And so on and so forth.
Last names were not on the back of the jerseys then, so you really did need a souvenir program to identify the new numbers for players.
The Browns have five retired numbers, which, considering who the players are, is a good decision. They include:
14 — Graham, one of the greatest — and winningest — quarterbacks in pro football history, leading the way in the greatest 10-year period ever in the sport with 10 straight league championship game appearances, resulting in seven titles.
32 — running back Jim Brown — the greatest player in the game’s history.
45 — running back Ernie Davis — died of leukemia in 1963 before ever playing a down for the Browns.
46 — safety Don Fleming — was just starting to blossom after three years with the Browns being getting killed in an offseason construction accident in 1963.
76 — Groza — called “The Father of Modern Kicking” for the way he pioneered that part of the game.
I have suggested before that the Browns should add two more retired numbers, those of Willis (60) and Motley (36), because they are not only Pro Football Hall of Famers, but, even more importantly, they permanently broke the color barrier coming out of World War II not just in pro football but in pro sports overall when they played in the Browns’ first-ever regular-season game on Sept. 6, 1946, a full eight months before Jackie Robinson first played for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. That’s an incredibly important event in the social history of the country as it pertains to African Americans.
But now I’d like to also suggest some type of retired number distinction for running back Tom Bloom, who was taken by the Browns with the latter of their two sixth-round choices in the 1963 NFL Draft out of Purdue. However, he was killed in a car accident on Interstate 70 near Dayton on Jan. 18, 1963 before he ever reported to Cleveland and was assigned a jersey number. He was the first of three Browns players who died that offseason, joining Davis and Fleming. Davis and Fleming are recognized in memorial by the Browns, so it only seems right that Bloom should, too, in some way without a number.
Steve King
