THE GIANTS? THEIR MERE MENTION USED TO GET EVERYONE’S ATTENTION IN CLEVELAND
By STEVE KING
To most fans, especially ones who have never watched black and white TV, the New York Giants are just another team.
The Giants, who will practice against the Browns on Thursday and Friday at Browns Headquarters in Berea, then play them on Sunday afternoon at FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland’s lone home preseason game of the year, now meet the Browns just once every four years in the regular season. Because they met last year – in New Jersey in the third-to-last game, won by the Browns 20-6 –they won’t square off again in a game that counts in the standings until 2024. By that time, the teams will look totally different than they do this week.
But there was a time – years and years and years ago, and those with gray hair remember it well — that the Browns and Giants were each other’s bitter, bitter arch rivals. The Browns were paired with the Giants in the American Conference, which later became the Eastern Conference, when they moved to the NFL from the All-America Football Conference in 1950. They stayed together in the East through 1969, after which the NFL-AFL merger, and all the realignment it caused, sent them to difference conferences, the AFC and NFC, in which, of course, they still remain today as virtual strangers to one another.
For all but one year in the 16-season period from 1950 through ’65, either the Browns or Giants won the East title (in 1960, the Philadelphia Eagles captured the conference and then the NFL championship). In 1950 and ’58, the Browns and Giants finished the regular season tied for first place in the conference, necessitating a special playoff game to determine who would represent the East in the NFL Championship Game. The Browns won 8-3 in 1950 after losing both regular-season meetings to the Giants, and New York triumphed 10-0 in 1958 to complete a three-game sweep of Cleveland.
In 1964, when they won their last NFL title, the Browns clinched the Eastern championship with a 52-20 rout of the Giants at Yankee Stadium in the regular-season finale. Earlier in the year, at Cleveland, the Browns also won in a rout, 42-20. People in Northeast Ohio were crowing that their team had beaten the Giants twice by a combined score of 94-40.
Indeed, the route to the league title ran through New York for the Browns, and it ran through Cleveland for the Giants.
Now, that championship road for each team goes through other cities, like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, and Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington.
