A friend brought to church the other day a list of some of the greatest feats in sports history.
The game he, another friend and I played as we greeted members of the congregation at the main door was to pick the record that we thought will never be broken.
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The list included, among others, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 points in an NBA game, Newcomerstown, Ohio native Cy Young’s 749 complete games pitched in Major League Baseball, Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, Secretariat’s 31-length victory in horse racing and the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team’s 111 consecutive victories.
My pick from the list was Young’s complete game feat. If a starting pitcher goes six innings now, ESPN cuts into its programming with a breaking news alert.
Then it hit me.
“You know, I’ve got one that will beat any of the things on this list,” I told my friends,
Immediately, I had their attention.
“With the fact the NFL recently decided to incorporate all of the records and statistics from the All-America Football Conference into its own records and statistics, what can now be recognized in a much broader sense than before is what the Browns did during Thanksgiving week in their perfect season of 1948,” I pointed out. “On the way to going 15-0 and winning the league championship for the third time in as many years, they played three games in just an eight-day period, all on the road on opposite coasts against their three biggest rivals, and won them all.”
My friends’ eyes glazed over. They were amazed, but at the same time, they had no idea what I was talking about. They didn’t grasp what I was saying.
The three of us joke a lot with each other during the 90 minutes we spend together most Sundays, but I assured them that this was no joke. It was the real deal. Hard as it may be to believe, it actually happened.
It began on Sunday, Nov. 21 when they defeated the New York Yankees 34-21 at Yankee Stadium. Then four days later, on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 25, they routed the Los Angeles Dons 31-14 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Browns completed their great and historic odyssey of 77 years ago on Sunday, Nov. 28 by going north up the West Coast 400 miles and edging the San Francisco 48ers, the biggest of their three biggest rivals, 31-28 at Kezar Stadium in the next-to-last game of the regular season to improve to 13-0. Three games earlier, before this road trip began, they had turned back the 49ers at Cleveland, 14-7, before the largest pro football crowd to that time, 82,769.
Wow!
Double-wow!!
And triple-wow!!!
Indeed, one wow for each win.
When today’s teams have to play on Thanksgiving or on Thursday Night Foitball, all the talk is on the short work week, the quick turnaround and shortage of time time to recover physically, emotionally and mentally and prepare. However, the teams that were on the road for their games the previous Sunday almost always host the Thursday games. No two road games in a row. Not so, though, for those incredible Browns. They played three on the road. And, it should be pointed out, they did so at a time when plane travel by pro sports teams was just beginning and as such was archaic to the plane travel of today’s teams.
And get this: For their regular-season finale on the following Sunday, Dec. 5, the Browns played their fourth straight road game by going back to the East Coast and topping the Brooklyn Dodgers 31-21 at Ebbets Field to improve to 14-0.
The Browns then finally got some rest with a week off the following Sunday — and a home game to follow — as they blasted the original version of the Buffalo Bills 49-7 at Cleveland Stadium on Sunday, Dec. 19 in the AAFC Championship Game to finish the season at 15-0. That road streak, in particular, and the entire 1948 season in general, served as the foundation of the Browns 29-game unbeaten string (27-0-2) that began in the middle of the 1947 season and ran though the midway point of the 1949 season.
Pro football had never seen anything like this before, it has never seen anything like this since and it will never see anything like this ever again.
It is, then, a feat that will absolutely, positively never be matched, let alone bettered.
To be sure, it was a real A-lister of an accomplishment if there ever was one.
Steve King
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