Here’s a great trivia question regarding the Browns and TV sportscasting legend Keith Jackson, who passYd away on Friday night at 89.

Who was the first play-by-play announcer – on TV, not radio, although the games were aired on radio as well right from the start – on Monday Night Football in 1970?

It was none other than Jackson.

It was supposed to be Frank Gifford, but he couldn’t get out of his contract with CBS in time. Jackson, who already worked for ABC, which, of course, did the games for decades, got the nod.

So what does that have to do with the Browns?

They played in the first game ever. In fact, the Browns hosted the game at Cleveland Stadium on Sept. 21, 1970. No one had any idea if MNF was going to work. After all, no games had ever been played on a weekday, Monday–Friday. To have any chance for the series to make it, it was going to need two good teams, a raucous home crowd and the New York market, which was – and still is – the biggest in the country, for that first game to make a good first impression. Remember, first impressions last.

The Browns were coming off a great 1960s decade, having won the NFL title in 1964 and played for the league title four times in all, including in both 1968 and ’69.

So Modell, a very influential man in the league then, and arguably the most powerful man when it came to the TV contract, volunteered his Browns and Cleveland Stadium, which could hold well over 80,000 and was selling out regularly for Browns games. So the possibility of that loud crowd to spice up the telecast did exist.

The Browns would represent the new AFC, which was made up of the former AFL teams plus Cleveland, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Colts, who agreed to move from the old NFL, which was renamed the NFC, to the AFC to balance out the conferences at 13 teams each.

The Browns were not scheduled to play the New York Giants in 1970, but they were slated to play the New York Jets. So it was the Browns against the Jets, who had won Super Bowl III with a stunning 16-7 upset of the Colts. That Jets triumph was the AFL’s first salvo in this new war with the old NFL teams. The NFL’s Green Bay Packers had won the first two Super Bowls handily.

The game was the perfect storm. The Browns bolted to a 14-0 lead and then held on to win 31-21, sealing the verdict with just a minute left when linebacker Billy Andrews intercepted a Joe Namath pass and returned it 26 yards for a touchdown.

A crowd of 85,703, the largest ever to see a Browns game in Cleveland, roared its approval.

So dubious were the ABC affiliates that MNF was a good idea that less than half of them decided to air that first game. The others showed their regular Monday night programming.

But in the cities where the game was aired, the TV ratings were through the roof and soon the rest of the affiliates were all in on MNF.

And Jackson, whose only season on MNF was that 1970 season, turned in his usual great performance.

Now you know.