DVR’d it to watch later.

The Browns were gone for three years, not two. They were shafted in the expansion process more than any other franchise had been. They were back in existence as Browns 2.0 for two season before watching version 1.0 win a Super Bowl. The Browns are in their 11th year of existence as version 2.0, with one playoff game to show for it and a 1-4 team that is helplessly on its way to an unbearably boring, losing season.

While your civility has improved, your understanding of the culture of Browns fans (and sympathy for other teams’ fans) still has a far, far way to go.

Your characterization of Modell “pleading” and the rest is way off. Not something I really care to debate though.

Please, please, please …. not another rehash about the Modell move.

We’ve tried have this debate far too many times and it only leads to bickering.

So let’s sum up so everyone has their say:

Baltimore – screwed by Irsay, royally in fact. We agree here.

Modell – basically heavy-handed the Indians franchise for decades. After the Tribe and Cavs got new digs, Modell was jealous. Begged for the city to do the same for him. The city had just forked over a ton of $$ for the other 2 stadiums and said not at this point in time, wait a few seasons. (Modell was still raking in $$ since that stadium was mostly full for every Browns game, he owned it and got all the reveneues, the city got very little).

Instead of waiting, he acted like a petulant 4 year old and stole the franchise off to Baltimore.

Cleveland – fought like he** to get an expansion and keep their name/colors.

NFL – after seeing how easy Jacksonville and Carolina had it (and Houston to a degree) in achieving playoff berths and winning football, the other NFL owners placed severe restrictions on the new Cleveland franchise, dooming them to a Tampa Bay like expansion.

Postscript:

Baltimore fans: extremely happy to have another franchise to root for, not to mention winning a Super Bowl shortly after the move.

Cleveland fans: still waiting for some semblance of order to be installed in their franchise, 11 years later!!!!

There you go. Summary for all involved.

Chris, please freeze this post so no long debates happen, Thanks!

Why must you come here and troll like this? I thought you’d learned something after last year.

While we understand your anger, it cannot compare to us having the team snuck out of town in the middle of a snowy night and being overlooked for expansion for so many years(Jacksonville, Carolina- are you kidding me!?)

The Cleveland FANS were the ones who fought hard enough to get their team back so soon. What did the Colts fans do in comparison? We were filing lawsuits and marching on Washington for Christ’s sake. If not for the fans, we probably wouldn’t have had a team for a similar amount of time that you guys didn’t.

You claim to commiserate being that something similar happened to you. I look at it the exact opposite way. You KNEW how shitty that felt and what that was like, and yet still chose to steal someone else’s team. Not one that had an apathetic fan base and wasn’t selling tickets, either. THAT I can understand, and the fans thus would have no one to blame but themselves (take Jacksonville recently).
While stadium issues are always the primary factor in a move, the Colts averaged just 40,923 ticket sales in Memorial Stadium the last year. The Browns, in contrast, filled 99.8% of the seats at Cleveland Browns Stadium during the last seven seasons, despite a combined record of 36 wins and 76 losses over that span. That’s an average of 80,898 in an 81,000 seat stadium

I’ll never forget, or forgive, the mayor of Baltimore calling a press conference and waiving a Baltimore Browns mug around to cheering crowds right after it happened…So essentially, you understand our anger… you just didn’t give a shit.

Oh, and I did actually see the band perform once. It was 1987 – a couple friends and I went to one of the replacement games in Cleveland. The announcer said that the Baltimore Colts Marching Band was living proof that the spirit of the NFL was alive and well in Baltimore. I’m glad that day that I had no idea how ironic that would be in a few years.

The band was competent.

BTW, we don’t ‘relate’ to you at all, at least I don’t. The only’ relating’ I hope for is the day that the Browns are continually beating the absolute piss out of the Ravens on a consistent basis. Looks like it’s a long way off, and I’m not holding my breath. But it’s something to hope for…

Hell, I dislike the Steelers, but at least I respect their history and tradition…your team, well, I’ll just quote from ‘Henry V’:

’Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt…

I don’t care if Baltimore thinks they were screwed. I hope the Ravens move to LA. I sure as hell don’t care about some band that kept on playing.

Art Modell is a rat bastard and I count the days until he croaks. If he is ever elected into the Hall of Fame, something I doubt, I would walk to Canton to Boo that old turd.

Signed,
Every self-respecting Browns fan.

When one of the Ravens fans came on here and made a similar-even more insulting- post a year or two ago, I went off on them. I’m glad that I don’t have to do it again.

Thanks johnny, Bernie19, talonk, notthatnoise, et. al.

Hate us or Modell all you want and I won’t take it from you, it’s your feelings. However, all I tried to get you to understand, and I’ll try to put this in as few syllables as possible, is that we lost our name, colors and team for 12 years and that was horrible. I guess it’s easy for you to say that after us getting screwed in the expansion process that we should have just said no thanks to Art and sat another ten to 20 years w/o another team. Great intelligence from rabid fans, no wonder…..

As always, a visit to ‘The Baltimore Beatdown’ reminds me what a good thing we have going here at DBN.

I think he might be comparing the websites, not the teams.

BTW, Here’s our ‘compassionate,’ ‘I just want to sympathize with you’ Rexx in action on Baltimore Beatdown replying to Joe flaccid, or whatever the hell his name is…
 
Hopefully all the ignorant pricks who are fans around this league like the Browns and those guys will see that they did not have it nearly as bad as we did. Irsay is the equivalence to Hitler.

I can’t wait for the LeBron one on Friday to.

by Joe Flaccid on Oct 13, 2009 4:00 PM EDT

Goodpoint

Curious what the Browns and Colts fans will say when they see this!?

aka ‘Rexx’

by Bruce Raffel on Oct 13, 2009 4:04 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

If you can stomach it go over to that board and actually read some of the BULLSHIT they are actually attempting to pass off as truth. Sickening.

why, no naked fat men?

rexx started an interesting discussion about a CURRENT topic. he asked for opinions and you asked him to leave. can’t build SB Nation with that close minded attitude. personally, i never wanted the browns. i hate that we have anything to do with you. when stover left we were finally finished with anything dukie brown. ahmen.

i will now visit the Boston site and see if they are still mad about the Braves leaving town and then I’ll go to the St. Lous site and check on the Cardinals and then I’ll go to the Houston site and check on the Oilers and then I’ll go to the LA site and check on the Rams and then I’ll go to the Atlanta site and check on the Flames and then I’ll go to the Brooklyn site and check on the Dodgers…..

Lots of BIG cities get screwed in all sorts of ways by guys with deep pockets. Seems like the Browns got off easier than ALLLLL of these examples.

I only read your post, none of the comments. But my reaction to your onesided, misinformed, and ignorant words is: F$%# off, Bruce.

It’s a nice story about the band. Great camaraderie, and a great story about friendship and how sports can bring people together in a positive way.

“While we understand your anger, it cannot compare to us”

You are right. Our situations do not compare: apples and oranges. Cleveland can’t begin to understand what Baltimore went through, just as Baltimore can’t begin to understand what Cleveland went through. Each group of fans went through unique experiences; and to make any estimates about whose ordeal was more difficult really does not make for kindly conversation. If you want to explore all of our dark demons, let’s put The Smiths in my Sony, pull out the Blue Nun, and drink the pain away.

Having had Irsay break fans’ hearts, you’d think that no Colts fan would want that same thing to happen to anyone else. Yet, here they are saying Browns fans should feel a kinship. Bottom line is that Baltimore fans could have cared less about our pain. Now, they want to rewrite history to whitewash this injustice.

baltimore didn’t want the browns. a handful of people and the NFL decided their fate. we despise having gone that way. just like we couldn’t stop the colts from leaving we had NO choice in Arts arrival.

its the NFL’s fault for not realizing that a team is part of the community and NOT just a business. we have a guy named angelos who’s running a baltimore team like a business. make money losing.

it won’t matter for some cities soon as the NFL is cramming Mexico down our throats. they are trying so hard to open those borders and send some poor cities team into Mexico. that Miami-Jets game made me want to puke with all the pinatas and crap. maybe it was a reward for all the cheap labor Jerry Jones trucked in to build the Space Beatle.

+2

I sure hope you read this … saw your last two posts on your Tonight on ESPN... post.

Your first comment:

As far as Cleveland, they are just clueless morons to love the guy for many years, support his team and then when he has to do what he did, to launch an unforgiveable campaign to block his deserved entry to the HOF is just plain wrong

First of all, calling us Browns fans morons will not score you any love here. And frankly as a mod of an SBN site, I expect better of you than your regular or drive-by posters. Stop stooping to that level as you are supposed to set an example.

Secondly, Modell was rarely loved in Cleveland. If you think otherwise, you have been hogwashed. After he bought the team, what was one of his first moves? Firing Paul Brown, the architect and namesake of the team. That firing did not go over well with the fans at all. He also had some contentious payroll disputes as well early on.

I don’t recall many of my family members liking Modell, he was like that crazy uncle you put up with at holiday functions, he came with the overall package because the fans loved the Browns so much.

The one thing I do give Modell credit for was the TV deals he worked on for the league, but other than that he was an extremely poor businessman.

Read my other comments above about how he screwed himself out fo a new stadium and when that turned out the way it did, he turned to Baltimore and you know the rest (at least from a Baltimore press perspective).

Your second comment:

WOW, YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!
Herad on over to the Browns and Colts blog where I posted a FanPost asking them to put their thoughts down about the show. They blew me and Baltimore out of the water and just don’t get it.

Cleveland even has a site dedicated to Modell’s Death Watch. It’s here.

The link to the Modell deathwatch is totally misleading in that Dawgs By Nature has nothing to do with that. That site is no way related to our site and that link does not appear anywhere on our site. In fact, that is the first time I’ve heard of it.

I hope you really listen to this when I say, I respect your blog, and I acknowledge your writing skills on that site, but please STOP POSTING ABOUT THIS TOPIC on this site. It only ends up with long diatribes about hatred and painful memories for all of us. Ravens fans and Browns fans will NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER (how many more times do I need reinforce this!) come to any middle ground on it.

BTW, this is a good read too…

http://members.tripod.com/~Time_Out/moving.html

Good as place as any-

We should remember that Cleveland is very familiar with a team leaving and keeping the name and colors and history. The Cleveland Rams won the 1945 NFL Championship. They were then moved to LA in 1946.

Gotta love good football talk. Poor Bruce, he tried. I can tell this blog has been an epic fail from the beginning.

Bruce,

It is obvious you are still pining for the days of Bert Jones etal. But yet you revel in the fact you have a well-run franchise with a recent Super Bowl victory.

Most of us would agree that Irsay royally screwed over Baltimore. We were not there to see how badly Baltimore treated the team (like was referenced in the Colt Stampede comments). You obviously lived there through that and would have more input.

So then on the other foot, you should also know how the majority of Browns fans who lived in Cleveland at the time know what a douche Modell was. He not only screwed the city out of the Browns, but his heavy handed tactics also pretty much kept the Indians in a financial hole for most of two decades.

When the Indians and Cavs approached the city about downtown stadiums, Modell was approached on a new and/or revision to the existing stadium at the same time. Modell deceided against doing that, mainly because he thought the funding would never pass and he could keep all the revenues he was generating from the Indians franchise.

However, the referendum did pass and the Indians and Cavs got their stadiums. Shockingly enough, Modell lost a bunch of revenue because of his poor planning, nothing that the city did to him. He had also made a lot of poor investments on other fronts that contributed to his financial woes. But through it all, the Browns fans continued to fill the 80,000 seats for all the hme games. It wasn’t like the fans dropped down to 25,000 or even 40,000 fans, they pretty much still sold out every game.

Once the Tribe moved and once Modell realizewd he screwed up, he then approached the city and asked for help. Unfortunately, the economic conditions had changed since the passing of the referendum and they told him he’d have to wait for help.

That was when as head of the NFL finance committee, Modell decided to act on moving the franchise. He knew Baltimore would fork over mega $$ and he ran off. Even though the city had already decided to extend the referendum to assist in the renovations he asked for.

Now tell me, is that even similar to what happened with the Colts? There might be a few similarities, but from what I have read, the city of Baltimore was not going to fix the stadium issue.

Enough. Closing comments.