Dawgs By Nature
The Cleveland Browns captured the 1964 NFL Championship by defeating the #1-ranked Baltimore Colts 27-0. The game was standing room only at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, which has 78,000 seats. The attendance was announced at 79,544. Fans were standing along the end zone lines and in every crevice of the venue.
The Colts came into the game as 17-point favorites. The score at halftime was 0-0, which means the Browns erupted in the second half for all of the game’s points. WR Gary Collins hauled in three touchdown passes and was voted the game’s MVP.
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John Brown was a right tackle for the Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game.
The Browns have eight pro football championships, tied for the third most with the New York Football Giants. The Green Bay Packers have 13 titles while the Chicago Bears have won nine. The 1964 club was the last championship team in Cleveland.
In that 1964 season, Cleveland had gone 10-3-1 in the Eastern Conference, one game ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals, who finished 9-3-2. Meanwhile, the Colts crushed everyone en route to a 12-2-0 record in the Western Conference. Back then, the league was devoid of a playoff system, so the winners of each division, labeled “conferences,” were placed in the NFL Championship Game, with the winner named “World Champions.”
Offensive tackle John Brown came to the Browns as a fourth-round draft pick after a good career at Syracuse University. He played with Ernie Davis, with whom he became great friends and was later roommates.
At the time, the Washington Redskins were the only NFL club to have zero black players on their roster. The United States government came down on them and was about to ban them from using the brand-new 56,000-seat state-of-the-art D.C. Stadium (later renamed JFK Stadium), which was paid for by taxpayer money.
The Redskins’ owner, George Preston Marshall, had a fresh 30-year lease and was given an ultimatum by U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall to hire black players beginning the 1962 season, or forfeit the lease. This would mean the Redskins would have to go back to antiquated Griffin Stadium, which held 27,000 and was built in 1937. It featured wooden bleachers and was built for baseball. Fitting a football field was problematic from Day 1.
Marshall was a well-known racist and never denied this. Of course, this was the time period when black Americans, although no longer enslaved, had a boatload of restrictions and minimal actual rights. Few restaurants accepted black patrons. In grocery stores, the white clientele was served first. Black folk had to sit in the balcony in theaters. They weren’t allowed in most stores at all. The only black doctors were employed in black medical facilities. No black judges, police, lawyers, or few teachers and athletes in college and the professional ranks.
Marshall refused to draft a black college athlete, so instead, he handed over the draft to his GM/head coach, Bill McPeak, who...
