Dawgs By Nature
Art Modell bought the Cleveland Browns back in 1961. He was the majority owner of a group that was just the third ownership group in the history of the franchise, dating back to 1946.
RELATED: THE STORY OF THE WEDGE BETWEEN MODELL AND PAUL BROWN
Modell then relocated the franchise to Baltimore beginning in the 1996 season.
This season marks the 30th Anniversary of their first year in the league as the Baltimore Ravens. Their first game in 2025 was on the road against the Buffalo Bills. This Sunday, September 14, is their first home game. Naturally, the front office wants to celebrate the 30-year milestone and make the achievement known to their fanbase as early as possible.
Which would be the first home game of the season, correct?
How very strange that the NFL schedule makers placed Cleveland as the Ravens’ opponent for their first home game of the year. Does anyone find that odd? Perhaps the league is doing a favor to Ravens President Sashi Brown, the former Browns GM who was unceremoniously dumped late in the 2017 season in favor of John Dorsey.
Yet, this weekend, the Ravens will celebrate their 30 years as an NFL team against the very city they stole the franchise from. Odd indeed.
Fans are not the only ones upset:
Not to get into deep and technical about the historical portion of the Browns, but here are a few condensed tidbits.
Mickey McBride was the original owner and sold the franchise in 1953 to a Cleveland group for $600,000. ($5,803,731 in today’s dollars), four times the largest sum ever paid for a professional football club. At the time of the sale, Cleveland had captured five league championships. From their inception in 1946 to 1952, the squad had been in the championship game every single year. This aspect alone drove the price up.
The new group all had Cleveland ties, with the majority owner, Dave R. Jones, who had been a former Cleveland Indians director. Under this group, the Browns won two more NFL titles in 1954 and 1955.
Going into the 1960s, the Browns were the NFL’s version of the New York Yankees. From 1946 to 1958, Cleveland was in the playoffs 13 times, played in the league championship game 12 different years, including 10 consecutive seasons, and won seven titles in two leagues. They only missed the postseason in 1956 and 1959 and had gone 8-3-1 in 1960.
At the conclusion of the 1960 season, the Browns were for sale again. It was announced that the asking price was $3-$4 million. No other franchise had ever been worth that much.
Both the 1960 Dallas Cowboys and the 1961 Minnesota Vikings were expansion teams. Their ownership groups had paid $1 million each to enter the league.
But the Browns had dominated the landscape of professional football, and the Jones group knew it.
Three groups showed serious interest: one from Rudy Schaefer of the Schaefer Beer Company, another headed by...
