NFL Week 15 thread -- Starry nights at Lambeau

See the last line of my post. Houston fans didn’t give a shit. That’s the difference. To me it’s a huge one. But yes, since you asked. It is silliness. Earl Campbell et al never played a down for the Titans and therefore should hold no team records.

 

Right. The correct answer is there's no difference other than, of course, the league’s deal with Cleveland.

So should, say, Kurt Warner not be in the Rams record books? Or Johnny Unitas not be in the Colts records? I mean, he never played a down for the Indianapolis Colts.

 

I like the idea of "3 teams" and sure, it's 3 teams when you squint just the right way. It's a fun thought experiment.

But the Cleveland Browns 1999-current are the same franchise as the 1946-1995 Cleveland Browns, 4-year death/rebirth included.

The Baltimore Ravens began on 9/1/1996 and all names, games, and statistics for the Baltimore Ravens franchise started on that day.

 

So what is the solution?

The records stay with the city? The mascot is tied to the city, too?

You move a team, you get a new logo, mascot and everything like the Ravens?

The Texans should be the Oilers?

WTF do you do with Los Angeles?

Honestly, I like the idea of any pro team playing in Houston, for example, are the Oilers. The tax dollars given by the city for the stadium buys the rights to the logo, name and records.

You leave? You leave it all behind.

 

Meanwhile, in a slap fight unrelated to this thread’s current slap fight:

Seven months after the minority owners of the Washington Football Team informed majority owner Daniel Snyder they intended to sell their collective 40 percent stake, tensions continue to escalate over terms of the breakup.

On Friday, the three minority shareholders — FedEx chief executive Frederick W. Smith, real estate magnate Dwight Schar and investor Robert Rothman — asked a federal judge to sanction Snyder, the team’s primary owner, for violating a Nov. 19 court order barring all parties from leaking information about negotiations, disparaging one another or otherwise interfering with the process.
…

Tensions between Snyder and his co-owners began to rise soon after they informed him, via a May 14 letter, that they had hired Baltimore-based investor John A. Moag to handle the sale.

Among the documents made public Friday is a June 1 letter from David L. Koche, a lawyer for the minority owners, to Snyder adviser Norman Chirite, noting that Snyder could avoid “a lengthy and expensive due diligence process” by outside accountants if he bought the co-owners’ shares himself or led the effort.

According to a person familiar with the situation, Snyder threw the minority owners off the team’s board sometime in June and denied them access to its financial statements.

Facing an impasse, the co-owners filed a formal grievance against Snyder with the NFL, as is standard procedure under the league’s bylaws for resolving major conflicts. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell appointed an arbitrator to settle the dispute.

Meanwhile, Moag sought prospective buyers and this fall identified a California-based trio interested in his clients’ 40 percent stake for a discounted price of $900 million.

After Snyder attempted to block the transaction by asserting a selective right of refusal — offering to buy the 25 percent held by Smith and Rothman but not the 15 percent owned by Schar — the co-owners sued him in U.S. District Court in Maryland on Nov. 13, asking a federal judge to force Snyder to let the sale proceed. The suit was filed under seal to keep details about the dispute and the team’s finances private.​

Tensions rise in Washington Football Team ownership breakup, unsealed court filings show — The Washington Post

 

Nobody would do it for fear of pissing off the NFL - but there is a good show to be made about a football team that doesn't feature a single bit of game action. A team is contemplating moving, wants a new stadium, politicians are involved, real estate interests, contractors, etc. while all this is going down, the owner dies setting off a family struggle for control of the franchise, rekindling old feuds etc. etc.

 

Does that apply to every team that moved? Especially if another team later moved to its home city? So Johnny Unitas' records should belong to the Ravens?

 

Congratulations on being thought-controlled by the NFL.

 

Maybe the Ravens should ask for the Browns's stats from 1946-1949 from the All-America Football Conference, none of which are recognized by the NFL. Browns won the title four times, bet their stats are plenty gaudy.

 

The difference is that the Oilers left Houston when their lease expired. Modell moved the Browns with three years left on a contract. And that lease demanded that the Browns play in Municipal Stadium. So the county which owned the stadium had a lot of leverage.

Modell, at the initial press conference in Baltimore, said the team would be the Baltimore Browns. But Modell had to give it up the team name, etc. in the settlement.

 

I understand the reason things are the way they are. And I am not expecting things to change. Just saying the whole concept of the new Browns having the old Browns' history is ridiculous.

 

Millionaires fighting with a billionaire. Fuck 'em all.