RIP Art Modell

Part of it was the stadium breaking down and non-football events not yielding profits.
Art had to have tractor shows, concert series and even a full-blown carnival or two to raise sagging revenues.
There was one year the field was so fucked up from one of these events in an early season game that the Steelers complained to the league.

 

Not much of a comparison. Panthers are relative neophytes in the NFL. Seventeen years doesn't give a franchise the roots that the Browns had - about a half-century before Art Modell pulled up stakes to chase the money.

 

Best I could find was this description from Cleveland.com:

But he did. He could not bear to part with the team by selling it to local interests. Although his negotiations with television networks helped fill coffers around the NFL, Modell was never a good businessman. He hemorrhaged money after buying the old stadium, which needed immediate and costly repairs.

I thought I had read previously that he had some real estate deals that went south, but it's hard to find anything on Google right now that isn't directly related to him dying. He also seemed like a guy who enjoyed living high on the hog rather than a more disciplined life based on an annual salary like the Rooneys or the Maras. Regardless, he had incurred so much debt over 35 years that he finally had to go to Baltimore or go bankrupt. That's hard to do in a business whose value has grown by $300 million in the time you've owned it.

And it's notable that when he finally did sell the Ravens, it was for the same combination of debt relief and estate-tax concerns that prompted the move a decade earlier.

 

Browns will not pay tribute to Modell, per his family's request.

I'm guessing it's because of the uncertainty over how the crowd would react.

If that's the case, then it's very sad that the good folks of Cleveland can't be trusted to behave like human beings for just five minutes out of their lives.

 

Right. They want to shove that in our faces and demand we pay tribute to the guy who stole the team out of Cleveland. We're jerks for not wanting to go along with it.

Please list for me all the Cleveland fans going to Modell's funeral to protest. Also, provide a list of the Modell protests fans have planned for the game.

No one in the stands will do anything unless the NFL wants to force that garbage on us.

If you think that reflects poorly on my city, who gives a fuck.

 

This. It's pretty incendiary to even consider a Modell tribute. Boos would be loud enough to be heard in Twinsburg.

 

If the NFL made the Browns go through with it, the Browns simply could have announced his death the split second the gates opened. No one would be in their seat yet and that would have fulfilled the NFL's mandate.

Or it would have created a turnstyle riot.

 

Given the NFL's insistence on everyone accepting the glory of it greatness on its own terms -- the transformation of Michael Vick into stellar citizen being the most recent example -- I am a little surprised they aren't going to make Cleveland fans sit through that.

 

At least Modell's death will give Browns fans something to talk about for a couple months while team goes 1-7.

 

Oh I'm absolutely certain what the reaction would have been.

 

We're going to get to celebrate a victory? Holy crap. This is going to be a good year.

I've expected 0-16 every season since 1999. They've surpassed my expectations 13 years running.

 

I didn't want to be mean.