Double Down said:
This is a weird day for Baltimore. My wife's family is from Baltimore, so I feel it.
On one hand, no one understands the way Cleveland felt the day the Browns left better than the city of Baltimore. It's like having a piece of your soul snatched away by someone you desperately wanted to trust. It's like having your heart broken for the first time. You never, ever completely get over it, because the rest of your life, you'll never love a sports team without reservation, without holding something back to guard against that feeling again.
On the other hand, I grow a little weary of Cleveland's martyr complex when it comes to Modell and the Browns. Mizzou is saying earlier in this thread, "Imagine Pittsburgh without the Steelers, Green Bay without the Packers, Dallas without the Cowboys..." but you don't have to imagine it at all. Imagine Baltimore without the Colts.
Imagine if, instead of the Browns being back in Cleveland in less than three years, there was a team called the Jacksonville Browns. Or the San Antonio Browns or the Las Vegas Browns. And that team tried to pretend Jim Brown was part of its legacy, and the NFL Hall of Fame was like "Yup, as far as we're concerned, the Las Vegas Browns all-time leading rusher was Jim Brown."
When Modell stabbed Cleveland in the back, the NFL bent over backward to give the city another team in the next round of expansion. When Baltimore lost the Colts, Paul Tagliabue literally told the city to "go build a museum" downtown because they were never going to get another team. Modell said "Sorry to screw you, but I'm leaving after this season." The Irsays said "We are absolutely not leaving, we absolutely did not meet with Phoenix and Indianapolis, anyone who says so is a liar, and no that's not bourbon on my breath" and then packed up a truck in the middle of the night and left. And it was 13 years, not three, before Baltimore got football back. If the city hadn't romanced Modell, they'd still be begging for a team or rooting for a CFL franchise. Instead, they sell out every single game.
I understand that the Browns leaving prayed on some of Cleveland's sports insecurity, because their departure was woven together with years and years of heartbreak from the Indians and, over time, the Cavs. I guess I don't quite get, logically, how people can feel no one in the history of the NFL was wronged the way they were wronged, when Baltimore was wronged for far longer and much worse. The league was determined to fix what happened in Cleveland. The league actively tried to prevent football from ever returning to Baltimore. Art Modell may be the devil in Cleveland, and perhaps justifiably so. But he literally saved professional football in Baltimore, and in the end, Cleveland fans still get to cheer for the same uniforms and feel like they're a part of the same history that their parents rooted for.
If we're being fair, Baltimore's martyr complex about the Colts isn't any better than the Browns' fans. It comes up every time the Indianapolis Colts play there, and 30 years down the line, and given the time lag and the fact that Baltimore did the same to Cleveland as Indy did to Baltimore, it's lame.
There's revisionist history out there about just how passionate Baltimore Colts fans were in the last 10 years or so of the franchise being there.
It's not as if a Colts ticket in Baltimore during the late 70s and early 80s was hard to come by. If you look at attendance from their last two playoff seasons in Baltimore -- 1976 and 1977 -- there were games were they were nearly 20,000 under capacity.
In 1983, the Colts were briefly in the playoff hunt before ultimately finishing 7-9. Attendance for the last five games there: 38,565, 32,343 (against Miami, a Super Bowl team the year before), 57,319 (against nearby Pittsburgh, so I'm sure Steelers fans gobbled tickets up), 35,462 and 20,618.
Yes. You read that right. The last game the Colts played in Baltimore (to be fair, no one knew it at the time) drew 20,618.
I know deriving passion via attendance can be dodgy. And I know that Robert Irsay's douchebaggery had a lot to do with it too. The Colts were run like shirt when he was in charge (something that translated to the Colts' first decade in Indy), constant coaching changes, etc. I get that. It would've been hard to be a Colts fan during Irsay's ownership.
On the other hand, it's not as if Baltimore didn't have ample time to keep the Colts. Irsay threatened to move as early as 1976. Los Angeles, Phoenix, Jacksonville, Memphis and Indianapolis were all candidates long before it actually happened. Irsay tabled a move in 1979 when cursory improvements were made to Memorial Stadium. If the passion to keep the Colts was as virulent as revisionist history says it is, it could have happened.
One can say it was a different time, and that cities weren't yet ready to take seriously the threats of owners. Maybe. Maybe not. Three years before the Colts skipped Baltimore, Al Davis got into a legal brouhaha over the Raiders' move to Los Angeles. So it's not as if the threat to move wasn't a real one.
Did Baltimore deserve the Mayflower trucks and Irsay beating an eminent domain "rap" at the crack of dawn? Nope.
But it's different from the Browns situation. Unlike Irsay, who made so many threats to move he undoubtedly came off as the boy who cried wolf -- which may explain why it took Baltimore/Maryland so long to take him seriously -- Art Modell never made the same implicit threat to Cleveland.
I lived in NE Ohio at the time, and while Modell would grumble about needing a new stadium, I don't recall at any point that he ever explicitly said, "I'm going to move the Browns out of Cleveland, if ..."
Browns fans never had the chance that Colts fans had. Browns fans never had a chance to put (or not put) political pressure on the powers-that-be to keep the Browns.
It just came down one day. We're moving. fork you.
In that respect, while the grave-dancing might be a bit over the top, I understand it. The Browns were/are a way of life in Cleveland. It's the only place I've been where the passion matches that of what I grew up with in Wisconsin with the Packers.
It's hard to put into words how complete the brown-and-orange-colored fall Sunday's were in that part of Ohio. In every bar, restaurant, grocery store (I recall at Giant Eagle, or one of the chain grocery stores, you
had to wear Browns gear on Sunday's if you were on the clock). It permeated nearly every walk of life.
Art Modell took that away. Its never been the same since. It never will be the same. I don't blame Browns fans one bit for holding that against him for perpetuity.
Sure Cleveland got a replacement, but once you lose the original love, it's hard to wrap your arms around the replacement.
And, unfortunately, the replacement Browns have largely been a joke.
The martyr complex might seem over the top in Cleveland. I can understand that feeling. But Baltimore doesn't get to have a martyr complex if Cleveland can't have one.
