RIP Art Modell

I just keep picturing Drip and his 7 tee-totalling scribes going to a local strip club, telling the doorman, "Mr. Modell says everything is on him tonight."

 

Hard to believe that Colts/Raiders classic failed to sell out. B'more viewers missed one of the greatest playoff games of all time there.

There's been a ton of romanticized revisionist history over the Colts thing. Of all the cities that've lost franchises recent decades, I don't think any has played the martyred victim routine as relentlessly as Baltimore. Yet, when you look at the attendance figures and circumstances that led up to the move, it appears they deserved it as much or more than anyone. Irsay was indeed an all timer insufferable douchebag, but he had stronger cause for leaving than Modell and other owners who've packed up over the years. And, as far as can tell, Cleveland fans have far more room to gripe.

 

http://www.nj.com/sports/ledger/izenbergcol/index.ssf/2012/09/izenberg_people_have_it_wrong.html#incart_river

Jerry Izenberg was the first columnist I ever thought of as destination reading.
Here’s what and who saved the merger:

Carroll Rosenbloom said he’d move his Colts for the money. Art Rooney’s Steelers had no money and no clout and had to go.

On a long-forgotten morning during those meeting, Art Modell was rushed to the hospital with a bleeding ulcer.

That afternoon Rooney and his son, Dan, and Wellington Mara went up to see him. For years Rooney had counted on his two games with the Browns who were based just up the highway. They were guaranteed sellouts.

So there was Modell, cranked up in a hospital bed saying:

“I’ll go only if Art (Rooney) can keep his series with us. That’s the only condition but a deal-breaker if he can’t. He needs it.”

The deal was made for exactly that reason.

That alone should put Modell in the Football Hall of Fame but it hasn’t. Neither has his role as the Lord High Television initiator.

 

A. I hope he used to write better back when you considered him "destination reading."

B. Cutting out the portion explaining what merger kind of matters to the story. Though not much, because he's still full of shit.

 

IJAG taking out Jerry Izenberg. This really tickles me. What always struck me about Jerry was that when he was on TV he talked exactly as he wrote.

 

Somehow, I can't picture Drip's spitball striking out Willie Mays the next day.

 

That was my pre-post dilemma: Do I call out bad ethical practice in a piece of fiction, thereby giving the fiction weight? Or do I ignore a pile of steaming manure with a potential teachable moment hidden in it?

I tried to err on the side of helping out the youngsters.

No gifts.

The end.

 

During my first year on my current beat, I did a feature where I embedded myself with the team for an entire day. Was there for coaches' meetings, practice, etc.

When we went out to lunch, the head coach offered to buy it for me. I kindly refused.

"Why?" he said, somewhat taken aback.
"Not to pull the rulebook out on you, but that's not OK in my profession. Ethics, etc.," I said.
"Meh. No one is ever going to know but you and me," he retorted.
"I'll know," I said.

He kind of half-smiled and said OK.

 

Funny story. Art Modell saw me on the street not many moons ago, and forced $600,000 into my hands. He knew me from the press box, of course, where I sat alphabetically between Otto Graham and Otto von Bismarck. Given my gambling habit (I always bet 'red' even when playing blackjack) Modell knew I could use the money. In any case, before I could refuse the gift, he forced another $17 worth of nickels, dimes and quarters into my mouth with a tire iron, leaving me unable to speak or breathe. As I lost consciousness, I'm told he performed a tracheotomy on me with his pen knife and took back $15 in change, leaving $2 worth of loose change rattling in my sinuses to this day. Turns out he did this fairly frequently to the beat writers, which accounts largely for his poor treatment in the mainstream press. True story.