RIP Art Modell

In another 32 years the Panthers will be exactly what the Browns were the year they moved. A 49-year-old professional football team.

 

The comparison is not apt.
As an organization, the Cardinals are 116 years old.
They are very much still just another football team.
They could vanish into the ether and there wouldn't still be great gnashing of teeth 20 years later.

 

Looking back, there was a team in Cleveland called the Browns and a team in Baltimore called the Colts. Eventually, Cleveland got their Browns back and Baltimore got a team back but a lot of fans went through a lot of emotional pain (and a lot of die-hard Colts fans in Balmer still do). As it turns out, the NFL could have simply left well enough alone and if Indy was such a hot spot, they should have put an expansion team there.

 

Of course the comparison's apt. The sentimental value of any professional sports team is a projection - emotional, psychological, symbolic, etc. - of its fans.

I keep asking 'why?'

You keep describing 'what.'

 

Nine-tenths of what major professional sports has to sell is the mythology of "our" team being deeply tied to the emotional fabric of the city or region. The bonds get reinforced as an act of civic patriotism. Without that, the sport may as well be run as a barnstorming tour like the Globetrotters or as a studio sport on the roller derby model. If that happened though, franchise values would crash harder than pets.com.

The story is the product. An old PR guy like Art Modell knew that in his bones.

 

Most Browns fans are over Art Modell moving the team. We have a new team. The team sucks. That's affected fandom much more than Modell moving the team.

Very little of the complaining has been dancing on Modell's grave. Most of it is directed toward the possibility of the Browns requesting a moment of silence for Modell at the game. You want us to do what? Ummmmmmm, no. We will show you what we think of your moment of silence for the guy who ripped the soul from the city with no remorse. If it weren't for that (and also the revived Hall of Fame talk), Cleveland would have moved on from the talk of Modell's death already.

Well, at least until next year, when downtown bars commemorate the first anniversary of his death with drink specials.

 

I fell like the combo of Modell's death along with Lerner selling the team has hopefully ended the curse on the team. After all, it was senior Lerner who loaned Modell his jet to make the trip to Baltimore to sell out the Cleveland fans. Maybe now we can move on.

 

The reason Art Modell always gave for leaving is that Cleveland wouldn't build a stadium but then built the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame and all the other civic projects.

It sounds very much like Art Modell considered his team to be more than a business -- a community treasure that must be sustained -- when it suited his purposes.

 

How was Modell is so much debt? Didn't the Browns make money?

The Maras had no inccome other than the Giants, and they were loaded.

 

I told you why.
You keep asking more questions.
The old Browns were uniquely a part of the city's id before they were excised.
The Houston Oilers, not so much.
There was some sadness when they left, sure.
But it wasn't funereal.

 

That has always been the galling part of it -- Art Modell was a terrible business mind who happened to fall into a gold mine in the 1960s, and even with all the NFL's growth he could barely keep his head above water. That was the tenor of Costas' blistering critique the weekend after the move was announced.

 

So, what did he do wrong? I honestly don't know?

Did he have other failed investments or did he somehow lose money with the Browns?