RIP Art Modell

Baltimore.

 

I posted on revenue sharing above.

But if you look at the history of Monday night football there had been a Monday night game of two on CBS beginning in 1964. The very first game was a 1964 game between Green Bay and Detroit that I think set an attendance record in old Tiger stadium. The Browns played in exactly none of the CBS games. In 1970 the NFL muscled their way onto the ABC schedule and the Browns played in the first game.

So when you watch clips of Modell talking about how he took one for the league by scheduling the first Monday Night when no one wanted to do it he is telling stories. All Modell did was get schedule the first game of the weekly series when ABC started the series. And lots of other teams played on Monday night in subsequent weeks.

And I don't mean to vilify the guy. Lots of people take more credit than they deserve after the fact. It is just the amateur historian in me.

And the reason Cleveland got football back quickly is that the city had a lease that probably would have held up in court for three more years. The NFL needed to settle.

Modell had a lease through a separate company, of which he owned something like 95%, with the city for Municipal Stadium. In that lease he specifically guaranteed that the Browns would play their home games in Cleveland. Modell argued that the city could not enforce that provision because the lease was with his holding company, not with the team.

But when Modell signed the lease he explicitly said in the lease that the stadium company could guarantee that the Browns would play in Cleveland. Since he controlled the Browns, where he had 51% ownership, the concern of the NFL was that the courts would force Modell to honor his lease, which would have been a disaster. Attendance would have been zero.

Which leads to the age old question of the profitability of the Browns. Cynical observers (well, me) believe that Modell had a lease between the city and his stadium corporation. And then another lease between the Browns, of which he controlled 51%,a nd his corporation. So Modell was doing things like taking all the concessions and parking profits from Browns games and assigning them to his stadium corporation, where he got close to 100% cut and having the team run on basically a break even basis, where he would only get 51% of the profit.

 

I remember Modell popped a quarter in when my meter was about to run out. I left the car parked an extra hour.

 

Actually, for decades, Pottsville has kept petitioning the NFL to give them the 1925 championship, which they originally would have won, and then which was given to the Cardinals under multiple controversial circumstances involving both teams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottsville_Maroons#1925_NFL_Championship_controversy

 

And then sent the parking ticket to him in the mail.

 

You know, with the shifting demographics of the country, if the NFL was starting from scratch, Cleveland would have a tough case saying its barely-top 30 metro area deserved a team at all over the other borderline (but at least growing) candidates.

So maybe, just maybe, instead of wallowing in misery and heartbreak and bitterness and hatred, its citizens could step back for a moment and realize how lucky they are for what they have.

Because the only reason it has ANYTHING is because it was once a great city, 3-4 generations ago. It really deserves little based on what it is today.

 

Detroit says hi.

 

Yes, and all of you who have been pissed on at work, had your salaries cut, had your hours and responsibility increased without additional compensation should simply drop to your knees and hug your manager's legs while thanking him for keeping you employed.

 

I shall call my next one-act play "A Lombardi for Pottsville."

 

At the risk of lighting oop's Bat signal, the whole "franchise move" thing is one significant part that always gets omitted in discussion of how wonderfully fair and democratic the NFL's business model is. There has been, what, one MLB franchise moved in the last 40 years? By my count the NFL has had six moves involving five teams since 1980 (the Raiders going twice of course), and damn near half the league has been perceived as a serious threat to move at one time or another.

 

Likely because MLB does not want to risk losing their anti trust exemption. A status that the NFL does not enjoy.

 

That probably plays some part. But Cleveland, Baltimore, Houston, Oakland and Los Angeles/Anaheim all still have their baseball teams -- and all have faced significant financial hurdles in that time, as have a few others. The only one that got so bad there was simply no solution was Montreal.