Dawgs Bark Again: Football Back in Cleveland as Patriots Get Set For Sunday
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Posted Under: 1999 Patriots Season
HOME > Patriots Blog > 1999 Patriots Season
CLEVELAND — Ah, the site of Ol’ Bowser munching on his Milk Bone. Yakky Doodle will have to do without Chopper on Sundays. Production on the sequel to “101 Dalmatians” ceases in the fall. And if you look closely on Sunday, you can see the Tramp and his date at the stadium, trying to get Pidge into this new sport that Jim Dear and Darling never heard of.
In Fresno, California, fans of the Big Red Wave (that’s the Fresno State Bulldogs, for those of you who don’t know that California is the USA’s number one agricultural state) bark, woof and howl during every home football game. Down in Athens, Georgia, the Georgia Bulldog mascot slobbers on the sidelines between the hedges, held in place with a choke collar and a leash both made of heavy chain.
Close-up |
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| Where: | Cleveland Browns Stadium Cleveland, Ohio |
| When: | Sunday 10/3 1:00 PM EDT |
| TV: | CBS WBZ TV-4 in Boston |
| DSS: | DirecTV Channel 706 |
| Latest Line: | Patriots by 12 |
| Team Records: | Patriots 3-0 Browns 0-3 |
And in Cleveland, all you have to say is “They’re back!” And finally, the NFL is good again.
The NFL made good on their promise to the scorned folks of Cuyahoga (I’m told locals pronounce it “kie-gah”) County by granting an expansion franchise to Cleveland as soon as possible after the team formerly known as the Cleveland Browns closed up and bolted for another football-scorned city. The NFL went the extra mile by preserving the team name and colors, and the new Browns came out on Sunday night, September 12, 1999, looking just like their final game in 1995. It’s like they never left.
Well, almost.
The Browns, who host the Patriots this Sunday, are 0-3 and prohibitive underdogs to the leaders of the AFC East. The Browns made their return to the NFL at their new home, Cleveland Browns Stadium, against their old “rivals”, the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Browns fans, considered by many to be the best fans in the NFL, roared, barked and howled in glee as their team made its triumphant return to professional football.
That is good. More than good, it is unabashedly fantastic. The NFL without the Cleveland Browns is like Emmitt Kelly or Clarabelle the Cow without their makeup. It’s not the same without it.
But beneath the glee of the Dawg Pound lies a hurt that may never go away. At the center of the hurt is the NFL’s all-time heel, and the severing of a football tradition that can simply never be replaced.
The NFL has had its share of chowderheads. George Preston Marshall of the Washington Redskins drafted Cal Rossi of UCLA in 1946 and 1947. In 1946, Marshall didn’t know Rossi had one more year left. In 1947, Rossi told Marshall he didn’t want to play pro football, something all the other scouts already knew. Al Davis, a classic example of an old timer who knows nothing about pro football as it is today, wants the NFL to bend to his every whim when he feels like moving his team. Bob Irsay placed Baltimore in Cleveland’s category 15 years ago when he sneaked the Colts out of the city in the middle of the night and moved it to Indianapolis, a city that knows only auto racing, Larry Bird and Jim Nabors.
But Art Modell committed the all-time brain cramp by moving the old Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. The Browns belong in Baltimore as much as the Colts belong in Indianapolis. Baltimore honored the arrival of the “Ravens” (I still haven’t gotten used to that name) by trotting out Johnny Unitas and his old Colt cronies. Nowhere did we see Otto Graham, Jim Brown or Leroy Kelly. This is, was, and always will be Colt Country. The Cleveland Browns play in Baltimore, and the Baltimore Colts play in Indianapolis.
Modell was too greedy and too callous to wait out the new stadium. Modell did get his big stadium in Baltimore (which the new Foxborough Stadium is to emulate, instead of the far nicer stadium in Carolina), but so did Cleveland. This move never should have happened.
Naturally, there was nothing the NFL could do to force Modell to stay put. Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland (which day of the week is it?) ‘s Davis took care of that. Modell skipped out, forsaking a dear city that embraced its great team with a passion, and a legion of fans that gave the team a unique and distinct personality.
Cleveland’s football history is storied. The team entered the AAFC in 1946 and won each of those league’s championships. They entered the NFL in 1950. From 1950 to 1955 they were in every NFL title game, and won three of them. Brown is generally judged as the best running back in NFL history, but an awful lot of people think that Graham was the game’s best-ever quarterback.
After the Browns Jim and Paul left, Cleveland enjoyed some good years with stars like Kelly, Greg Pruitt, Paul Warfield, Gene Hickerson, Jerry Sherk and UMass’ Milt Morin. But something was to happen soon that would change the franchise forever, and turned them from a great team into a football legend.
About the late 1970s/early 1980s, the Dawg Pound emerged. Fans down in the right end zone began showing up to games dressed in the most God-forsaken canine apparel. They’d woof and bark like they were rabid. In truth, they were rabid, the most rabid fans in the NFL. Their legend grew by leaps and bounds, and by the mid-1990s, they were the lovable mascots of the Cleveland franchise, and the symbol of the true American football fan.
Until Modell took their team away from them.
Modell’s NFL legacy is carved in stone. When he dies, no one will remember this man for anything except that he moved the Browns from Cleveland. Paul Brown’s descendants will claim that he did worse by pirating the franchise away from their family. But moving the team was the all-time worst thing an NFL owner has ever done.
True, the Cleveland Browns are back. But the severed legacy is quite another story.
The Patriots aren’t playing the Cleveland Browns this Sunday. They’re playing an expansion team called the Cleveland Browns. This is a team that lost its opening game to Pittsburgh, 43-0. They rushed for 9 yards for the game as a team (Sedrick Shaw chipped in with a huge game for him — minus one yard), and had 40 yards of total offense. They are 0-3, and are a team in diapers. These fans don’t care, they’re only too happy just to see a team.
The Browns that the Patriots remember beat them in the 1994 playoffs, 20-13. Drew Bledsoe remembers this team as his first-ever playoff opponent, in which he threw three picks against their defense. This was the team that Curtis Martin faced in his first-ever NFL game. The Patriots are 4-10 against the team that used to be the Cleveland Browns.
But this is today. That old Cleveland team that plays its games in Baltimore lost to New England in 1996, 46-38. This new Cleveland team is expected to get blown out Sunday unless New England reverts back to last year in St. Louis.
Again, the fans won’t care. This year isn’t about wins and losses to them. It’s the fact that they have a Cleveland Browns team to root for once again.
It’s a shame that the old bloodline cannot be replaced. You could have sent all the Ravens back here and given Modell these expansion lads. Then complete justice would be served. Who wouldn’t have loved to have seen Modell a 43-0 loser in week one? Modell will always be a loser for what he did to the fans of Cleveland.
Patriot Nation won’t be rooting for Cleveland on Sunday. But it’s great to see football back in a city where it never should have left in the first place.
Welcome back to the NFL, Dawgs. Bark loud, long, and forever. And let’s hope no one in the future does such a moronic thing like moving your team away again.
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