The Baltimore Ravens play in their second NFL Championship Game on Sunday in their brief twelve-year history in Baltimore. How fortunate we are in Baltimore to have one of the NFL’s most successful and classiest organizations, and for that, we owe tremendous thanks to Art Modell, the team’s original owner. Under the guidance of Ozzie Newsome, who played his way to the Hall of Fame for Modell’s Cleveland Brown’s, the Ravens have been a team built on stability and character avoiding the cheap fix that often rattles many a promising team to its core.
Surely, Baltimore fans not withstanding, Art Modell moving the former Browns franchise to Baltimore is not his ticket to the fame and recognition he deserves. Sadly, it would be hard to identify a sports franchise owner who has been more vilified for his decision to move a team from one city to another. While we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the greatest game ever played, the Baltimore Colts stunning overtime victory over the more established and recognized New York Giants, we cannot help but sense a cruel irony to all of this. That famous game after the 1958 season is credited for launching the NFL as a national sport on equal footing with major league baseball. From that famous game until Super Bowl V, the Baltimore Colts were one of the top teams in the NFL overshadowed mainly by Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers. With Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, John Mackey, Gino Marchetti, Art Donovan and other hall-of-fame and noteworthy players, Baltimore was the toast of the NFL. As devastating as it was to see those greats unceremoniously dumped at the end of their careers, the Colts rebuilt quickly to win three consecutive division championships from 1975-1977. Sadly, from the next season, 1978 until the Colts left for Indianapolis and many years thereafter in the Hoosier Dome, the Colts became one of the most shameful franchises in the pros. Yes, Memorial Stadium was a horrible field for football as the upper deck extended between the opposite 50 yard markers around home plate from the baseball configuration. Beyond that were mostly just bleachers elevated above ground level. The state and city did not take the threats of losing the Colts seriously, though a drunken Robert Irsay would often be caught stumbling off a plane having visited numerous cities trying to attract his NFL team. Irsay delivered a terrible product on the field as well. Toward the end, fans started losing interest and the fix was in.
Where was the outrage when the team, fans, and city that put the NFL on the map lost its storied franchise?
Meanwhile, on the west coast, maverick owner, Al Davis, moved his Oakland Raiders to the Los Angeles Coliseum. Where was the outrage?
After the 1987 season, owner Bill Bidwell moved the Cardinals franchise from St. Louis to Arizona. Busch Stadium was essentially the same design as stadiums in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. Where was the outrage?
After the 1994 season, Georgia Frontiere moved the Los Angeles Rams to St. Louis while Al Davis moved his Raiders back to Oakland leaving the nation’s second largest city and marketing area without professional football. Where was the outrage?
In late October, 1995, Art Modell announced that he was moving the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. From the big media centers on both coasts and through out the heartland, the press and sports fans screamed, “FOUL!” A tide of outrage swept the nation as the city of Cleveland attempted every legal maneuver to keep the Browns from relocating to Baltimore. Art Modell was vilified as few public figures ever were so denigrated. This kindly avuncular gentleman was subjected to every mean-spirited slur and insult imaginable. It was his greed and poor performance as an owner alone that was reason for the move. And the reasons for the other team’s departure from their original cities were……?
Meanwhile, the year after the Browns bolted for Baltimore, Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams snatched his franchise out of Texas for two years in limbo playing in Memphis and on the Vanderbilt campus while Nashville erected a modern stadium to host the rechristened Tennessee Titans. Outrage? Hell no! Business as usual in the NFL….
Reality check, on a certain level all sports are businesses and as such, those elite few who own such major teams have a set of non-negotiable expectations from the cities in which their teams’ reside. What was deemed an acceptable stadium changed dramatically from the late 60’s into the new millennium?
The onset of the “cookie cutter” stadia in the 60’s and early 70’s created new requirements for stadiums with such amenities as luxury suites and other perks for the corporate crowd, but in their design were planted the seeds of their demise. In the interest of creating mega-complexes accommodating both baseball and football, the facilities compromised the fans’ experience of both sports having a cold, contrived artificial atmosphere. Nevertheless, they were moneymakers and from San Diego to the East Coast, the new era of sports arenas hastened the doom of fields like Memorial Stadium and the old “Mistake by the Lake” in Cleveland.
While the Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey presented a modern concept for a football only stadium in Giants Stadium, it was seen as the kind of luxury only New York could afford. The irony or ironies was the city whose stadium was too archaic to retain the Colts, became the home of the grand idea of what stadiums should be when Baltimore introduced Orioles Park in Camden Yards as Memorial Stadium had become too primitive for baseball as well.
Cleveland was one of the cities next in line to introduce a new “retro” baseball field while new concepts were on the drawing boards as cities attempted to lure expansion franchises to be awarded by the NFL. In the spitting image of its Baltimore counterpart, Jacobs Field opened to much applause on the shores of Lake Erie while public money not only paid for the new baseball stadium but also provided funds for the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame and other downtown attractions.
Odd man out, Art Modell.
Art Modell presented his needs for a new stadium and felt assured he would receive accommodations much like those granted the Indians who had been given up for gone several times before the new ballpark was erected.
NFL Expansion was announced in 1994. Amidst speculation that Baltimore and/or St. Louis would surely be top candidates to rejoin the NFL, instead awarded Charlotte, North Carolina the first expansion team, then Jacksonville, Florida, to the surprise of many received the second award. Soon after that, the Rams moved to St. Louis taking advantage of the new facilities they had to offer, but many owners were quite impressed by the Baltimore proposal. While Jack Kent Cooke did not relish an NFL team just over thirty miles and attempted to block a team in Baltimore, the prospect of moving to Baltimore was mighty attractive to owners dissatisfied with their existing arrangements.
The City of Cleveland and State of Ohio did little to acknowledge Municipal Stadium was a crumbling wreck in need of replacement. Modell’s deadline came and past, thus the Browns were Baltimore bound.
Unlike any other sports move, Art Modell and the NFL were most accommodating to the city they had vacated, leaving the Cleveland Browns name and rights to its history in Cleveland to be assumed should Cleveland meet the criteria for a new football team. As such, the play of the Cleveland Browns would be considered “suspended” for three seasons as a new state-of-the-art football field was erected on the exact spot of Municipal Stadium on the shore of Lake Erie. The new Browns returned to play for the 1999 season. Cleveland got its new modern stadium. Local investors would own the Browns, and they were freed from Art Modell the ironic figure who had become the subject of their scorn.
Meanwhile, as the game of musical chairs for NFL franchises continued, it has more or less come full circle. Baltimore, Cleveland, Oakland, St. Louis, and Houston all received NFL franchises, three through relocation, two by expansion leaving only Los Angeles without a team. Then all should be well aside from missing out on LA one would expect, right?
Not for Art Modell. His name still evokes scorn from football fans around the nation ignoring the important roll he played in helping build the NFL into the successful sport it is today.
Prior to owning the Browns, Art Modell’s background was in television production and public relations. He was a visionary who could see the huge potential the game of football had as a televised event and had the marketing savvy to know how to sell it. Art Modell played a leading roll in establishing the lucrative national television contracts where revenue from the networks would be divided between all franchises. Modell was also instrumental in helping to get Monday Night Football launched.
Modell was not only one of the most influential and effective NFL owners in the 1960’s and 1970’s, his contributions to Cleveland and Northern Ohio were tremendous contributing to many local charities using his position to be a powerful fundraiser.
As a rust belt city losing its industrial strength, Cleveland, Ohio was a city facing tremendous problems in the 1970’s and was in severe financial trouble. Art Modell single-handedly labored to preserve not only football but major league baseball as well as the city could not afford to maintain its stadium. Modell established “stadium Corp” where he would lease the stadium from Cleveland for one dollar a year, and assume all maintenance and repair costs while subleasing the stadium to the Browns and Indians. Modell had even invested in property in Strongsville, Ohio as a potential site for a new stadium.
Lacking modern revenue generating sources such as luxury suites and relying on the success of his football franchise as the sole source of income, Modell’s financial stability became weaker as operating costs increased tremendously with no nest egg for any bailout funds.
Unlike owners moving franchises simply for greener pastures, the rich getting richer, for Modell it was a matter of financial survival. The only way he could retain the franchise was to move the team since neither Cleveland nor Ohio would step forward to provide him a deal on the same terms as what they had given the Indians. Interestingly enough, in moving to Baltimore, one of the terms of both the Ravens and the Orioles lease is one of mutual parity where anything the Stadium Authority does to benefit one team must be offered in comparable form to the other. Such a proactive move in Cleveland would have kept Modell in Ohio.
Many Browns supporters suggested Modell was obligated to pursue another possibility to right his finances, to sell the Cleveland Browns to local interests. While such a move might have been laudable in some circles, it ignores the hard reality that professional sports are business entities. Cities compete to provide the best financial packages for the billionaire owners who command such enterprises.
Ironically, Art Modell is not such a figure, just a millionaire largely due to his moving the Browns to Baltimore. While outside of the cities that were scorned by having their teams uprooted, names like Bud Adams, Robert Irsay, and Bill Bidwell mean relatively little negative outside those cities from whom their beloved teams were removed.
What did Irsay or Bidwell do for the well being of the National Football League? Did Robert Irsay do anything to support the City of Baltimore while he owned the Colts?
Art Modell is one of the key figures whose vision and hard work off the field helped make the NFL the great spectacle and huge financial juggernaut it is today. Fans, players, team executives, and owners alike owe thanks to this humble, kindly man who deserves to be enshrined in Canton, Ohio while he is still well enough to attend such honors.
If he is to be vilified for the Browns relocation to Baltimore, other owners are far more villainous than Art Modell is. Any examination of franchise relocations would tell the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment