Cleveland Rocked

As if the Blue Bird of unhappiness hasn't shit enough on the city of Cleveland, while looking up the list of Super Bowl teams, I came across this little tidbit of information about the once venerable NFL franchise in that city.

• Cleveland Browns, NFL champions four times in 1950, 1954, 1955, and 1964; appeared in six other NFL championship games in 1951, 1952, 1953, 1957, 1968, and 1969; and appeared in three AFC Championship Games in 1986, 1987, and 1989^[63] (The Browns are officially viewed as one continuous franchise that began in 1946 as a member of the All-America Football Conference, joined the NFL in 1950, suspended operations from 1996–1998, and resumed play in 1999.^[64] The Baltimore Ravens were an expansion team created in 1996 with former Browns players.)^[65]

Okay, the NFL has seen its share of franchises pull up stakes and move from one city to another.  There was Robert Irsay's contenious departure from Baltimore to Indianapolis in 1984 - 15 vans literally cleared out everything but the kitchen sink in one night.  Two years earlier there was the infamous move of the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles, which was basically Al Davis telling Pete Roselle to go fuck himself.  And then there was the Los Angeles Rams bolting to St. Louis in 1995, the same year that the Raiders skedaddled back to Oakland, thus leaving the second largest sports market in the country without an NFL franchise. 

But while all those cities went through a period of mourning, none has had to endure the anguish of Cleveland.  The Browns were a proud franchise with a storied history.  Jim Brown played for them. Their four NFL titles in the pre-Super Bowl era are rivaled only by the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears.  Their loss to the Denver Broncos in the 1986 AFC Championship game still ranks as one of the great upsets in football history.

When Art Modell decided to move them to Baltimore in 1995 that was bad enough, but what the NFL did next only added salt to a deep wound.  It's one thing to lose your team, but imagine after all was said and done you found out that the team you lost went on to win a Super Bowl while all you got to keep was the lousy name that now belongs to a decrepit expansion team.  And then the league that sanctioned the move had the balls to tell you that your franchise was "one continuous franchise" that "suspended" operation from 1996 to 1999.

Bullshit, I say.

I'm no Cleveland fan, but no other city has been fucked over more than this one.  If there's any justice in the world, Cleveland will one day get its real Browns back and Art Modell will wind up roasting in hell alongside Robert Irsay, Al Davis and Georgia Frontiere.