> Lifelong suffering Browns fan.
Dittos here. Started collecting football cards in 1959 when I was 7. Went so see Jim Brown & got his autograph when I was still in grade school. Was mad as all get out when my sixth grade teacher signed on the same page.
My father was a truck driver and was still able to afford season tickets in what became the Dawg Pound for the 1962 - 1964 seasons for himself and I. I was at the 1964 Championship game. I watched the red right 88 game on television in 1981 and was at the double overtime playoff game against the Jets in 1986 and was there the next week for the drive. I will go to my grave swearing that the game winning field-goal was wide right. Of course, that was back when I cared.
Back then I usually watched whatever games that were on television. I saw the first Monday Night Football broadcast and watched just about every week, then the Great Satan Modell moved the team.
Just to set the record straight on the revisionist history of the move as told by Mike Trivisono, (Modell had no choice), in the early spring of 1995 the whole front office of the Browns held a press conference on the 50 yard line to announce a $100 million dollar remodeling of the old stadium. He specifically said that he didn’t want a new stadium and we never got a chance to vote on it.
What we got in November was a leak that the team was moving.
That news was not to have been announced until the end of the season. As a result Browns fans all over the country mobilized against the nfl. We still had BBS back then and Freenet was abuzz with the latest news. In a nutshell, the private fax numbers of nfl headquarters and teams got out and the sheer volume of faxes from outraged fans amounted to a denial of service attack that crippled communications within the league. Fans also protested at games throughout the rest of the country. Finally the nfl had enough and they told our mayor to call off the dogs or the city would never have another pro football team, which told us between the lines that we would be getting a new team. We then lobbied to keep the name, records and colors and won that.
So what did we get? An expansion team that sucks as bad as something can suck and it has since they returned in 1999.
As for me, I had it with the nfl. I didn’t watch any games in the three years after they left and when they returned I watched the Browns but nothing else. This year I don’t even bother with them. I just don’t care anymore and believe me, I sure used to.
I’m guessing that the NFL’s interest in Europe, specifically the UK, will lead to one of the financially strapped small market teams relocating over there. I would guess London to be the first....
I remember that game as well, and also thought the FG was wide. I remember jumping up and down yelling "it missed!"
The price for a 'seat' in the bleachers then was $2. You could get a season ticket back then for less than one ticket to one game today.