• Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
  • Consider registering! Fewer and higher quality ads, no emails you don't want, access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Even if you just want to lurk, there are a lot of good reasons to register!

Cleveland Browns (2012 season)

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
JCOSU86;2207148; said:
Hmmmm, that's not the way I (and facts actually) remember it. He leased the stadium from the city for something like $1/yr and spurned any city initiative to finance a new one. Once the Indians moved to their own stadium a major revenue stream dried up. Also, I seem to recall (as, again, does reality) that he, Art Modell, put a moratorium on any stadium talks the year before he moved them. Do I think he wanted to leave? No, but his own mismanagement (see "Rison, Andre") put him in a situation where he sold his soul to Baltimore to erase his poor decisions.
Click to expand...


Hmmm...so Clevelanders really wanted to give him a brand new stadium for years but he refused? That seems highly unlikely. How can you bring up Rison as some sort of prrof despite him using the same team plus a few new players to win a title a few years later? I'm not trying to flame so I won't post in this thread again. Just silly to be happy he died. He didn't sneak the team out in the middle of the night.
 
Upvote 0
Modell wanted out of Cleveland - I could give a damn what else anyone says. What JC posted was 100% accurate. He did nothing but drag ass about a new stadium until, as pointed out - The Indians moved to the Jake. Then he did nothing but bitch as to how the people of Cleveland were unreasonable and didn't want to work on bringing a new stadium for the Browns.

I was only 13. But I remember all that shit quite well. I was in the Muni for the last game. Hell my father still has part of the bench we sat on that was ripped out.

Those were dark days indeed.

I have zero good will towards that man.
 
Upvote 0
BUCKYLE;2207174; said:
Hmmm...so Clevelanders really wanted to give him a brand new stadium for years but he refused? That seems highly unlikely. How can you bring up Rison as some sort of prrof despite him using the same team plus a few new players to win a title a few years later? I'm not trying to flame so I won't post in this thread again. Just silly to be happy he died. He didn't sneak the team out in the middle of the night.
Click to expand...

really? because the initiative to finance a new stadium passed the ballot overwhelmingly that winter while he was secretly in talks to move to baltimore already.

and by a few new players winning a title a few years later, you obviously mean 6 years later with a host of new 1st round draft picks.

people also forget that despite the massive bailout he got upon his arrival in baltimore, he still had to sell off the team because he once again went broke due to mismanagement. it was modell's inability to operate a business that spurred his move, nothing the city of cleveland did.
 
Upvote 0
As pointed out by Terry Pluto in this article, Modell could have sold the team to Lerner but said that he wanted to keep the team for his family and then he had to sell it, little by little, when he moved it to Baltimore

Yes, had Modell sold to Lerner, he would have been one of the grand old men of the game -- part of the Browns legacy.

He'd have been a man welcome in any restaurant and given a place of honor at any civic event -- because he helped keep the team here.

And the two friends could have found a way to make it work.

In 1999, I had a long talk with Lerner about this -- and I outlined my "What if Art sold to Al?" thesis.

He didn't disagree with much, but simply said, "Art didn't want to sell. He wanted to keep the team for his family."

For Modell, the money issues continued to haunt him in Baltimore. Not long after playing his first season there in 1996, he sold a minority interest in the franchise to Steve Bisciotti, a Baltimore businessman.

Over the years, Modell continued to sell more and more of the team to Bisciotti. By 2004, Bisciotti was the main owner and Modell had only a token piece of the franchise.

So he didn't keep it for his family.
Click to expand...
more http://www.cleveland.com/pluto/blog/index.ssf/2012/09/for_art_modell_and_cleveland_b.html
 
Upvote 0
BUCKYLE;2207174; said:
Hmmm...so Clevelanders really wanted to give him a brand new stadium for years but he refused? That seems highly unlikely. How can you bring up Rison as some sort of prrof despite him using the same team plus a few new players to win a title a few years later? I'm not trying to flame so I won't post in this thread again. Just silly to be happy he died. He didn't sneak the team out in the middle of the night.
Click to expand...

All he had to do was ask... he never did.

I remember when Gateway was being put together and one of the rumors was the Indians first asked the Browns to be part of it, think of KC where the baseball/football stadiums are next to each other. Art said no, thinking it wouldn't pass and he didn't want to kill the revenue the Indians were giving him to play at Muni.

If Art plainly stated he needed a new stadium or he would move, ANY initiative tax wise would have passed. But he chose not to make that public. Did the Clevleand politicians screw up? Probably... but all Art had to do was leak one story of him needing a new stadium or he was selling would have gotten the politicians to give in.

Instead he ran and hid, and then had the audacity to freaking win a Super Bowl??? FUCK THAT! He turned the whole Cleveland fan base into degenerate fanatics that are so impatient and fragile it sickens me to this very day.

Do I wish death on anyone? Not really... I wished he lived a long life knowing he would never be able to set foot in Ohio and suffer because he was forced out of ownership of an NFL team and his family can never have it and every year during the Hall of Fame vote, get more bitter he won't ever go in.

Now that part is over... I hope he burns in hell.
 
Upvote 0
Fuck Art Modell. He's a family money guy. If he hadn't been the grandson of the founder of Modell's sporting goods store, he'd have been just another guy; never would have had the opportunity to buy the Browns, fire Paul Brown in a bitter battle of egos, and ship the franchise to Baltimore in petulant fit over the success of Jacobs' Field.

As Mike Ditka said during the broadcast of the last game at Municipal Stadium:

"...these are some of the best fans in the NFL. I said that when I came here with my Bears. They (the Cleveland sports fans) don't deserve this. If Modell had any sort of sense of dignity he would have sold the team."

I didn't cheer for his death. I didn't pray for his death. I'm not even glad he's dead. But I'm not sad. And if today is a day for remembering anything it's that Art Modell was a fucking asshole. Fuck him. Burn in hell.
 
Upvote 0
What did he do with the money he made from the stadium for the $1 lease per year? If his land costs were fixed to $1, he must have made an absolute killing especially with concerts and the Indians. Did he piss that money away?

Come to think of it - what dumbass city officials agreed to a $1/year lease?
 
Upvote 0
MSURacerDT55;2207135; said:
Hate to see him pass, did a lot of good things outside of football and within football but I wont lose a lick of sleep, maybe we were under the curse of Model and we might win Sunday
Click to expand...

He didn't do half of what he gets credit for, he was a good politicker and not much else. Several people in the Cleveland Media (Terry Pluto in particular) have debunked many of his supposed contributions for the "good of the game". He belongs nowhere near the NFL HOF, despite what idiots like Rod Woodson want to say.

I am not "happy" he died, but I am certainly not going to lose any sleep over it either. The guy screwed over Cleveland (the facts are all well documented regarding the move) and then had to sell the team anyway because he was terrible with money. That's his legacy.
 
Upvote 0
Hopefully the NFL doesn't try to put AM stickers on the helmets. If they do hopefully the Browns management is smart enough to say not gonna happen. At least JoePed has someone to talk football with now.
 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top