After enduring a 1-15 season, Browns fans have little to be excited about as the Super Bowl hype reaches a feverish pitch.
Adding insult to injury, the Patriots are once again in the big game on Sunday with that certain coach whose monosyllabic answers were a trademark of his so-so four-year run as the Brown’s coach in the 1990s — although his 36–44 record here sounds pretty darn good just about now.
The Belichick era ended with the team’s move to Baltimore and the rest is, well, history.
The reincarnated Browns have struggled to be competitive, so fans have to travel pretty far back in the team’s history to find a time when they were the team to beat.
Believe it or not, there was a time when the Browns ruled professional football.
(Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal)
The Cleveland Browns 1955 World Championship ball is on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
We were once that team — you know the ones that seemed to have made a deal with the devil and seem to win all the time.
Kind of like the Patriots and (deep sigh) the Steelers.
If you are looking to dig out your Browns gear from that lonely storage tote hidden deep in the closet and wear it proudly this Super Bowl weekend, then a trip to Canton’s Pro Football Hall of Fame may be just what the coach ordered to lift your weary team spirit.
Be forewarned you will first have to endure walking past pictures, gear and memorabilia from a lot of other teams — like that one from Pittsburgh — as you search out happier times for Browns fans.
The modern era has not been too kind to fans of the orange and brown, and the hall of fame pretty much reflects that.
An area set aside for modern records broken has nary a Browns reference in sight — aside from a photo or two of a Browns defender being beat to help a rival set a milestone.
It is an even lonelier and sad place for Browns fans in the section of the hall set aside to mark the winners of the modern Super Bowl.
The closest thing for a Browns fan to cling to here is the ring on display from Super Bowl XXXV — a championship pretty much won by Browns players wearing Baltimore Ravens uniforms.
(Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal)
Jon Kendle, archivist at the Pro Football Hall of Fame talks about the Browns and the game of football at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The hall’s signature enshrinement gallery does offer some solace. Of the 303 bronze busts, the Browns and Cleveland can lay claim to 20 of them.
Some of the hall of famers have familiar names like Otto Graham and Ozzie Newsome.
Others, like Frank Gatski, not so much.
But it is the names of Cleveland Browns players like Gatski, and Lou Groza and Marion Motley and Bill Willis and Dante Lavelli, who were superstars before the sport held the national prominence it does today.
Under the guidance of coach Paul Brown, from 1946 to 1962, the team was the one that made fans in other cities groan about its winning ways — particularly in the 1940s and 1950s.
The area of the museum dedicated to the history of the game, and in particular the birth of the National Football League, is the one place you can wear your Browns gear proudly and maybe let out a “Way to go Brownies, way to go!”
Next to big, bold letters proclaiming the team dynasties of football are the Cleveland Browns.
Yes, those same Cleveland Browns who won just one game this season.
From the time the Browns were born in 1944 and began playing in the then new All-America Football Conference, all they seemed to do was win.
(Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal)
Coach Paul Brown’s sideline jacket is on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
With Paul Brown as coach, Graham at quarterback, fullback Motley and tackle/kicker Groza, the city won all four AAFC championships and posted an overall 52-4-3 record.
The folding of the AAFC in the 1949 season just meant the team would take its winning ways to the then rival NFL.
There is a game day program on display at the hall from the Browns first game in the NFL against that league’s then champion Philadelphia Eagles.
Considered the underdog, the Browns beat the NFL’s defending champs 35 to 10 at Municipal Stadium.
The Browns were crowned the NFL’s Eastern Conference champs six years in a row from 1950 to 1955 and won NFL titles in 1950, 1954 and 1955.
The Browns won another divisional title in 1957 — the year a running back from Syracuse by the name of Jim Brown joined the squad.
Aside from the legendary first coach, whose sideline jacket is on display and whose signature cap is forever memorialized in bronze, Jim Brown is perhaps the most visible Browns player found in the hall.
(Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal)
The bronze bust of Cleveland Browns great, Jim Brown.
In addition to having his chiseled good looks cast in bronze in the Enshrinement Hall, there are huge floor-to-ceiling photos of Jim Brown showing off his prowess on the field where he amassed an astonishing 12,312 career yards rushing, and another showing his creative side as a Hollywood actor.
He is also among the players featured in the hall’s new Game of Life hologram theater where the sport’s best are celebrated.
Within the museum’s public spaces, the Browns in some ways seem to be relegated to the sidelines by the superstars of the modern era like Peyton Manning.
But within the hall’s behind-the-scenes collection of 40 million pages of documents, another 6 million photographs and another 40,000 artifacts, the Browns are pretty well represented.
The Browns recently agreed to let the hall take possession of and help preserve the team’s archives.
Workers have slowly been transporting everything from team programs to large books that contain old clips of articles written about the team to Canton where they are being categorized and stored in special climate-controlled rooms.
(Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal)
Jon Kendle, archivist at the Pro Football Hall of Fame looks for Cleveland Browns items in the archive during a search to recalling the Browns years of greatness.
Among the hidden treasures in the hall’s extensive collection are actual plays drawn up by coach Paul Brown that include instructions for young players like Chuck Noll, who went on to coach the Steelers and led them to become another of the sport’s dynasties.
You can even dig through the stacks of history and find a time when the Browns and Steelers were formidable rivals.
Craig Webb, an unabashed Browns fan, can be reached at cwebb@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3547.