A Brief History
On November 6, 1995, owner of the Cleveland Browns, Art Modell, made an announcement that broke the heart of Cleveland football fans, that he was moving the team to Baltimore. Ironically, the fans in Baltimore had lost their own beloved Colts after the 1983 season when they moved to Indianapolis.
Digging Deeper
Clevelanders should have known better than to think their Browns were sacred, since back in 1945 the NFL franchise Cleveland Rams announced a move to Los Angeles for the 1946 season. Incredibly, this came right after the Rams had won the NFL Championship in 1945! Even before that, in 1928 hapless Cleveland fans lost the NFL Cleveland Bulldogs to Detroit, where they became the Wolverines. Before that, they were the Canton Bulldogs. The NFL (National Football League) proves with their ongoing game of musical chairs that money comes first and fans come second.
Franchise shuffling has always been a part of the NFL. Speculation today concerns the St. Louis Rams (yes, the old Los Angeles Rams that were once in Cleveland), with the possibility of that team moving back to LA. It seems the NFL desperately wants to get a team back to the second biggest market in the US. Damn the fans, the money makes sense! Another candidate for the LA franchise are the Oakland Raiders, themselves having played in LA back in 1982-1994, before moving back to Oakland.
Update, November, 2019: The Rams did indeed move back to Los Angeles in time for the 2016 NFL season. The Oakland Raiders are still in Oakland, but the San Diego Chargers are now the Los Angeles Chargers, as of the 2017 season! By the way, the Chargers played their first season, 1960, in Los Angeles before moving to San Diego. (San Diego also lost their NBA Clippers to Los Angeles in 1984, so LA has a history of raiding San Diego for sports teams. The Clippers started life in 1970 as the Buffalo Braves.)
One of the most bizarre flips was Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers in 1940, when they switched players and corporate ownership without changing the franchise. In 1971 a similar flip flop took place between the Baltimore Colts and Los Angeles Rams, when the corporate identity switched, but this time not the players.
The Arizona Cardinals had been the St. Louis Cardinals for 28 years, from 1960 to 1987 before following the sun. Prior to that, they had been the Chicago Cardinals, for an even longer period from 1920 to 1959. (On the bright side, it is likely a lot of people from the Chicago area now live in Arizona.)
Did you know the Washington Redskins originally played in Boston? Or the San Diego Chargers in Los Angeles (while an AFL team)? Another AFL move was the Dallas Texans to Kansas City where they became the Chiefs. The Houston Oilers moved to Memphis in 1997 to become the Tennessee Oilers, only to move to Nashville a year later where they now play as the Tennessee Titans.
Rumors continue to swirl about various franchises, from moving far away or even to an adjoining suburb that offers better tax rates or a taxpayer financed new stadium. In fact, we have listed only some of the incredible array of franchise shenanigans that have gone on in professional football over the years.
Well, the NFL saw fit to give a new Browns franchise to Cleveland in 1999, after taxpayers authorized the building of a new $283 million (those year dollars) stadium for millionaire players to play for billionaire owners. This of course follows a trend in both the NFL and in Major League Baseball.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Should sports teams be allowed to move without municipal approval? If so, should any business be so limited? Should the monopoly nature of the NFL granted by the government come with moving restrictions? What is your opinion of these matters?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Rushin, Steve. “The Heart of a City.” Sports Illustrated, December 4, 1995.
Poplar, Michael G. and James A. Toman. Fumble : The Browns, Modell, & the Move. Cleveland Landmarks Pr, 1997.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Jerry Sherk (talk) of en:Art Modell, the former en:Cleveland Browns owner, giving a press conference around 1983, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
