As a kid I absolutely loved watching NFL Films. There are very few programs that I watched as a 6 year old that I can still watch now that I'm 31, but I can watch those NFL Films presentations all day. I used to watch it when they would play blocks of it on tv, or on VHS until the tapes wouldn't play anymore. Steve Sabol was my connection to the gladiators of the past, introducing me to the powerful men in the grainy footage that would grow to be my heroes. I sat in awe in at the images of players like Buck Buchanan and Alan Page. Dick Butkus and Jack Lambert. Jim Brown and Marion Motley. Willie Brown's interception return. Art Donovan. Billy White Shoes dancing in the endzone. I loved listening to the old stories. I loved the footage. I loved the music. I loved the narration. I loved football, plain and simple, and NFL Films brought football to life. Demigods covered with blood and sweat and tape and pads, engaged in battle to prove who was the better man. Football was beautifully violent and majestically skillful at the same time, and Steve Sabol brought it to me. We named our son Deacon, the name of one of my favorite players to see on those NFL Films programs, Deacon Jones. A name with connotations of power and attitude, connotations born from the old footage and interviews I used to watch over and over again on NFL Films.
Growing up in Cleveland, I was a Browns fan. My dad would take me to the old stadium, the grimy place was a perfect representation for what football was to me. It wasn't glamorous. It was as rough around the edges as the fans were. It was old, loud, dirty, and intimidating, and I loved it. It was the way football looked on those old NFL Films. As a kid, those Browns of the 80's were my heroes. Kosar, Newsome, Mack, Byner, Slaughter, Langhorne, Dixon, Minnefield, Matthews, Golic. I could go on and on. They were warriors, like the kind I used to watch on those NFL Films shows, in real life. They used to have training camp at Lakeland Community College, and my dad would take me there every year. Fans used to line the walkway to see the players as they came in from practice and get autographs. I remember one year running under the ropes to go get autographs in my #19 jersey, and when Kosar came through he was mobbed by people. He reached across the mob of people, took my program, and signed it. I was in heaven, he made my day, he was my idol. That team, those group of players, was connected to the community, they were a blue collar team in a blue collar town. They understood what it meant to represent Cleveland and it's fans, the best in the country.
The move by Art Modell and Bill Belichick to release Bernie Kosar in the middle of the season in 1993 was heartbreaking for me and many others in Cleveland. My idol, the best and really only quarterback of the Cleveland Browns that I had known, was gone. I was 12. I remember the anger of the people, I remember after he signed with Dallas kids coming into school with 18 Kosar jerseys, I remember how happy we all were when Dallas won the Super Bowl and Bernie got his ring. A heroic ending to a sad tale, ultimately, but my idol, the face of pro football to me was gone.
I remember coming home from football practice in 1995, my dad was in the kitchen with the radio on, and he told me the Browns were moving to Baltimore. It was inconceivable at the time that the Browns wouldn't play football in Cleveland. In spite of the misinformation that has been floated around after his death, Art Modell was not forced to move the Browns. He made the decision to move the Browns, starting with blocking expansion to Baltimore in 1993 when Jacksonville was awarded a team. He stole the heart out of a city, with his buddy Al Lerner providing the jet the deal was brokered on and the NFL standing by and doing nothing. He didn't leave Cleveland the history and colors of the Browns, Cleveland sued him and the NFL and he gave them up so he could slither faster to Baltimore. He spit in the faces of an entire city full of people he had walked beside for 30 years, he was a coward and a liar. His death does not change those facts, but it did change the way I felt about the NFL and the players that Steve Sabol had turned into legends to me.
There was no professional football in Cleveland for three years while I was in high school. No games to attend with dad. No Sundays spent with family and friends watching the Browns play football. No more heroes on the gridiron.
Life went on and I became a much bigger college football fan. The Browns got an expansion team, owned by none other than Al Lerner. They got a shiny new stadium, complete with PSLs and club level seating and corporate suites, pushing the common fan up into the nosebleeds. These Browns are just not the same though. They look like the old Browns, but everything about the Browns of my youth packed up and is gone. They are terrible year after year. There is no connection to the community. There are no heroes.
The NFL was only gone for 3 years, and it's been 13 years since they've been back, but it has changed. Maybe I grew up and that's why, but I think it's more than that. The NFL that Steve Sabol introduced me to, and the NFL of my youth, died November 6th, 1995, courtesy of Art Modell.
Two men, deaths 12 days apart, two incredibly different impacts. One a man who helped create and foster a love for the game of football in a child, and one who destroyed that child's love of the game. Like the Browns, that love came back, it's just not the same.
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