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Sunday, January 28, 2001

By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

TAMPA, Fla. -- Art Modell ran into his old friend on a Saturday night in Cleveland, Art Rooney, who was in the company of priests and a former Pennsylvania governor. The year was 1964, October 10 and Rooney's downtrodden Steelers were about to play Modell's Browns, who would go on to win the NFL championship that season.

	Ravens owner Art Modell is cheered by Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley at a Super Bowl ralley. (Gail Burton, Associated Press)

Rooney begged Modell for mercy.

Modell, sitting and basking in the sunshine of the Super Bowl this week, recalled the meeting with Rooney as if it were last month.

"I moved the game from Sunday afternoon to Saturday night. We had Pete Rozelle and the networks approve it so we could duck the World Series on Sunday.

"Art came in walking with Governor David Lawrence and six priests, collar and all. I said what's this, Art? Where do I get a rabbi at this hour? It's ridiculous; you win, hands down.

"I want you to do me a favor," Modell recalled Rooney saying. "You guys go easy. We have one healthy linebacker, Myron Pottios. All the others are hurt. I hope you go easy on us."

Modell laughed at the memory. "I was fully confident: 'Don't worry Art; don't worry, Chief.'"

The Steelers then went out and pulled one of their biggest upsets in history, trampling the Browns, 23-7, behind John Henry Johnson's 200 yards rushing.

"I was appalled," Modell said. "Buddy Parker was their coach. They put up a defense that might have been a forerunner of the 46 defense in Chicago. I was beside myself. He told me to go easy and they're piling it on.

"So, I leave the stands and I stomp back to the office in the stadium, and I hear, 'Hey, Art! Art!' I thought it was some disgruntled bettor, so I didn't turn around.

"Art! Art!

"I recognized the voice. It was the Chief. I turned around, he was 20 yards away."

Modell, sitting at Raymond James Stadium, then mimicked the gesture Rooney gave him. The Chief put his hand up to his face, his thumb on his nose and wiggled his fingers.

If a player were to try that today on the field, he would be penalized for taunting. Twenty-six years later, it's a charming story, spun by a master story-teller.

There is plenty to like about Art Modell. He spun many such tales the other day, holding court here before a gaggle of news media under bright sunshine at his Mecca, the Super Bowl. He is 75 years old, a Brooklyn native who quit high school to help his family during the Depression. He has waited 35 years to get here.

His team will play its first Super Bowl tonight against his best friend in the business, Wellington Mara, part-owner of the New York Giants. They chat on the phone often. It's a matchup of old-world NFL owners in an era fast disappearing.

Yet, Art Modell is the devil, despised, the worst form of life imaginable because he did the unthinkable. He moved the Browns out of Cleveland. Five years ago, he hauled them southeast, across the Ohio and Pennsylvania turnpikes, down Route 70 through Maryland and into Baltimore.

He ripped the heart out of Northeast Ohio, and they will never let him forget it.

"I have bad feelings," said Dante Lavelli, a former Browns wide receiver who is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, a Cleveland resident and businessman. "From all the public reaction I see, they hate him here."

Many in Cleveland and Browns fans across the country will not let it go, and their anger has been exasperated by the visit of Modell's "new" franchise, the Baltimore Ravens, in the Super Bowl. The Browns have never appeared in the game, and many of their fans believe this one should have been theirs.

Never mind that Modell's departure from Ohio prompted Cleveland to build of one of the best and newest stadiums in pro football, that the Browns have returned to the town as a new franchise with a deeper-pockets owner, that the city is better off today than it was five years ago, that many NFL owners have new stadiums to thank for Modell's actions.

They hate him.

"I think it's unjustified," Modell said. "I think it's unwarranted. And only people [in the news media] might correct the reference, given enough time to do it.

"Right now, the Cleveland Browns are playing in Cleveland, Ohio. That's their football team. And in a new stadium, with solid ownership. So, why the betrayal? . . . I think the constant villification is wearing thin with a lot of people."

The dislike for him even spills over into the nation's news media. Yesterday, Buffalo owner Ralph Wilson was among the 15 finalists in the voting for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Wilson is a nice, old man but his credentials cannot approach those of Modell, who was responsible for bringing the NFL it's mega-billion television contracts, the league's lifeblood. He also played a main part, along with Art Rooney, in forging the 1970 merger of the AFL and NFL by agreeing to move the Browns to the AFC.

Al Davis moved his Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles and back again, and he was voted into the Hall of Fame. Bill Bidwill's Cardinals moved from Chicago to St. Louis to Phoenix and no one says a word. Bud Adams is seen by Houston as a weird old guy but he's not vilified there for packing up the Oilers and turning them into the Tennessee Titans.

But Modell is so despised in Cleveland, he's afraid to go back there. It was no worse than if the Pittsburgh Steelers had moved to Memphis.

Yet, Modell had little choice but to leave, or so he says.

The city fathers of Cleveland asked Modell to wait and be quiet while they built gleaming new palaces for their pro basketball and baseball teams downtown, called the Gateway project. In the meantime, the Browns languished in the run-down artifact that was Cleveland Stadium.

Modell kept his tongue and when the other two buildings were complete and he came with his hand out, it was slapped. The politicians dragged their feet. Modell pleaded with them, but there was no action. Finally, presented with an offer he could not refuse, he struck a deal with Baltimore and stunned the nation's football fans with the announcement.

He had little choice, but he made some bad choices along the way, which is part of why Browns fans still hate him for it. His biggest mistakes was not warning the public that he might move if he did not get a new stadium. It is a tactic other owners have used to scare their fans into supporting movements for new stadiums. The latest to do it were the Philadelphia Eagles.

But he never gave Browns fans that chance. He simply up and moved without a public warning, and that was an error that will haunt him to the grave, no matter how much charitable work he and his family did in Ohio.

Modell, though, believes no matter what he did, had he kept his Browns in Cleveland, they still would not have the luxuries the new Browns have today.

"No way. No way!" he said. "Anybody who says anything to the contrary is not telling the truth. I waited two years for a response. I was asked to stay out of the public debate about Gateway. I stayed out of it, and the Cavaliers and the Indians got what they needed. Then nothing was forthcoming for the Browns for two years, not even a meeting that had any significance to it. I felt they were taking me for granted. Then there was the science museum, and the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, and they had trouble fixing the toilet that was leaking in the upper deck."

Modell claims that many other owners benefitted by his move because the politicians and public in their cities feared that if the Browns could move, so could the Steelers or Bengals or Lions or Eagles or Patriots or Broncos. They built or will build many new football stadiums because of him, he said.

"I do know that Mike was looking at Baltimore," Modell said of Bengals owner Mike Brown. "Other teams were, too.

"I've given some thought to the residual effect, around the league, of my moving. It was not done by design, but it helped in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and a few other places. I think it precipitated some favorable action in thos respective markets. Others have told me that."

Dan Rooney never threatened to move the Steelers father away than Washington County, but the Browns' relocation may have helped push Pennsylvania politicians into action into building a new football stadium in Pittsburgh.

Rooney was one of only two NFL owners to vote against allowing Modell to switch his franchise from Cleveland to Baltimore, but the two remain friendly even if Rooney does not buy Modell's story that he had no choice but to leave Ohio.

"He has been a friend of mine and my father's for years," said Rooney, who is happy to see Modell finally bring a team to the Super Bowl."

Modell was running out of time to get here. Last year, he sold 49 percent of his franchise for $275 million to Stephen Bisciotti with an option for Bisciotti to purchase the remaining 51 percent for $325 million within three to five years.

Modell was forced to sell because of mounting debt brought about, in part, because of bad football decisions fueled by Modell's passion to get where he is today, the Super Bowl.

"He always wanted to win, he was emotional about everything he did," Rooney said

Modell may not be loved in Baltimore the way he is hated in Cleveland, but he is happy there. What's not to like about a man who brought football to a town that itself lost its beloved Colts when they moved to Indianapolis in 1984? They have a new stadium and now they're in the Super Bowl.

"This is unquestionably the best team I've had, because we're very deep."

There are a few in Cleveland who have let time and a new team salve the wounds Modell opened. One is the Big Dawg, John Thompson. Another is Lavelli.

"Probably the mayor of Cleveland pushed him out," Lavelli said. "That came out after the fact. There are a lot of things the public doesn't know and I don't know what happened. But he has to have a strong stomach for what he's gone through."

Modell won't say it, but there is a sense that his trip to the Super Bowl would have been more fulfilling for him had it been with the Cleveland Browns. He believes, however, that he saved that franchise by burning it.

"Let me say one thing," Modell said. "I am simply delighted on behalf of my family and myself that there is a professional football team in Cleveland called the Cleveland Browns. And they wear uniforms with a seal brown and burnt orange colors, and they have the legacy of Jim Brown and Otto Graham and dozens and dozens of others.

"And above all, they're playing in a new stadium. That's all I can say. Anything beyond that, I'm not going to do it."

After all, Cleveland, hasn't he done enough?