History: How the AAFC Panthers became the Browns became the NFL Champion Browns
History: How the AAFC Panthers became the Browns became the NFL Champion Browns
The Cleveland Browns have captured eight pro football championships. This ranks as tied for third-most with the New York Football Giants behind the Green Bay Packers (13) and the Chicago Bears (9).
At one time, Cleveland won five titles in a row which tied with the Edmonton Eskimos for second place among professional football teams. Only the Kansas Koyotes indoor pro football franchise has won more with six consecutive titles. The Browns’ franchise also played 10 championship games in a row, winning seven. The consecutive title game appearances are a record.
But the Browns’ pro football history begins in 1945.
NY Giants (dark uniforms) and Cleveland Rams
The Cleveland Rams were having a great season in 1945 after floundering in the standings for several years. The team also had an attendance problem and hence played their home games at League Park at the corner of East 66th Street and Lexington Avenue which held a capacity of 22,500 patrons. The club would rent mammoth Municipal Stadium, home of the Cleveland Indians, on occasion when one of the league’s better teams would roll in such as the Giants, Washington Redskins, Portsmouth Spartans, Green Bay Packers, or the Chicago Bears.
Each of these visiting teams had famous offensive star players which brought exceptional crowds to the City of Cleveland. Municipal Stadium held 81,000 for football and the payout was always very good for both the home team and the visitor (which took home 40% of the gate).
As World War II was coming to a close, there were hundreds of athletes who had left the NFL to fight overseas and many college graduates, seniors, and juniors who had also enlisted. Coming back to the States, they were wanting to play professional football.
Each year into the 1940s, numerous wealthy men wanted to own a pro football club but were turned away by the NFL owners about expansion. Some were rebuked because of their geographic location such as the Pacific West Coast or even Texas.
At the time, the league was mainly situated in the Midwest and along the Eastern seaboard. Travel was mainly by train but with shorter trips charter buses were obtained. If the NFL placed an expansion team in Los Angeles for example, the travel time would be two days from Chicago and three days from New York just to get there with the same number on the calendar with the return trip.
So, these admonished prospective owners began their own league and called it the All-America Football Association, then a month later renamed it the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) as a nod to college football.
The AAFC began their planning stages in 1945 with their maiden season set to begin in 1946.
Cleveland Rams and Cleveland AAFC
The Rams began in 1936 in another NFL-rival league called the American Football League, often referred to as AFL2. After one season of complete disorganization, the Rams applied for entry into the NFL who at the time had an odd number of clubs. The league accepted their proposal over other submissions from Los Angeles, Dallas, and Buffalo since their location remained in the Midwest and Buffalo was deemed too small.
Tom Fears - Cleveland Rams
In 1945, the Rams captured the Western Division and then were matched with the Eastern Division champs Redskins in the NFL Championship Game played at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. The Rams won 15-14 in one of the coldest title games ever.
For two years, Rams owner Daniel Reeves had wanted to relocate the Rams to Los Angeles but was voted down by the owners because of travel concerns. But beginning in 1946, air travel was now available for large groups. Reeves saw that the new AAFC Cleveland team, coached by legendary Ohio football man Paul Brown, was not going to go well for his franchise. His thoughts were the city barely supported one pro football team much less two. Plus, the AAFC Cleveland club had already rented Municipal Stadium and had an exclusive rights clause in their contract which eliminated any big paydays with that stadium.
After a lot of bickering, posturing from Reeves, plus an additional visitor’s stipend to each traveling NFL club that played in L.A., the NFL owners relented and the reigning NFL champion Cleveland Rams suddenly became the reigning NFL champs Los Angeles Rams.
AAFC Cleveland owner Mickey McBride ran a “name the team” contest in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and the winner was “Panthers.” The Cleveland Panthers was a defunct team that had played in the 1930s. Upon reading about the new team’s chosen team name, a man came forward and informed McBride that he owned the rights to “Cleveland Panthers” but he would lease it annually. McBride passed, and eventually, the team would be named after their famous coach and christened the “Cleveland Browns.”
Browns dominate AAFC
The NFL implemented a college draft in 1936 to help promote parity among their teams. The AAFC did not hold any college draft their first season, nor have any restrictions on how many current NFL players they could poach, or any parameters on how to form rosters. Each team was on their own to obtain athletes and coaches.
Browns head coach Paul Brown
Paul Brown had a huge advantage. He had won six high school state championships as the head coach of Massillon (Ohio) Washington High School, won a National Championship as head coach of Ohio State University, and then during the war he coached the Great Lakes Navy Bluejackets for two seasons which played some very tough college teams.
Coach Brown had all this knowledge about the guys he coached, plus all of his opponent’s players. Great Lakes had played and beaten some of college football’s best teams during his two-year coaching stint. Ohio State gave him three years of scouting other team players. By the time the Browns suited up for their first AAFC game against the Miami Seahawks in front of 60,135, Coach Brown had a roster that was two-deep at every position, plus a group of extra players at the ready called the “Taxi Squad.”
Part of the reason for this roster domination was that McBride was very wealthy and gave Coach Brown an unlimited salary cap. The Browns offered players more money than the other AAFC teams as well as NFL clubs. Why play for $4,500 a season when Cleveland was offering $7,500? Coach Brown was very selective. As the seasons rolled along, he signed more blue-chip college players than any other club in either league.
The AAFC did not have any regulations that would promote parity although they did institute a college draft, and so the Browns dominated the league every year. There were numerous newspaper articles that addressed why Cleveland had all of the good players while the remainder of the AAFC signed a few exceptional athletes. Coach Brown told his players to ignore this and play as they were coached.
The Browns went 12-2-0 in their first season and captured the Western Division. During the season, Cleveland had 67 defensive takeaways, a pro football record that still stands today. The team had two games played to over 70,000 and one contest that drew just 37,054.
Then they met the Eastern Champs New York Yankees in the first-ever AAFC Championship Game, winning 14-9. The gate at Municipal Stadium was announced as 41,181 which just barely topped the Rams home win over the Redskins the year before in minus-8 degree weather.
In 1947, the Browns finished 12-1-1 and then defeated the Yankees 14-3 in the title game for their second league championship. Cleveland went undefeated and untied in 1948 with a sterling 14-0-0 record and a third consecutive title beating the Buffalo Bills 49-7 in the championship game. In 1949, the Browns again finished with a one-loss season going 9-1-2 before defeating the San Francisco 49ers 21-7 in the title game for their fourth consecutive AAFC title.
AAFC (and NFL) had a Cleveland problem
With the Browns being such a dominating club, the other teams and their fans simply quit coming to games in which Cleveland was participating. Beginning in 1948, even Clevelanders stopped showing up for home games knowing their team was going to be victorious and the outcome was predetermined basically. For example, the 1949 Browns home game against the Chicago Hornets drew a mere 16,506. The following week versus the visiting Bills, a very good team, had just 22,511 fans in a stadium that held 81,000.
AAFC team owners
With the remainder of the AAFC, the Los Angeles Dons, 49ers, and Bills all had decent followings but none ended their seasons in the black all four years.
One of the main reasons was player salaries ballooned each season because of the war between the AAFC and the NFL.
Most AAFC owners offered larger contracts each year and were able to sign quite a few existing NFL athletes as well as incoming college talent. NFL franchises were forced to match or increase their salary offerings to stay competitive. This then inspired the AAFC teams to increase the pay even higher. Every year, this cycle escalated to which no team other than the NFL Chicago Bears and AAFC Cleveland Browns was making any profit.
At the time, the gate, program sales, and concessions were the only revenue streams. Each respective league did charge radio the rights to broadcast their championship games, but during the regular season, all radio broadcasts were free as each team was happy to have their games broadcast to fans. Television revenue would not come into play until the 1950s and then those contracts were with only a single club instead of the entire league.
Something had to change. And the NFL made the first move.
Internally, some of the NFL owners wanted to work with the AAFC in some fashion. Player salaries were looking like the ruination of the league. The last thing most owners wanted was to have to fold the league because of costs. The NFL had gone through so many obstacles in their 29-year history including World War II, other rival leagues, the government wanting to disband football altogether because of deaths, and the amount of teams that came and went.
Alexis Thompson, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, suggested a common draft with the AAFC which would then manage rookie salaries and bonuses. The Chicago Bears’ George Halas and George Preston Marshall, owner of the Washington Redskins, pushed to put the AAFC completely out of business. Every team in the NFL was operating in the red except the Bears.
The motto for both leagues was, “We’ll get smart and make peace, or we’ll all go bust.”
A truce was in the best interest of everyone involved, or else pro football would be eliminated. Halas came out publicly in the Chicago press that it was time to sit down and work out a sensible solution. This signaled to the AAFC owners to get a committee together. Within days of Halas’ comments, the AAFC committee sat down with NFL Commissioner Bell.
The merger
At first, Bell announced to the AAFC continency that the NFL only wanted the Browns and the 49ers. Both clubs had very good rosters, they drew well at the gate, their coaching staffs were professional and experienced, and upper management had operated their franchises with few issues.
By accepting San Francisco this gave the Rams a natural California rival. Cleveland was still nestled in the Midwest and would fit travel plans for most NFL clubs.
The AAFC was floored by Bell’s assessment. Only two clubs? Bell also stated that the other AAFC teams would be disbanded and their players distributed among their existing teams and that the league would not compensate or offer any settlement to the owners of the dispersed franchises.
The AAFC wanted four teams to merge. The NFL countered with the ownership groups of the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Dons, the other two successful teams, the option to buy minority shares in two NFL franchises. But the rosters of the Bills and Dons would go into a dispersement draft just like the others.
The AAFC stuck with four teams. The NFL consented and allowed a third team to merge. The two leagues agreed.
However, the third AAFC club to move into the NFL did not go smoothly. As mentioned earlier, the league’s second tier of talent and gate were the Bills and Dons. The Rams owned the territorial rights to Los Angeles now, so the Dons were a casualty from the get-go. That left Buffalo as the third club, correct?
Wrong. The NFL did not want Buffalo - for many reasons. For one, it wasn’t large enough, and November and December game dates were brutally cold. While in the AAFC, all of the Bills home games were in September and October. That did not appeal to the NFL. To them, Buffalo was out. The fact that Buffalo had the third-largest attendance on average did not matter. Remember, those games were in early fall before blizzards roared in.
The Baltimore Colts were then chosen as the third team to join the NFL in 1950 despite having a dismal roster, poor coaching staff, and lackluster gate. Now with an odd number of teams, the Colts were chosen as a “swing team” whose schedule was different than the other clubs. They finished 1-11-0 and surrendered an average of 39 points a game.
The punishment
The NFL owners hated the AAFC.
They despised the fact that before their existence, they had built their little corner of the major sports leagues into this tidy organization and were finally seeing the light now that World War II was coming to a close.
The NFL owners knew they would never be as popular as Major League Baseball, but didn’t really care. They loved baseball just as much. These owners also didn’t stress that there were 10 times the fans that followed college football than the pro version. People became fans of pro football, but people were fans of college squads. Their school was inside them, and they felt a kinship to their college rosters.
Annual All-Pro LB Chuck Bednarik (#60) of the Philadelphia Eagles
The NFL wanted to make a mockery of the Browns right away. For the 1950 season, they wanted to expose Cleveland for being imposters. Four-time champion? Yeah, you haven’t played the Eagles yet who had a ferrous defense, or the Rams who had a high-flying offense, or the playoff Giants. Remember, the NFL’s own commissioner had once stated that the worst NFL club could defeat the champion Browns any day, any season.
First off, the NFL hierarchy placed the Browns in the American Conference with the powerhouse Giants, Redskins, and current NFL champs Eagles who had won the league two consecutive seasons in 1948 and 1949. Before that, the Giants and Redskins had been in the championship game a total of 10 straight.
The NFL had placed the Browns in the lion’s den.
Secondly, in Cleveland’s preseason schedule was a date with the Bears, who had won seven NFL titles at that point.
And lastly, the Browns’ Week 1 opponent was none other, than the Eagles. On the road. In front of 71,000-plus. The message was clear: you are now playing Big Boy Football, no more minor league opponents, and four titles from a sandlot organization.
Before the game, Coach Brown had told his team those four championships were on the line. The reputation of the AAFC was dangling as well.
Cleveland went behind 3-0, although a punt return for a touchdown was called back. The halftime score was 14-3 Browns with a final score of Cleveland 35, Philly 10. The record-breaking home crowd was deftly quiet the entire fourth quarter.
After the game, NFL Commissioner Bell told Coach Brown his club “was the greatest team to ever play the game.”
The Giants and Browns would finish with identical 10-2-0 records which forced a one-game playoff to which Cleveland won 8-3. This placed them in the 1950 NFL Championship Game in their very first year in the established league. The Browns won that game 30-28 to become NFL champions.
The win meant the franchise had won five pro football championships in a row, at the time a record.