Quote:
Originally Posted by Warfish
Cleveland.
Nuff said.
Modell is one of the best and most visionary owners in NFL history, hands down. he brough football back to a real football passionate city (Baltimore). He say the value to the league of TV before most, and drove the league in that direction, and was a guiding hand behind a number of comissioners in growing the league. He also set the bar of quality in Baltimore for it's ongoing success as a franchise.
The fact that he couldn't afford to compete within a small-market city and made he right business decision to relocate to a better city in every way means less than nothing on Modell's lifelong resume of success.
At least he left Clevland with it's stupid "Hi, I'm a Color!" name and history, settin gthe stage for this (great IMO) change away from owners taking the Cities history with them. |
1) In terms of football, Cleveland was not a "small market" franchise. They were one of the flagship NFL properties. Properly run, they would have made a forturne for the owners. Even poorly run under the last group of owners, they were doing fine financially. According to Forbes, the current Browns have an operating income of $50.8m. They sold last month for north of $1,000,000,000.
He left b/c he could not afford to run a franchise and Baltimore gave him $225m to leave.
2) Even with $225m from Baltimore, he ran that franchise into the ground and was forced by the NFL to sell it.