But before he began, he had a message for Ray Lewis: “You’re a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man who my dad loved dearly. And for you I have a bottle of Tiffany For Men because that’s what it was…”
Ah, laughter, That’s what Art would’ve wanted. That was Art’s way to tell a joke, to lighten the load. To be joyous amidst the strife and loss.
“Nothing made my mother more happy than to see Art greeted by a hundred fans when he arrived on game day,” David began. “To see what happened the other day at the stadium at the public memorial touched our family. It was the personification of everything Art was. He used to tell us why sports teams were so important to a community, and how they served as the glue that brought together people from disparate side of life to a common cause. It was his hope that this commonality would spread to more days of the week beyond Sunday.”
“To see 5,000 fans descending on stadium – from bank presidents to church ladies, all in Ravens jerseys. All hues, religions, fathers, sons, grandmothers, granddaughters, joy, thanks, and tears. We experienced kindness and warmth from complete strangers, and it touched us. It was peaceful and celebratory and loving, one of the astonishing things I’ve ever witnessed. All for Art…he really loved Baltimore and Baltimore loved Art Modell.”
The Modells relatively short tenure as owners in Baltimore didn’t slow down their affinity for philanthropy. Their contributions to the NFL, to Cleveland, the Cleveland Clinic, Baltimore, the arts in general, and philanthropic deeds speak for themselves. In 2007, the Modells pledged $5 million to help start a public boarding school, The SEED School, for disadvantaged youth. The Modells contributed $3.5 million to the Lyric Opera House, which was later renamed the Patricia and Arthur Modell Performing Arts Center at The Lyric in 2010. Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Kennedy Krieger Institute also benefited from Modell’s generosity in Baltimore.
But Modell’s lasting gift will be the breath of life he breathed into the Baltimore Ravens with the residue of the Cleveland Browns in 1996 and the lasting change and impact it’s had on the residents on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.
And despite a lifetime of buying, building, selling, and growing the NFL, it’s become clear that Modell will never be rightfully inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame by the current voting assemblage. There are too many on the committee who are pro-Cleveland and anti-Modell. There are none who will listen to the many good deeds, including the reformation of the modern football experience in Baltimore, one of the cities that helped build the NFL. A town that bore the scars and pain of the Irsay’s departure and was made whole in this strangely cathartic and serendipitous turn of events since 1995 when Modell, on the verge of bankruptcy, found a home in Baltimore that would serve his family well.
In the end, Cleveland wound up with everything that Baltimore didn’t get in the Irsay departure. Cleveland had a new stadium, a new owner, a new lease on life, and team records, colors, logos, and uniforms in 1999 when they rejoined the NFL. And Cleveland had certainty. Baltimore groveled for a decade and offered a desperate partner of theirs a deal that was too good to be true and the NFL got one of the model franchises in the sport in the wake of what was once viewed as shameful. And, of course, the same could be said for the former Baltimore franchise in Indianapolis, where the Colts’ new generation laid a foundation of excellence in the wake of incompetence and greed.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said: “There are very few people who have contributed what Art Modell contributed to the NFL.” Modell’s son, John, touched on the Hall of Fame issue in his eulogy, calling his father “one of the league’s greatest protagonists and antagonists. But that won’t be Art’s greatest legacy because my father is already enshrined in the hall that really matters; in my heart and all of your hearts and Baltimore’s heart.
“We can honor him, by each of us building our own hall – our Hall of Love – and inducting everyone we have into that hall.”
On the football side, perhaps no one made Modell more proud than Ozzie Newsome, who has always endured the complexity of the Browns-Ravens civic angst, because he is tied to both places so inextricably. Modell gave Newsome a real chance after his Hall of Fame career ended, a meaningful job in the NFL and a way to make his way up the ladder to the highest heights in the business the old fashioned way – by earning it through results and trial and error. Newsome considered Modell a father figure. And for what some at the time were calling bizarre nepotism in appointing Newsome to be in charge of the new Baltimore Ravens in 1996, well, it now looks like a stroke of genius. Somehow Modell never seemed to receive any credit for this bold move despite the achievements of his Hall of Famer from Florence, Alabama who turned out to be the best evaluator of talent in the recent history of the NFL.
