On the day before Newsome would earn his second ring in Baltimore in February 2013, his mentor Art Modell was once again a finalist to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Once again, the mostly same group of sportswriters that Jack Harbaugh said “came up very small” in the past, denied Modell passage into Canton, Ohio’s ground of pigskin worship and history. Newsome wrote an op-ed for the The Cleveland Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com. This is what it said:
“I am a Cleveland Brown and I will always be a Cleveland Brown. I was proud to wear that orange helmet for 13 years and represent all those great Browns fans who were so good in supporting my team throughout my career.
Although I love and am proud to be the team’s executive vice president and general manager, I never played for this team. I am a Brown.
And I believe Art Modell should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
My reasons are the same as most of the voters for putting any person into the Hall of Fame: Can you write about the history of the game without using that person’s name?
You can’t write the NFL history without Art. He was an architect of the game we love today.
The first person who recognized that television and football were perfect for each other was Art Modell. He did that in the 1960s, became the chairman of the NFL’s TV committee and had that job for 31 years.
All of pro sports owes Art thanks for how he changed the financial landscape of pro sports. He recognized the value of the NFL to TV and sold it, dramatically increasing the money paid to the league.
This, in turn, helped every player, coach and owner in the league make more money.
I was proud to be a member of the NFL Players Association. Art recognized the need for the players to form a membership, and negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement in league history when he was the first and only NFL president. (His fellow owners voted him to this prestigious position.)
He was instrumental in the merger of the NFL and the AFL, creating the league we know today. As Dick Ebersol recently said, “Monday Night Football” was Art’s brainchild.
And Art won. The Browns had 27 winning seasons in 42 years. We made the playoffs seven of the 10 years in the 1980s when I was a Brown.
His Browns won an NFL championship in 1964 – the last Cleveland team to accomplish that. His Ravens won the Super Bowl after the 2000 season. His teams played in three more title games, four AFC Championships, and five other teams had a chance to make the playoffs entering the last game of the year.
To my benefit, but so historically important, Art Modell is the first owner in NFL history to hire a minority to run his football team. I will be forever grateful for that.
In all of my years, I have never found a former Browns player who did not admire Art for the way he treated his players. He cared about us. He sacrificed for us and, for many, he became our friend.
I know many Clevelanders will never forgive Art for moving the team. I understand that. But he didn’t want to move the team. As I look at it, because he took over the running of Cleveland Stadium – and he did that at the request of a mayor of Cleveland – his finances were never what they should have been in just owning an NFL team. In the end, to stay in the business, Art moved. But Cleveland got its new stadium shortly after and the Browns still exist today and they play in a beautiful home. Why that couldn’t be done for Art’s Browns, some of us will never understand.
But this is what I believe: Art Modell should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I hope he makes it this time.
And, if he does, I will be sad that it didn’t happen when he was alive.”
When they all attended Modell’s funeral that day it was hard for anyone in the room to imagine where their lives would be right now if Mr. Modell wasn’t a part of their lives and a mentor to them in some way. So many people had one thing in common – they all owed their vocations, livelihood, and prosperity in some way to Arthur B. Modell, who loved his role in helping people, building a business, and laughing along the way.
Art Modell was, as Ozzie Newsome said, “a giant.”
It could be said that Modell helped build football in two cities – first in Cleveland, and then in Baltimore, where it was fractured and needed to be repaired and rebuilt.
Even though he is gone from the Ravens, Modell’s spirit lives in the walls through his deeds, his ethos, and the people he touched and brought into his extended family, which was football. It was his whole life. He wanted to be around football until the day he died.
