Cleveland Browns

Did you know that the Cleveland Browns were earlier an AFC Team??

The Cleveland Browns were founded in 1946 under proprietor Arthur 'Mickey' McBride. A lover competition was conducted to decide the figure of the squad, with the almost favorite selection being "Panthers. " However, Coach Paul Brown objected to the figure as there was a semi-pro squad using it already. A second competition was held, and the figure "Browns" was selected. The manager was uneasy with the thought of having the squad named after him, but stated publicly that the original squad was named after boxing champ Joe Louis, who was known as the "Brown Bomber. " The Browns were exceedingly productive early into their creation, dominating the original All-America Football Conference, winning all four of its championships including the 1948 season in which they went undefeated and untied - 24 years before the NFL's 'best' ideal squad, the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Cleveland's unbeaten streak (including ties) reached 29 games including 18 consecutive wins.

In early 1998 the National Football League began its search for an owner for the reborn Browns, finding one later in the year in Al Lerner, a former limited partner of the original Browns and a friend of Art Modell who assisted in Modell's move to Baltimore. Lerner was the winning bidder against a number of others who sought the team, including cable TV magnates Charles Dolan and Larry Dolan, Cleveland real estate developer Bart Wolstein and New York developer Howard Milstein. During the period from 1996-1998 other franchises, such as Tampa Bay, threatened their home cities with the possibility of moving to Cleveland in order to put pressure on their respective cities to get more governmental funding for their own stadiums, despite the fact that the city of Cleveland asserted that it would not accept such an arrangement.

(0btained from wikipedia.org)