The Baltimore Scavengers? Not quite

Sporting News, The, Feb 19, 1996 by Ken Rosenthal

You want to condemn Baltimore, condemn Baltimore. Call it a city with no memory. Call it a city with,no morality. Call it anything you want, but at least know the facts. The NFL started all the trouble. The NFL created the monster.

If there is such a thing as civic harassment -- and why not in this day and age? -- then Baltimore could make quite a case. To the end, the NFL tried to stick it to the city, asking it to wait until 1998 for an expansion team so the Browns could remain in Cleveland.

The difference this time is that Baltimore bad leverage. A 36-million antitrust lawsuit it had filed against the league. And the threat of blocking three stadiums -- two in Maryland, one in Cleveland -- if the owners rejected the team's move.

It was quite a metamorphosis.

Baltimore, the skinny kid who got sand kicked in his face once too often, became the baddest dude in town.

For nearly 12 years, the city jumped through every hoop, fought the good fight, played by all the NFI's silly rules. What good did it do? The league snubbed Baltimore in expansion, choosing Charlotte and Jacksonville. The league turned the city into a scavenger, and along came the Browns.

If not a deal with the devil, it certainly was a deal with an owner who voted against Baltimore in expansion, a deal that created a local as well as national furor. The likely poetical outcome will be a state contribution of $273 million to two football stadiums -- one for the Browns, the other for the Redskins.

No one wanted this.

But to return to the NFL, Baltimore had little choice.

Build a museum, that's what Commissioner Paul Tagliabue suggested to a Baltimore television reporter after the city lost out in expansion. Heck, the league even sued Baltimore's CFL franchise to prevent it from using the Colts name, claiming it was capitalizing on the "goodwill" created by the original NFL team.

In the end, Tagliabue and Co. got what they deserved. The relocation of one of the NFL's most storied franchises, the one that gave the league Jim Brown, Otto Graham and Marion Motley. And the revenge of a city it portrayed as a demographically incorrect, mid-Atlantic wasteland, never mind its place in league history.

Want to talk memory? Colts Owner Robert Irsay is the one who moved to Indianapolis. Redskins Owner Jack Kent Cooke is the one who wanted to claim the Baltimore market for his own. And Tagliabue, the self-appointed Sun King, is the one who was so hot to expand into virgin territory.

Want to talk morality? Fine, name a town that isn't willing to play this seedy game. Cleveland, guaranteed an existing or expansion franchise by the time the new stadium opens there in 1999, says it won't accept a team that fails to meet the league's relocation guidelines. Fair enough, but let's not put the city on a moral pedestal. Chances are, it still will wind up with someone else's team.

Baltimore learned the hard way, and so did Cleveland -- it's business, dirty business, and woe to any city that won't build a new stadium, no matter how loyal its fan support. Viewed from that narrow perspective, the Browns were a logical target for Baltimore. And even then, the city is not entirely comfortable with its participation in such an unseemly act.

The Colts left in 1984, left in Mayflower vans, left in the middle of a snowstorm, under cover of the night. The psychological impact was enormous. William Donald Schaefer, the mayor and then governor, embarked on a crusade to ensure that the city kept its baseball team and landed a football team. The result was a landmark facility in sports history -- the high-revenue, state-of-the-art Camden Yards.

Schaefer secured the legislation authorizing public funding for a baseball--only park for the Orioles, and a football stadium for a new NFL franchise. The city then fined with no fewer than seven NFL teams, and failed in its expansion bid. Finally, a new governor, Parris Glendening, threatened to revoke the funding for the stadium.

And Art Modell jumped.

To much of the nation, the Browns' owner represents all that is wrong with sports in the late 20th century -- the selfishness, the deceit, the greed. But to Baldmore, he was the first owner to negotiate with the city in good faith, rather than using its offer as blackmail to get a better deal someplace else.

Whatever you think of Modell, it's clear he wanted out of Cleveland. He saw Baltimore as the last city in North America offering a publicly funded NFL stadium. If he hadn't taken the deal, then Arizona's BUI Bidwill and Tampa Bay's Malcolm Glazer might have fought for it The entire league knew the financial package was that good -- even Tagliabue admits it now.

Obviously, it would have been less traumatic for Baltimore to steal the Cardinals, or the Buccaneers, but their owners already had image problems in the city.

Bidwill jilted Baltimore when he moved the Cardinals from St. Louis to Phoenix after the 1987 season. Glazer had been a candidate to own a Baltimore expansion team, but when he bought the Buccaneers, be said, "I sure as heck would rather own a team in Tampa than I would in Baltimore."