More revisionist history

[goalieboy82]

the VFL/AFL in Australia has done somewhat the same thing with a few teams (can only think of Port Power right now).  

  

[Cosmic]

6 hours ago, McCarthy said:

Art Modell had to agree to allow the Browns' records to stay in Cleveland in the terms in the move. When he signed the papers he willfully took ownership of a different franchise. Again, nothing was ever rewritten after the fact and nobody who mattered was unclear about what was happening. 

 

 

As the wise sage Judith Sheindlin once said, "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining." It doesn't matter when they decided to lie; it's still a lie. That the Browns moved to Baltimore is objectively true in all but the most recondite sense of the concept. I don't care that there was a piece of paper that stayed in Cleveland. Virtually everything that was the Browns in a physical sense went to Baltimore. The genesis of the Ravens is incontrovertibly tied to the dormancy of the Browns. The Browns went dormant because their owner took them to Baltimore. The Ravens carried on with business as usual in 1996; the Browns participated in an expansion draft in 1999.

 

1 hour ago, Sykotyk said:

But the truth is, a 'franchise' isn't the team. The team isn't the franchise. It just depends how you feel history abides.  If someone starts talking about Washington Senators records, will you step in and say, "Oh, no, those aren't Washington Senators records. They're Washington Senators records. Completely different team."

You can really go around in circles on this, but I think there are advantages to looking at it both ways; it just depends on the situation. For local fans, I think it makes complete sense to have records combining multiple iterations of the team. If you were a fan in Cleveland the whole time, it would be the best team you ever saw or worst QB rating you ever saw or whatever stat category you want. Same goes for the Twins/Senators, Rangers/Senators, and the Nationals. You don't have to pretend the teams are all one to compare them. If you're looking at something in the context of the whole league, though, I think the continuity of the team is the most important thing. If someone sets a record for the Montreal Canadiens, it's a product of the continuous flow of circumstances over 100+ years that led to that achievement. If someone sets a record on the Browns this year, it dates back to the games, draft picks, and roster moves since 1999; it has nothing to do with the original Browns' history. 

[MJWalker45]

Except for the fact that the NFL would say it does.

[dont care]

1 hour ago, MJWalker45 said:

Except for the fact that the NFL would say it does.

The NFL has been wrong before

[MJWalker45]

4 minutes ago, dont care said:

The NFL has been wrong before

But they still write the books, so even if they're wrong everyone has to go by what they say.

[Cosmic]

3 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:

But they still write the books, so even if they're wrong everyone has to go by what they say.

Aren't sports journalists supposed to be actual journalists? With an obligation to truth in reporting? If it comes up, reporters can report things the way they actually happened, and say things like, "The NFL considers this or that to be the case." Again, you can get cute with words and correctly say that it's one "franchise", but it doesn't mean the Browns didn't move to Baltimore; they did. To me, claiming that the new Browns are the same team as the one in 1995 feels like arguing a ridiculous point in debate class just to do it.

[OnWis97]

5 hours ago, Cosmic said:

Aren't sports journalists supposed to be actual journalists? With an obligation to truth in reporting? If it comes up, reporters can report things the way they actually happened, and say things like, "The NFL considers this or that to be the case." Again, you can get cute with words and correctly say that it's one "franchise", but it doesn't mean the Browns didn't move to Baltimore; they did. To me, claiming that the new Browns are the same team as the one in 1995 feels like arguing a ridiculous point in debate class just to do it.

Yeah...I think it was just this past year (or was it last year; time flies when you are old) that the Hornets won their first postseason game since they expanded the league as the Bobcats.  However, I saw that ESPN reported it as the Hornets first playoff win since the last season before the old Hornets moved to New Orleans.  Was ESPN, according to the NBA, correct?  Yes.  But I think it would have been far more accurate/informative for them to add "...and that  team moved to New Orleans the next year year.  This is the franchise's first playoff win since expanding the league as the Bobcats." 

 

How anyone's comfortable actually suggesting that the current Hornets had ever won a playoff game is just beyond me.  But, then again, I don't think it's any worse than suggesting the current Browns won pre-Super Bowl titles...just slightly more confusing.

 

And I know there's a segment of us that likes the Cleveland Deal but not this over-the-top crap.  Just remember; the Cleveland Deal was the gateway drug to this nonsense.

[Sport]

11 hours ago, Cosmic said:

As the wise sage Judith Sheindlin once said, "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining." It doesn't matter when they decided to lie; it's still a lie. That the Browns moved to Baltimore is objectively true in all but the most recondite sense of the concept. I don't care that there was a piece of paper that stayed in Cleveland. Virtually everything that was the Browns in a physical sense went to Baltimore. The genesis of the Ravens is incontrovertibly tied to the dormancy of the Browns. The Browns went dormant because their owner took them to Baltimore. The Ravens carried on with business as usual in 1996; the Browns participated in an expansion draft in 1999.

 

Is it a lie, though, when everything was buttoned up and agreed upon before the move and as a condition of the move? Isn't that, then, just how it went down? I remember Browns fans in 96 or 97 describing themselves as "on hold" because their team's records were frozen. The Hornets-Bobcats-Pelicans-Hornets snafu is a lie, but this wasn't that. 

 

[dont care]

19 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

 

Is it a lie, though, when everything was buttoned up and agreed upon before the move and as a condition of the move? Isn't that, then, just how it went down? I remember Browns fans in 96 or 97 describing themselves as "on hold" because their team's records were frozen. The Hornets-Bobcats-Pelicans-Hornets snafu is a lie, but this wasn't that. 

 

Their fandom might have been "on hold" because the team moved to another city. Anyone considering the new browns the same browns as before when everything but the helmets changed. It's like if a guy had his girlfriend leave him and take everything with her to a new man and has success in the new city. So you find a new girl where the only similarity is the are both red heads but you pretend that it's the same girl as before calling her by the same name etc and pretending that the new girlfriend had all the same expiriences with you that the old girl had but she didn't.

[Cosmic]

1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

 

Is it a lie, though, when everything was buttoned up and agreed upon before the move and as a condition of the move? Isn't that, then, just how it went down? I remember Browns fans in 96 or 97 describing themselves as "on hold" because their team's records were frozen. The Hornets-Bobcats-Pelicans-Hornets snafu is a lie, but this wasn't that. 

 

Do you believe Obi-Wan that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Anakin Skywalker? It's true... "from a certain point of view." That's the best you can do with the Cleveland Deal. There is a way to see the NFL's version of history, but it goes strongly against the way we normally view these things.

 

The Hornets thing is worse; I think everyone can agree on that 

[Sport]

29 minutes ago, Cosmic said:

Do you believe Obi-Wan that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Anakin Skywalker? It's true... "from a certain point of view." That's the best you can do with the Cleveland Deal. There is a way to see the NFL's version of history, but it goes strongly against the way we normally view these things.

 

The Hornets thing is worse; I think everyone can agree on that 

I believe that the way the history actually played out is just as valid a history as the way people feel it should've played out. I suppose I don't see the harm in "the Ravens used to be the browns, but aren't anymore" versus "the Ravens ARE the Browns" as long as the books are clear about what happened, which they are, and especially when that was agreed upon in the terms of the move before the Baltimore Ravens ever kicked off. 

 

The Browns deal is not "revisionism" because nothing was ever revised.

 

Did it set a bad precedent? Maybe, but also so what? It's sports. That's revisionist but If the Bobcats wanna pretend they're the original hornets and the Pelicans/NBA let them then I can't really muster much energy to care about that. 

[kimball]

As much as I might get flack for this opinion ... but I hate revisionist history, especially in regards to the Cleveland Browns.

 

The Browns should have been the Baltimore Browns while Cleveland came back in '99 as the Bulldogs, Gladiators or whatever. The Cleveland Bulldogs has a nice ring and some history to it in the Ohio area.

 

[Sport]

16 hours ago, smzimbabwe said:

Who was the first pick of the Baltimore Ravens in the expansion draft?

 

Who was the first pick of the Baltimore Colts in the expansion draft? 

[Pharos04]

17 hours ago, smzimbabwe said:

Who was the first pick of the Baltimore Ravens in the expansion draft?

The roster of the 1995 Browns

[smith03]

4 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

 

And I know there's a segment of us that likes the Cleveland Deal but not this over-the-top crap.  Just remember; the Cleveland Deal was the gateway drug to this nonsense.

This

[smzimbabwe]

So why did the NFL call it an expansion draft when Cleveland re-entered the league? Why did all the Browns at the time go to Baltimore? Carolina and Jacksonville got expansion drafts, as did Houston. Why didn't the NFL declare Houston a dormant franchise? And why do the Washington Nationals honor the retired numbers of Montreal Expos?

[smzimbabwe]

12 hours ago, McCarthy said:

 

Who was the first pick of the Baltimore Colts in the expansion draft? 

The Baltimore Colts were a merger from the AAFC. You might as well ask who did the Denver Broncos pick in the expansion draft. Can you do me the courtesy of actually answering my question?

[Sport]

6 hours ago, smzimbabwe said:

The Baltimore Colts were a merger from the AAFC. You might as well ask who did the Denver Broncos pick in the expansion draft. Can you do me the courtesy of actually answering my question?

 

Not the same thing as the Broncos at all and here's why I answered your question with a question - The AAFC Colts folded in the NFL after the 1950 season. That franchise line ends there. The current iteration of the Colts began In 1953 when the NFL awarded Baltimore another expansion franchise who adopted the name Colts. They have nothing to do with the AAFC Colts. They're also interesting because despite being an expansion franchise never held an expansion draft. Where have I seen that before? That second Colts franchise filled out their roster by using the players from the previous season's Dallas Texans. The NFL record books don't recognize the Colts and NFL Dallas Texans as the same franchise. 

 

So to give you the courtesy of answering your question, an expansion draft has never been a prerequisite for expansion into the NFL and there is in fact precedent for a team of players moving from one franchise to another and the league treating them as separate and distinct franchise lines. An expansion draft didn't happen in the NFL until the Cowboys in 1960.

 

 

 

[C-Squared]

On 5/30/2017 at 7:41 PM, smzimbabwe said:

Who was the first pick of the Baltimore Ravens in the expansion draft?

 

 

The collective unit of the nWo Cleveland Browns.

[FlyEaglesFly76]

Yeah, ok, the Browns bull :censored: happened over 20 years ago. Get over it already.

 

Besides, that's got nothing on the whole Charlotte/New Orleans Basketball disaster. That's not just revisionist history, it's outright raping the book.