Cleveland Browns Unveil New Uniforms

[tp49]

I feel as though the only thing missing from this thread is a picture of the Cuyahoga River burning which reminds me of the Browns franchise for the past 20 years and their current (for now) uniform set, so here it is.

 

 

[sealbrownandorange]

4 hours ago, tp49 said:

I feel as though the only thing missing from this thread is a picture of the Cuyahoga River burning which reminds me of the Browns franchise for the past 20 years and their current (for now) uniform set, so here it is.

 

 

Good Lord! How about the City going into default in 1978? The Cleveland Torso Murderer? Red Right 88? The Drive? The Fumble? The Shot? There's plenty of dreadful things that could be dredged up from my childhood and formative years...

I'm going to focus on the future, however, and keep my fingers crossed that the Haslems start to get things right (with both Coach and Uniform) and the franchise moves in a positive direction.

To swing this conversation back in the direction of the uniform - I still say that this franchise needs a stronger identifying brand other than the Helmet logo. I'm not saying that they should put a logo on the helmet.  However, when you try and explain the Browns' tradition of a logo-less helmet and the plain aesthetic  (ala Penn State) to a 12 or 13 year-old, they look at you like you have a third-eye.  This generation has grown up in a time when sports teams are highly marketable, and the Browns pre-1999 are just ancient history to them.  If you read back through the recent posts in this thread, for many the ties to the old Browns were broken - at least in their minds - when the team moved to Baltimore.  So, who says you can't make a few minor tweaks to tradition?  Incorporating a modernized Elf as a primary, for instance, perhaps might help to make the ties to the old franchise a little stronger.  I don't know - I just think that there has to exist an intelligent compromise as far as the Browns are concerned - and smarter people than me exist who can figure it out...

[Gothamite]

11 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

Since you asked...

I studied history in school, and I teach it now. The sanctity of the historical record was drilled into me time and time again, as was the instinct to examine past events and suss out bias in the recordings of those events. 

 

So the NFL and Cleveland insisting a team that up and moved, keeping most of its roster intact, isn't the same team as the one that played a year prior strikes me a blatant lie. An exercise in intellectual dishonesty.

It irks me because the past events show us that the 1995 Browns up and moved to Baltimore and changed their name to the Ravens, with only so much turnover as you would expect in a given NFL offseason.

 

I totally respect that.  And if the Browns’ situation hadn’t played out in real time, if Modell hadn’t agreed to leave the franchise certificate before moving to Baltimore, I would agree with you.

 

But every time this standard is applied it raises a question; what year do you think the Celtics were founded?

 

 

[BBTV]

I used to feel like Ice Cap, and wanted to jam an ice pick up the nose of anyone that disagreed, but now I just don't care.  NFL==WWE.  If WWE tells me that some title's lineage stops somewhere and some new one carries the history of some old one, then whatever.

 

I'm trying to think of a real world example of something like this that's recent enough to be relevant, and the best I could do is China, where the govenment of the Republic of China moved to Taiwan, and the Communists assumed control over China.  The new People's Republic of China was deemed the legal successor of China (inheriting the history and replacing them at the UN like 20 years later), even though the former legal administration still existed... just in a new location with new colors.  Taiwan is essentially an expansion country that was started by the whole team that moved (though not recognized as a sovereign state... and that's where this breaks down.)

[infrared41]

10 hours ago, seasaltvanilla said:

10 hours ago, guest23 said:

a stable society requires a factual historical record that is backed by empirical evidence. Without such acknowledgement of the historical record and documentation you veer into civil crisis

 

Civil crisis over the records of a football team. OK then. As I said earlier, just when you think you've seen everything around here...

[infrared41]

44 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

Taiwan is essentially an expansion country

 

And a smart one at that. Picking manufacturing a -load of stuff with its first pick in the expansion draft made Taiwan competitive right out of the gate. It barely missed the playoffs that first year. 

[The_Admiral]

20 pages demanding that it be referred to only as Chinese Taipei

[BBTV]

FWIW, I was there shortly after its last election cycle and saw first hand the effect that any country's (specifically the US in this case) even implicit acknowledgement of its government has - and it's not good.  It'd be like you could call the Ravens a "team", but they didn't get representation at the owners' meetings, and if you used the word "franchise", all the other teams would hate you, and the new Cleveland Browns would do everything they could to contract the Ravens and absorb their good players.

[oldschoolvikings]

13 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

 

 

Now you might say "ok that's important for studying history, but this is football, who cares?"

And hey. That's a good point. I'd just answer that I spend some of my free time on a message board arguing over sock stripes. So I'm already the sort predisposed to having strong opinions on relatively unimportant topics  

 

Well, pages long arguments over sock stripes I totally get... THAT is history that matters.

[crosfam]

45 minutes ago, oldschoolvikings said:

 

Well, pages long arguments over sock stripes I totally get... THAT is history that matters.

I am an amateur, not a designer. I've been on these boards for years and socks did not often get much discussion. We focused more on helmets, jerseys, and a bit on pants, etc. Only sock concern I have is the Bucs quit with orange ones year one with their horrible unis. 

[crosfam]

For the Brown's, I hope there is not a color change and do not expect one. Same helmet and cleaned up look Would be fine. Hoping same for Pats too. 

[infrared41]

2 minutes ago, crosfam said:

I am an amateur, not a designer. I've been on these boards for years and socks did not often get much discussion. We focused more on helmets, jerseys, and a bit on pants, etc. Only sock concern I have is the Bucs quit with orange ones year one with their horrible unis. 

 

 

G-d help me, but there are times I really do love this place. 

[jws008]

As a mostly lurker (maybe I should change my screen name), I’m surprised no one’s mentioned the Johnny Unitas statue at the Ravens’ stadium in this topic. I mean his records are part of the Colts history and not the Ravens, but the statue obviously acknowledges that his career was played in the city of Baltimore.

 

Also, let’s not forget how the Colts band morphed into the Ravens’ band (after one last appearance as the Baltimore Colts band).

 

i guess my point is really that we can argue the semantics of who owns a franchise name, but the related historic facts can’t really be changed. Unitas never played for the Ravens but he’s part of Baltimore football history. Ozzie Newsome was a Super Bowl winning general manager in Baltimore, who got started when the team was still in Cleveland and called the Browns (but he didn’t switch jobs). Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk had great careers in St. Louis and are part of the city’s football history, even if the Rams are back in L.A.

 

(End of rant)

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, BringBackTheVet said:

It'd be like you could call the Ravens a "team", but they didn't get representation at the owners' meetings, and if you used the word "franchise", all the other teams would hate you, and the new Cleveland Browns would do everything they could to contract the Ravens and absorb their good players.

 

This sounds like something the NHL would have done to the Whalers

[JayMac]

As natural as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west and as frequent as most change their underwear, the CCSLC boards are talking about "who owns the history?" 

[zoogs44]

I appreciate quite a few of the points made here, but call me crazy because I think the NFL is ridiculous to allow teams to just up and move so freely. Wouldn't these genius' have been smarter to let Cleveland keep the original Browns and Give Baltimore the Expansion franchise, new name , new tradition, new logo, new colors? Or maybe if we want to go deeper, Maybe  the Colts should've stayed in Baltimore and the Browns in Cleveland and put an expansion team in Indy?? I know maybe I'm Stirring the pot a bit, but  I just don't think its right for the organization to be attached to a city and the people of that city and then they are like free agent organizations, where they can leave in the middle of the night because somebody is flashing more money in their faces.. But while some teams can leave without warning others will never leave  their respective cities, Packers, Vikings ,Steelers, Cowboys....And just look at the fiasco with the Chargers, Raiders, Rams..... Anyway just to weigh in on the uniforms, I would like them to do a tasteful update of the old Uni's Maybe like what the Padres and Brewers did in Baseball ,or maybe the Vikings current iteration or the Jets prior version to this one....

[PaleVermilion81]

54 minutes ago, zoogs44 said:

I appreciate quite a few of the points made here, but call me crazy because I think the NFL is ridiculous to allow teams to just up and move so freely. Wouldn't these genius' have been smarter to let Cleveland keep the original Browns and Give Baltimore the Expansion franchise, new name , new tradition, new logo, new colors? Or maybe if we want to go deeper, Maybe  the Colts should've stayed in Baltimore and the Browns in Cleveland and put an expansion team in Indy?? I know maybe I'm Stirring the pot a bit, but  I just don't think its right for the organization to be attached to a city and the people of that city and then they are like free agent organizations, where they can leave in the middle of the night because somebody is flashing more money in their faces.. But while some teams can leave without warning others will never leave  their respective cities, Packers, Vikings ,Steelers, Cowboys....And just look at the fiasco with the Chargers, Raiders, Rams..... Anyway just to weigh in on the uniforms, I would like them to do a tasteful update of the old Uni's Maybe like what the Padres and Brewers did in Baseball ,or maybe the Vikings current iteration or the Jets prior version to this one....

 

Vikings would've left had they not gotten their new stadium.

[IceCap]

8 hours ago, Gothamite said:

if Modell hadn’t agreed to leave the franchise certificate before moving to Baltimore, I would agree with you.

The thing about that, from a historical perspective is that the franchise certificate would be akin to primary documentation. A historic study that attempted to look at the Browns/Ravens relocation situation would certainly acknowledge its existence and what it means in terms of the NFL's view of continuity. 

 

Even primary sources (sometimes especially primary sources) are tainted from bias, however. What was the NFL's motives for forcing the franchise certificate to stay in Cleveland? Was its desire to establish a sort of continuity influenced by outside factors or their own bias? Does the continuity they wished to establish line up with the facts of the relocation as reported by a number of other sources? And how do the bias of those other sources come into play? 

 

If you were to treat this event like an event worthy of historical study? You'd look at stuff like rosters lists from the 1995 Browns and 1996 Ravens, compare and contrast against the rosters of other NFL teams over that stretch. You'd look at the NFL's terms of "expanding" to Baltimore and see if it matches up with previous expansions in terms of how ownership and players were selected. 

You'd look at news stories covering the event and see if, inherent bias aside, there are facts that they all agree to. 

 

And then you'd stack the weight of that evidence against the NFL's decision to leave the certificate in Cleveland and issue Modell an expansion team in Baltimore and see whether or not if the other historical documentation supports the assertion of Browns continuity and Ravens expansion from the League. 

 

9 hours ago, Gothamite said:

But every time this standard is applied it raises a question; what year do you think the Celtics were founded?

People like to bring up the Celtics and Braves swapping rosters or the Colts and Rams doing the same, but I don't think situations are comparable. 

 

In both cases organizations just traded personnel. In larger quantities than usual, but teams trading player (or even staff) assets between them is an intrinsic part of sports. 

Had the Baltimore Bombers existed and Model and whoever owned them just "swapped" teams? Well that's one thing. Ownership/personnel/staff may be changing but it's still two existent organizations in a transaction. 

 

Instead what happened was the ownership, players, and some staff of the old Browns just up and moving o Baltimore over the course of an off-season. And the Browns shut down for three years. So to pretend that the team in Baltimore wasn't the Browns, that just rings hollow to me, especially as there were no Browns during that initial stretch after the move. 

It was a standard relocation in everything but Modell's decision to leave the Certificate in Cleveland. Which I don't think holds much weight against the rest of the historical record. 

 

The only thing that comes close, in my estimation, would be those merged teams from WWII. Where wartime conditions forced teams to temporarily merge or suspend operations. I view the outbreak of WWII as a large enough variable to give those teams a mulligan. It's certainly not the same as what Modell did, which was a pretty much standard relocation in almost every respect.  

[infrared41]

5 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

What was the NFL's motives for forcing the franchise certificate to stay in Cleveland?

 

To fix the greatest tragedy in the history of sports.  (Cues Cleveland Rocks clip.)

 

 

 

[Gothamite]

 

Quote

People like to bring up the Celtics and Braves swapping rosters or the Colts and Rams doing the same, but I don't think situations are comparable. 

 

In both cases organizations just traded personnel. In larger quantities than usual, but teams trading player (or even staff) assets between them is an intrinsic part of sports

You’re the one who said that “insisting a team that up and moved, keeping most of its roster intact, isn't the same team as the one that played a year prior strikes me a blatant lie. An exercise in intellectual dishonesty.”

 

If that’s true, then the Celtics were founded in 1970.  Because when the owners of the Braves and Celtics trades franchises, they also traded rosters.  The entire Celtics roster (minus the standard offseason departures) up and moved to San Diego.  It would be intellectually dishonest to pretend that the 1978-78 Boston Celtics were the same team that played a year earlier. 
 

The situations are directly analogous.  More than just personnel (although personnel was the example you citied), the actual business entity left Boston and went to California, to be replaced by the business entity that had been operating in Buffalo. Not just personnel, but also assets and liabilities.  The old Celtics organization continued to pay their debts incurred in Boston, only from their new San Diego bank account.  The Celtics and Braves simply traded whatever the NBA equivalent of a franchise certificate is.  If that’s okay, then so is leaving a franchise certificate behind for a predetermined dormant period when a team leaves town.

 

I understand wanting to separate the first and second incarnation of the Browns. One can make the case that Baker Mayfield isn’t playing for Jim Brown’s old club. But that argument can’t be intellectually consistent unless we’re also willing to say that Bill Russell and Larry Bird didn't play for the same team, either.