A Grossi Injustice

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If not for Art Modell, you wouldn’t be reading this.

RussellStreetReport.com would not exist and I’d probably be working as a sales executive for some subsidiary of an out-of-town financial institution.

Thankfully Art moved the Browns to Baltimore and the rest is history.

It’s only natural that we as Baltimoreans love Art for he helped to restore part of our city’s heritage.  He stitched a gaping wound left by a scoundrel named Robert Irsay.

The memories are many; friendships have grown deeper, grown in numbers or both. The Ravens are clearly the single-most galvanizing force here in The Land of Pleasant Living and Art is the maestro.

And therefore just as we are one with the Ravens we share the same page of support for Art Modell’s enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His humanity, philanthropy, vision and achievement in and around the NFL scream Canton, Ohio.

One of Art’s peers, Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson is already enshrined and there is one man who sits on the Hall’s voting committee who believes that the late Ravens’ owner is every bit as deserving.

“If Ralph Wilson belongs in the Hall of Fame, and I think he does, then you have to give serious consideration to Art Modell”, explains Scott Garceau from 105.7 The Fan.

“Art’s contributions were significant and comparatively speaking you could make the argument that his resume is even more impressive than Mr. Wilson’s.”

So why isn’t Art in the HOF?

Most would say that his exodus from Cleveland is the glaring blemish on his body of work that prevents his induction and leading the charge in that argument is Tony Grossi.

Last week on Cleveland’s ESPN Radio AM 850, Grossi opined on Modell and his HOF worthiness.

“When you’re a contributor (not a player or coach) you have to do what is good for the league ALL the time to merit induction in the Hall of Fame.”

Then how do you explain Al Davis’ induction Tony?

Are you conveniently overlooking the late Raiders owner’s shenanigans, moves, and threats to move? What about all those trips to the courtroom as a plaintiff against the NFL?

Grind an axe much Tony?

Like many of you I must admit that for years I’ve blamed Grossi for blocking Art’s rightful place in the hallowed hallways of Canton. But is that an accurate placement of blame? Might Grossi simply be a convenient scapegoat?

While listening to Grossi on the Rizz & Hammer Show, I was surprised by the balance and the lack of extreme bias I expected when he discussed Art Modell. That said, I do think Grossi’s loyalties to his city taint his opinion.

“All of the good that Art Modell did in his career, for the city of Cleveland AND for the NFL – and there was plenty of it, was overturned by his one decision to desert the Cleveland Browns’ fans, the generation of fans; the city of Cleveland; to break his [stadium] lease and run for the money in Baltimore, for whatever reason – personal bankruptcy or whatever, that was not the right thing to do.”

We could go round and round on this topic and argue the merits of Art’s worthiness. And I would have done that with Tony Grossi had he joined us a couple years back when we hosted our radio program GAMETIME on ESPN 1300.

But Grossi wanted to promote his book about Art, which of course ended that conversation.

So that brief encounter plus Grossi’s crusade to keep Art out of the HOF placed the former beat writer for the Plain Dealer among my most despised Baltimore nemeses.

Art flat out belongs in the HOF and eventually he will receive his proper due. The tragedy in it all is that the honor will arrive posthumously.  And I suppose that makes Grossi a twisted winner.

But is this all on Grossi?

Can one man’s vendetta keep another out of the Hall?

“Some believe that you’re either a Hall of Famer or you’re not. It’s not that simple”, explains Garceau.

“Each year there are 15 finalists and those are paired down to a minimum of four inductees and a maximum of 7 with two of the 7 being senior nominees, the others modern era guys.

Garceau continued…

“Plus you have to account for other factors. Some on the voting committee believe that contributors should never be inducted at the expense of players. So that impacts voting. And then sometimes a nominee is just simply up against stiff competition and a victim of a numbers game. It took Art Monk 8 years to get in; Shannon [Sharpe], a NFL record holder as a tight end – it took him 2 years. Even J.O. [Jonathan Ogden], a slam-dunk by most accounts for The Hall, is prepared for a miss on his first attempt.

“Sometimes it’s just part of the process.”

Ed DeBartolo operated a model franchise in San Francisco for years and won 5 Super Bowls. He failed to get in on his first attempt while facing other very worthy nominees. Bill Parcells – same thing.

And then you need to consider the proximity of Canton, Ohio to Cleveland. Fifty-one miles separate those towns and one would think that there’s at least some Cleveland influence in the building.

Moreover, let’s assume that Art was inducted while alive. Might the collateral distraction be unfair to the other inductees?

The point is that as much as you or I would like to pin this on Grossi, one vote and one man’s passionate plea is not enough to deny another a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

As time goes by perhaps emotional factors influence voters that Art could not inspire while alive. Maybe the ceremony is less awkward with Art missing. Or there may be a change in the voting method for contributors that helps pave the way for Mr. Modell.

The bet here is that he’ll eventually make it into Canton.

Until then, as fans we can sincerely thank him for one less sales executive in the financial services industry and for changing our lives for the better forever.

 

10 Raves on “A Grossi Injustice”

  1. Curt Bly on said:

    Mr. Lombardi,

    I find your commentary to be amazingly hypocrital. How can you in one breath label Robert Irsay a scoundral, and laud Art Modell a hero with the next? Your reasons for castigating Irsay, reasons that are 100% valid in my opinion, hold the same weight when considering Modell. I will freely admit I am a native of northeast Ohio and a lifelong Browns fan and that perspective impacts my opinion on Modell. But how can you not feel the injustice that Modell caused the city of Cleveland when you went through the same thing? And for the record, Tony Grossi isn’t one man with an ax to grind, he rightfully sees himself as the voice of thousands of people who had part of their personal heritage ripped out by Modell’s run for the dollars. He speaks for us, and I appreciate his commitment to now allow Modell’s death to rewrite history in regard to what he did. Was it his right to move his franchise? One could argue no, since he had a lease with the city of Cleveland, but when he made that choice, he decided to forever taint what he accomplished as an NFL owner. While I’m not an Al Davis supporter, one could argue his move from Oakland, and subsequent return didn’t dramatically alter a fan base, comparing this to what Modell did is loose logic. The much more appropriate comparison you should be making is to the late Robert Irsay, or scoundrel as you call him. A perfect choice of words in my opinion.

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  2. Tony Lombardi on said:

    Mr. Bly,

    Thanks for sharing and respectfully presenting your opinion. But let’s set the record straight here.

    Comparing Modell to Irsay is like comparing Mother Theresa to Madonna.

    Modell gave his money to your community; Irsay regularly threatened to rip our sports heritage to shreds, something he eventually did.

    Modell treated your players with dignity. Even former Browns who played when Modell owned the team describe him with glowing terms; Irsay’s own mother described him as “the devil on Earth” and he even kicked the iconic Johnny Unitas to the curb with complete disregard.

    Your community knew within a year that you would get a new team and stadium; Baltimore waited for 12 years, used as leverage by other owners looking to drive up the asking price for their teams or by Paul Tagliabue to sweeten the pot during expansion.

    You kept your history, your colors and your name…essentially the heritage you said was stolen; we were forced to rebuild in all those areas.

    Modell was honored by the league and has been nominated as a HOF candidate; Irsay was not honored and in many ways an embarrassment to the league.

    So if you think that these men are peers, then I can see why you might find this column hypocritical. Clearly you are blinded by your biased perspective. And in the process you have missed the point of the piece — that Grossi couldn’t have kept Art from the HOF acting alone.

    Ask yourself this question…if the Ravens were as bad as the Browns and the Browns as good as the Ravens, would you even be concerned about your 3 year absence from the league?

    We both know the answer to that.

    God bless Art Modell!

    Reply ↓
  4. festivus on said:

    Curt’s a hurting fan. I understand what he’s saying and there’s not much point in arguing with him. How will you persuade him to reconsider, when he thinks Art Modell chopped off his leg?

    Art Modell was one of the guys who took the NFL and made it what it is today, though. Art was one of the creators of NFL Films, the visionary behind Monday Night Football, which was, for many, the only way they got to see football, and was a humanitarian both for the Cleveland community and for the players who sometimes needed a helping hand.

    Bob Irsay treated everyone around him, all the time, like garbage.

    Mr. Grossi’s comment that a non-player must be cleaner than Caesar’s wife, so to speak, to get into the Hall of Fame is absurd. Someone who was instrumental, the leading edge of the knife, in making the NFL the powerhouse it is today, should be part of the Hall of Fame.

    Mr. Modell moved his football team to avoid personal financial ruin, and he gave the city of Cleveland every opportunity to avoid the move. He was taken for granted in precisely the way that pushes a person to leave a relationship, either business or personal.

    I do, genuinely, feel pain for Curt Bly and the Browns fans like him. But Art Modell was one of the men who recognized the potential of the NFL at a televised sport and was a pioneer in driving it toward that goal, and he was a man beloved by generations of players who were devoted to him because he took care of them.

    The two men were not similar.

    It is a shame that Modell is not yet in the Hall of Fame, but one day perhaps he will be.

    Reply ↓
  5. Curt on said:

    Fellow posters and Mr. Lombardi,

    I appreciate your insight concerning my opinion. As I said, I freely own that my allegiance to northeast Ohio slants my view of the man, and maybe I should have given more specific wording to the good things Modell did for the NFL during its growth into what it is today, which isn’t in question. The issue I took with your piece is merely from a fan’s point of view, Irsay and Modell are the same in what they did to fan bases. I have no personal knowledge as to the type of men either were in their personal and professional relationships as I never met either and I take you at your word in regard to what you know about Irsay and what you believe about Modell in the short time he owned a team in your city. I wasn’t comparing the people they were, simply that Modell’s act was just as despicable to the fans of Cleveland as Irsay’s and I find your argument that Modell’s act was less so because he seemed to be the better man problematic.

    I will take exception to the statement that Modell gave Cleveland every opportunity to keep the team, however. This is simply not true. You need to do your research into the 20 years leading up to the move before you make that claim. Much of what is being published now, after his death is revisionist history. Research the Gateway project and the role Modell could have played in it, but refused to. Or how he grossly miscalculated the loss of revenue his stadium corportation would feel when the Indians changed ballparks. Or his duplicitious behavior with city officials leading up to the move, knowing full well their was a tax vote on the ballot to vastly improve the stadium condition that was to occur I believe the day after his love fest with your govenor on that platform in Baltimore. There is no doubt he was falling into financial ruin, but much of that was his own mismanagement, not the fault of the city of Cleveland. And his arguement that he moved instead of selling to save the franchise for his family loses its altruism considering he sold the franchise less than a decade later due to more financial problems.
    Lastly, Mr. Lombardi stating that my feelings would be different if the teams’ fortunes and skill levels were reversed offends me. I shed too many tears in 1995 not because we were a great team, but because those Cleveland Browns were knit into the fabric of our lives. Yes, that blow was somewhat softened because the city fought for our colors and history, something Modell wasn’t willing to give up out of the goodness of his heart as I’ve seen reported this week. This was a battle we won, but it doesn’t change the fact that our team was gone, and in some ways its not been same even since the return of football in Cleveland and that isn’t just about the win-loss record.

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  6. Steve on said:

    Tony,

    Well-written piece and thanks for sharing. I see no sense in dealing with people who care to not see the truth but would rather buy into home-grown horse-hockey. To say that Grossi speaks for Cleveland says it all after what he has done. To judge Modell and give no forgiveness and then get fired for being a simple hack is a real joke.

    It might be helpful for some people to really look at the history of Irsay and his treatment of this city and then offer an intelligent opinion. Offering an emotional opinion serves no purpose. And none of these whiners were anywhere to be seen when Irsay pulled out.

    Reply ↓
  7. Chris on said:

    Dear Curt,

    I appreciate your willingness to come into “enemy territory” to discuss this issue.

    While I appreciate your sentiment about Mr. Modell, I must point out that the sentiment about Mr. Irsay in Baltimore is due to long-standing grievances that predate the 1984 move. Actions such as firing the coach during the game, calling plays from the owner’s box, and shopping the team almost immediately upon purchasing it. He even went so far as to helicopter into a rally held in Jacksonville’s Gator Bowl, held in his honor to persuade him to move the Colts there then.

    Older Baltimore Colts fans discuss his drunkenness and the general level of embarrassment that he brought to the city at that time.

    So when Cleveland fans equate Irsay and Modell, they’re missing the fact that there is a decade-plus-long negative relationship there. Cleveland fans have often countered this by saying that the move erases all the good that Modell did in Cleveland. That’s for them to decide, but Irsay left no good behind. He apparently did good out in Indiana and that’s fine. But the relationships between the two cities and those two men differ in many ways outside of the move. Cleveland fans decry the fact that Modell didn’t sell to local ownership to get out of his financial problems. When Irsay left, the Baltimore Colts were profitable. There weren’t even any financial problems.

    With respect to the name and colors, there is this sentiment around Cleveland fans that somehow, Baltimore fans were at all interested in the name Browns and the colors. This is not correct.

    On the day that the news began to leak, the late John Steadman, who written about or worked for the Baltimore Colts from day one of their existence, decried the whole deal. Fans, upon discovering that the NFL was returning to Baltimore, began pressuring officials to call Indiana to inquire whether the Colts name and colors could be purchased and brought back home. To the older Colts fan, the name Browns meant a championship the Colts lost in 1964 as well as the domination of one player, Jim Brown. Certainly not a history that the Baltimore fan wanted to adopt. Not that the Baltimore fan wanted to adopt any other city’s history.

    So, while the Cleveland fan rightfully acknowledges the fight that they and their elected officials waged to ensure the name and colors would be returned to the city so that when they received another team, the Cleveland fan sadly refuses to acknowledge that Baltimore fans never, ever wanted the Modell team in Baltimore to be called Baltimore Browns. The Cleveland fan refuses to acknowledge that the Baltimore football fan didn’t want the Cleveland history, but their own history. And when the Colts name and colors were deemed not for sale, Baltimore fans decided to embark upon creating a new history while still holding onto the past as much as possible. The band didn’t even adopt the name Marching Ravens until the team moved into the new stadium. Lastly, the Cleveland fan refuses to acknowledge the Baltimore Colts fiasco as a large part of the reason why the name and colors had to stay in Cleveland.

    As for Baltimore, Paul Brown never has fit the bill. Let Cleveland and Cincinnati have whats theirs in the history department. And had Modell tried to keep the name and colors here, there would have been an ongoing fight. If John Unitas was unwilling to shake the hand of Jim Harbaugh when Harbaugh donned the Ravens colors simply because he had played up in Indy, do you really think he and the older Colts who did lend their support to the Ravens, would have, had Modell tried to keep the name Browns? And it was Modell who reached out to them to get their support for the new team. It was Modell who reached out to the marching band. Do you really think that the band would have marched under the name Browns in any way, shape or form, when they kept the name Colts Marching Band as a protest?

    I understand that this will probably fall on deaf ears, but I feel compelled to share. I was a child when the Baltimore Colts moved. I still have a Baltimore Colts pennant, but no Colts to wave it for. You don’t have that. You have your tradition there. It has a 3 year gap but you still have it. I was grown when the Ravens started. Even people who were kids in Cleveland still had more of a chance to grow up with the Browns than I could have with the Ravens. You can take your old 1964 programs and wave them at the Browns because good or bad, they’re still the Browns. Your team really never left the way the Colts did, never to come back except as an opposing team. Neither you nor anyone else in Cleveland ever had to see that.

    For so many reasons, the two situations and the two men were different. The only commonality is that they moved the team. Al Davis moved twice and he’s in the Hall of Fame. Let’s evaluate Art Modell on his entire resume. And we can look at Bob Irsay’s as well. You won’t find it to be like Mr. Modell’s.

    Reply ↓
  8. Curt on said:

    Chris,

    First let me say it’s a pleasure to be able to have a civil, intelligent dialogue with someone from the opposing viewpoint of a tremendously emotional issue. Usually discussions like these turn into a simply back and forth of insults and inflammatory statements. This is why I’ve never posted before on anything like this, but I found myself moved this time to say something. Thanks again for treating my comments with respect and I will try to do the same even where I disagree.

    I found your statements about Irsay enlightening as I wasn’t aware of much of what he did to the city of Baltimore and the Colts’ fans. I can definitely see how you and Mr. Lombardi in his original post to me felt it easy to draw a distinction. Obviously, though, you’d have to allow that a big reason that it’s so easy for you to see how much greater a man Modell was is because he returned football to your town. Our perspective fuels everything. Just as you say much of your post would fall on deaf ears with me, I could feel the same way.

    Your point about never seeing the Browns return as a visiting team is a valid one, I can’t imagine what that would be like, but watching our players in 1996 come out in those black and purple uniforms was unlike anything I could ever imagine. I do know I felt proud when Steve Everett took off his helmet to display the Browns bandana he was wearing though. Again, it’s my perspective that fuels my perception of these events and people just as yours does the same thing.

    The only point you made in your post that I really took exception to was the claim that Cleveland fans refuse to acknowledge that Baltimore fans didn’t want the name Baltimore Browns or that you wouldn’t have cheered for them if Modell would have succeeded in taking the name, colors, and history with him as he originally intended. I could cite the photos of Baltimore fans and the press conference holding up signs that said “we love you Art” and “Welcome Baltimore Browns” as evidence to the contrary, but I’m willing to recognize those fans didn’t represent the whole of the citizens of Baltimore if you can also recognize your claims about who the city, team, or band would have supported aren’t pervasive either. But to be honest, our resentment in cleveland never had much to do with the fans of Baltimore, it was always about Modell and what he did. You see, you may not have wanted the Baltimore Browns, but he did, regardless of what revisionist historians would contend now.

    As I said earlier, your points about Irsay were informative to me, but in Cleveland our anger still burns for the very oppositive reason. Art was good to the city, players, and fans for many years. He made us believe we mattered, that he was invested in our town, that he loved it and would never hurt it. He actually said in 1994 he would never consider moving the Browns out of Cleveland even though we now know he had preliminary discussions just a few short weeks after making this claim. So I guess we are at a crossroads as to what’s worse, a man who blatently flaunts his disregard for the people of his town, or the one who claims loyalty, and love only to set flames to all he said he stood for and make excuses after the fact. Clearly we will never agree, but rehashing all of these feelings after Modell’s death have made me realize that’s ok. I have to acept the fact that Modell gave you something very important and you will be forever grateful to him for that. But I hope you and the city of Baltimore can accept it’s what he took from us, and how he did it after promising to never hurt the people of Cleveland in this way that will forever mar him in our town.

    Reply ↓
  10. Sean on said:

    I believe that Art Modell belongs in the HOF and I am forever grateful that he brought NFL football back to Baltimore. That being said, I don’t understand why this is such a big issue for some Raven’s fans. Art’s HOF achievement’s occurred while he was in Cleveland, not Baltimore. It seems to me that some Raven’s fans look upon this as some sort of validation of Baltimore’s worthiness as a NFL city. I couldn’t care less about that. The NFL screwed us for 12 years and I am supposed to want their validation? The hell with them! These are the same bozos that are now destroying the integrity of the game to grab a few pennies back from the referees. The same goes for the sportswriters too. Where were they when the NFL chose Jacksonville and the Sun King told us to build a museum? As a fan, I don’t apologize for Browns moving to Baltimore. It does not bother me in the slightest. If that sounds cold, then blame it on being screwed by the NFL for 12 years. Cleveland did not deserve to lose the Browns (and I am glad that they got their team back) but deserve has nothing to do with it.

    IMO, Baltimore fans should worry less about Art Modell in the HOF and start to get behind someone like Bobby Boyd for the HOF. Unlike Modell, Boyd’s legacy is with Baltimore (the Colts). He was voted to the 1960′s NFL All-Decade team. Yet, he has been passed over for less accomplished players like Dick LeBeau.

    Reply ↓

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