CLEVELAND, OHIO (TheOBR.com) - Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans! I tried to be a good, careful bloviator this morning. I really did. I'm aware that my Browns football-related columns do much better numbers than when I wander over to other subjects.
So, while I had planned a nice little column on all the ways the Browns could potentially go about the task of slowing down Ravens QB Lamar Jackson next Sunday, the echoes of the past again have my attention
THE DAILY BLOVIATION
You are reading this article today because of something that happened thirty years ago, when I was still a relatively young man with a somewhat successful career in the field of software engineering and business consulting. I was a Cleveland Browns fan and an Ohio State Buckeyes fan who enjoyed watching both teams on my weekends, often with friends or family. The Browns were part of my life, part of my social network, one of the rare respites from a busy work schedule and managing young children.
It was November 1995. I was driving around with my wife, waiting in the car for her as she did some shopping, when I tuned into WTAM 1100AM and heard that the Browns were rumored to be leaving Cleveland for Baltimore. I was shocked.
During the months that followed, I was part of the internet mob of fans that jammed up fax machines, overloaded message boards, and fought back in any way we could.
It wasn't until April of 1996, when the angry mobs of Browns fans had started to disperse following the agreement that fans forced on the NFL, that I started my first website, called GreedWatch, which protested the move to Baltimore and proceeded to savagely mock the Modells, their accomplices, and the team itself as it struggled under Art Modell's incompetent leadership.
The launch at that time, when the online movement was losing steam following the settlement, wasn't timed with the peak of the rebellion. That's because the site wasn't about football. It was about morality.
I was in my mid-30s. At the time, the last vestiges of naivete had been beaten out of me, and I had become painfully aware and cynical about our system. Bad people in America could do bad things and get away with it if they were wealthy enough, powerful enough, and connected enough. It took me 30-some years of life to figure this out. But it rattled me nonetheless.
What the Modell family and Maryland politicians did was wrong. And I wasn't going to let it go. I furiously launched onto whatever forum I could find under the sophomoric alias "Art Bietz", holding Ratfans' noses in what they did.
Over the years, I've mellowed like most people do as they age. I've come to enjoy what this rage turned into, running a Cleveland Browns site and enjoying doing something that, at its very least, doesn't intentionally hurt anyone.
Last night, as I age through my sixties, I was innocently spending some time yesterday evening, engaged in domestic endeavours, when this came across my phone's Xitter app:
Sunday’s Ravens Legend of the Game: Ozzie Newsome
Honorary captains: John Moag, Parris Glendening, Kurt Schmoke and John Modell
Giveaway: a “Ravens Forevermore” 30th season flag
— Jamison Hensley (@jamisonhensley) September 9, 2025
I thought it was a joke. I was seeing names that were last relevant thirty years ago - Art Modell's accomplices in screwing over Browns fans, amorally stealing a team from loyal fans to make up for their own misfortune a decade earlier.
Parris Glendening was the governor of Maryland on a stage with Art Modell, famously saying, "I can't wait to fill my Baltimore Browns mug with beer!". John Moag, a lawyer who enabled the deal, worked secretly with the Modells on airport tarmacs to lure the Browns from their loyal fans. Kurt Schmoke, the mayor of Baltimore at the time, was dealing with that city's social collapse. John Modell is the most innocent of the bunch, simply representing the family that profited from the betrayal without having a personal hand in it.
Art Modell Parris Glendining and Kurt Schmoke
Parris Glendening, Art Modell, and Kurt Schmoke in 1995 (Photo: Getty)
These people are who the Ratbirds are feting when the Browns come to town on Sunday.
Think about this for a minute.
Baltimore is celebrating the enablers. The connected. The politicians. The people who made it possible for Art Modell to stick a knife in the backs of people who loved their local football team and had it interwoven with their lives.
With the Browns in town and the eyes of the victims on the festivities.
The cluelessness and lack of empathy for the victims of Modell's self-serving act are staggering.
Look. I'm not a point on the curve. I'm a guy who was so incensed by what happened in 1995 that it set my life on a new course. Most people moved on, lived three years without football and were later victimized again by the sheer ineptness of the franchise that replaced it. Things have never been the way they were before.
But the classlessness of Baltimore's decisions this weekend has caught the attention of more forgiving types like Mary Kay Cabot and Mike Florio. I'm not alone on this.
Browns fans can always hope for an unlikely Browns win on Sunday, helping to cancel the pain caused in 1995 for a day. That's not likely to come their way.
Baltimore, though, is piling their lack of empathy onto their sins by holding this celebration on Sunday with the Browns on site. It's classless, ignorant, and a giant insult to Cleveland and Browns fans. To hell with the lot of them.
There, I've said what I had to say.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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WRAPPING UP
When not raging against the machine, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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