Paul Brown

Brown spent two very successful years at Severn. The team was undefeated in his first season and won the Maryland state championship.[18] In 1931, the team's win-loss-tie record was 5–2–1.[18] Brown's overall record was 12–2–1. After his second year, Massillon's head coaching job became available, and Brown took the position.[19]

Brown returned to Massillon in 1932, when he was 24 years old and barely two years out of college. His assignment was to turn around a Tigers team that had fallen into mediocrity over the six seasons since the departure of Stewart, Brown's old coach. In 1931, the year before Brown arrived, the Tigers finished with a 2–6–2 record. Brown's strategy was to build up a disciplined, hard-working team. He fired an assistant early on for arriving at a practice late because he had to work on his farm.[20] No Tigers player was allowed to sit on the bench during a game; Brown made them stand. At Massillon, Brown put in an offense and blocking scheme he learned from Duke's Jimmy DeHart and Purdue's Noble Kizer. He emphasized quickness over strength.[21]

Brown convinced Massillon Washington officials to build a new, bigger football stadium. Completed in 1939, the facility is named Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.

In his first season at Massillon, Brown's team posted a 5–4–1 record, better than the previous year but far from Brown's exacting standards.[22] The Tigers improved again in 1933, ending with an 8–2 record but losing to their chief rivals, the Canton McKinley High School Bulldogs. In 1934, Massillon won all of its games until a 21–6 defeat to Canton in the final game of the season.[23] As the pressure on Brown grew to turn the tables on Canton, Massillon finally accomplished the feat the following year in an undefeated season, the first of several with Brown at the helm.[24]

By then, Brown had put his system into place: a strict, systematic approach to coaching combined with a well-organized recruitment network that drew promising young players from Massillon's junior high school football program.[25] He paid no attention to race, and brought several African-American players onto the team at a time when many northern schools excluded them.[26]

In the ensuing five seasons, Massillon lost only one game, a 7–0 defeat at New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1937 after several players came down with the flu. As the Tigers' prestige grew, Brown in 1936 convinced the school to build a new stadium almost triple the size of the existing 7,000-seat facility. The stadium was finished in 1939, and is now named after Brown.[27] The pinnacle of Brown's career at Massillon was a victory in the 1940 season against Toledo's Waite High School.[28] The Tigers and Waite both went undefeated in the 1939 season, and both claimed the state championship. The teams decided to settle the score the following year, and Brown's team won 28–0.[28] The Massillon 1940 squad is still regarded by historians as one of the best in the history of state high school football.[29] In a pre-season scrimmage, the Massillon Tigers played the Kent State University Golden Flashes, and defeated the older college team 47–0.[30]

During his nine years at Massillon, Brown invented the playbook, a detailed listing of formations and set plays, and tested his players on their knowledge of it. He also originated the practice of sending in plays to his quarterback from the sideline using hand signals.[31] His overall record at the school was 80–8–2, including a 35-game winning streak.[32][33] Between 1935 and 1940, the team won the state football championship five times and won the High School Football National Championship four times, outscoring opponents by 2,393 points to 168 over that span. After the early losses to Canton, the Tigers beat the Bulldogs six straight times.[32]

Brown's success at Massillon raised his profile in Ohio considerably; people started calling him the "Miracle Man of Massillon."[34] When Ohio State was looking for a new coach in 1940 – Francis Schmidt left after losing to the rival Michigan Wolverines three times in a row – Brown was a candidate for the job. Ohio State officials were skeptical about the 33-year-old making the transition to college football but were worried that they might lose talented high school recruits loyal to Brown if they did not sign him.[35]

Ohio State offered Brown a $6,500 salary ($120,000 in 2021 dollars), about $1,500 above his Massillon pay.[36] He accepted in January 1941 and immediately began to institute his rigorous system.[37] Players were drilled and quizzed, and Brown focused on preparing the freshmen to take starting roles as graduating seniors left.[38] He conditioned his players to emphasize quickness, adopting the 40-yard dash as a measure of speed because that was the distance players needed to run to cover a punt.[38]

Brown's first year at Ohio State was a success. The Buckeyes won six of eight games in 1941; the only loss was to Northwestern University and its star tailback, Otto Graham.[39] The final game of the season was a 20–20 tie with Michigan, which the school's supporters saw as a good outcome given that Ohio State was a heavy underdog.[40] The Buckeyes tied for second place in the Western Conference, a grouping of college teams from the Midwestern United States (now known as the Big Ten), and finished 13th in the AP Poll. Brown was fourth in balloting for national Coach of the Year.[41]

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, threatened to derail the 1942 season, but most college teams played on, adjusting schedules to include military teams composed of players serving in the military.[42] The Buckeyes opened the season by beating a Fort Knox team 59–0, followed by two more wins against Southern California and Indiana University.[43] In the first AP Poll of the season, Ohio State was ranked best in the nation, the first time the school had achieved that mark.[43] The 1942 team was the first composed mainly of players hand-picked by Brown, including Bill Willis, Dante Lavelli and star halfback Les Horvath.[44] In the middle of the season, the Buckeyes lost to the University of Wisconsin after numerous players drank bad water and got sick.[45] That was the team's only loss of the season, which culminated with a 21–7 victory over Michigan. The Buckeyes won the Western Conference and claimed their first-ever national title after finishing the season at the top of the AP Poll.[46]

The 1943 season was a disaster for Brown and the Buckeyes. Depleted by the military draft and facing tough competition from teams on Army and Navy bases, Brown was forced to play 17-year-old recruits who had not yet enlisted.[47] Ohio State had affiliated itself with the Army Specialized Training Program, which did not allow its trainees to participate in varsity sports, while schools such as Michigan and Purdue became part of the Navy's V-12 training program, which did. The Buckeyes ended with a 3–6 record. In three seasons at Ohio State, Brown amassed an 18–8–1 record.[7]

Brown was classified 1-A in 1944 and commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.[48][49][50] He served at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station outside Chicago as head coach of its Bluejacket football team, which competed against other service teams and college programs.[51] The station was a waypoint for Navy recruits between training and active service in World War II, but its commanders took athletics seriously and saw winning as a morale-booster and a point of personal pride.[52] Brown could have been called up for active duty – Tony Hinkle, his predecessor, was already serving in the Pacific – but the war began to wind down as Brown arrived.[52] Brown had little time to institute his system, and instead adopted Hinkle's offensive scheme, borrowed from the Chicago Bears.[53] He had a smattering of talented players, including defensive end George Young and halfback Ara Parseghian.[53] In 1944, the team lost to Ohio State and Notre Dame, but finished with a 9–2–1 record and was among the top 20 teams in the AP Poll.[54]

In September 1944, Arch Ward, the influential sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, proposed a new eight-team professional football league called the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) to compete against the more established National Football League (NFL) once the war was over.[55] Ward lined up wealthy owners for the new league, which included teams in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and Cleveland.[56] Arthur B. "Mickey" McBride, a taxi-cab magnate who made a fortune in the newspaper business, was the owner of the Cleveland franchise.[57] As Brown was preparing for the 1945 Bluejackets season, Ward came on McBride's behalf to ask Brown if he wanted to coach the new team.[58] McBride offered $17,500 a year ($260,000 in today's dollars) – more than any coach at any level - and full authority over football matters. He also received a stake in the team and a stipend while he was still in the military.[58][59]

On February 8, 1945, Brown accepted the job, saying he was sad to leave Ohio State, but he "couldn't turn down this deal in fairness to my family."[60] Brown was still Ohio State's head coach in absentia, and the decision surprised and outraged school officials who expected him to return after the war.[60] The AAFC did not start play until after the war, however, and Brown continued to get ready for the 1945 season at Great Lakes.[61] That year, many of his best players were transferred to bases on the West Coast as the focus of the war shifted to the Pacific.[62] The team started with a 0–4–1 record, but rattled off six straight wins after the war ended and players returned from service overseas.[63] Within weeks of Brown's final Bluejackets game, a 39–7 victory over Notre Dame, he set off for his new job in Cleveland.[64]

By the time Brown arrived in Cleveland, the team had signed a number of players to its roster, including quarterback Otto Graham, whose Northwestern squad had beaten the Buckeyes in 1941.[65] Many of the players came from Ohio State, Great Lakes and Massillon teams that Brown coached. Lou Groza, a placekicker and tackle, played for Brown at Ohio State before the war intervened. Receiver Dante Lavelli was a sophomore on Ohio State's championship-winning team in 1942.[66] Bill Willis, a defensive lineman whom Brown coached at Ohio State, and Marion Motley, a running back who grew up in Canton and played for Brown at Great Lakes, became two of the first black athletes to play professional football when they joined the team in 1946.[67] Other signings included receiver Mac Speedie, center Frank Gatski and back Edgar "Special Delivery" Jones.[68] Brown brought in assistants including Blanton Collier, who had been stationed at Great Lakes and met Brown at Bluejackets practices.[69][70]

The name of the team was at first left up to Brown, who rejected calls for it to be christened the Browns in his honor.[71] McBride then held a contest to name the team in May 1945, which yielded the name "Panthers," which had previously been used by an earlier team that had played in Cleveland in the 1920s. However, the nickname was scrapped soon afterward. Depending on the source, Brown rejected it after learning that the Panthers had failed (according to this version, Brown said, "That old Panthers team failed. I want no part of that name."[72]), or McBride balked at paying the owner of the original Panthers for the rights to use the name.[59] Whatever the case, in August, McBride gave in to popular demand and christened the team the Browns, despite Paul Brown's objections.[73]

For years, however, Brown claimed that the second name-the-team contest yielded the name "Brown Bombers," after then-world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, whose nickname was "The Brown Bomber." According to this version, when Brown rejected the nickname "Panthers," he decided that the team needed a nickname befitting a champion, and felt the nickname "Brown Bombers" was appropriate. The name was reportedly shortened to simply "Browns." This alternate history of the name was even supported by the team as being factual as recently as the mid-1990s,[74] and it continues as an urban legend to this day. However, Paul Brown never held fast to the Joe Louis story, and later in his life admitted that it was false, invented to deflect unwanted attention arising from the team being named after him. The Browns and the NFL now both support the position that the team was indeed named after Paul Brown.[59][75]

With the roster fixed and the team's name chosen, Brown set out to build a dynasty. "I want to be what the New York Yankees are in baseball or Ben Hogan is in golf", he said.[76]

After a training camp at Bowling Green State University, the Browns played their first game in September 1946 at Cleveland Stadium.[77] A crowd of 60,135 people showed up to see the Browns beat the Miami Seahawks 44–0, then a record attendance mark for professional football.[78] That touched off a string of wins; the team ended the season with a 12–2 record and the top spot in the AAFC's western division.[79] The Browns then beat the AAFC's New York Yankees in the championship.[80]

Cleveland won the AAFC championship again in 1947 behind an offensive attack that employed the forward pass more frequently and effectively than was typical at the time.[81] The Browns' offensive success was driven by Brown's version of the T formation, which was gradually replacing the single-wing formation as football's most popular and effective scheme.[82]

The Browns won every game in the 1948 season, a feat that went unmatched until the Miami Dolphins (coached by Brown disciple Don Shula) did it in 1972.[81] Cleveland then won the AAFC championship for the fourth time in a row in 1949. By then, however, the league was struggling for survival, due in part to the Browns' dominance.[83] Attendance at games dwindled in 1948 and 1949 as fans lost interest in lopsided victories, and at the end of the 1949 season the AAFC dissolved. Three of its teams, the San Francisco 49ers, the Baltimore Colts and the Browns, merged into the NFL.[83] The Browns picked up a few good former AAFC players from other teams, including offensive guard Abe Gibron and defensive end Len Ford, but some observers saw Brown's team as the lone standout in an otherwise minor league.[84]

The Browns' first game in the NFL in 1950 was against the two-time defending champion Philadelphia Eagles in Philadelphia.[85] They won the game 35–10, the first of 10 victories that year.[86] After beating the New York Giants in a playoff game, the Browns went on to win the championship game against the Los Angeles Rams on a last-minute field goal by Groza.[87] "The flag of the late lamented AAFC flies high, and Paul Brown has the last laugh", the Plain Dealer's editorial page proclaimed.[88] Brown said his was "the greatest football team a coach ever had, and there was never a game like this one."[88] In 16 seasons, Brown had led his teams to 12 championships. He was the first head coach to win both a college and NFL championship, a feat not repeated until Jimmy Johnson and later Barry Switzer did it with the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s,[89] and Pete Carroll who accomplished the feat with USC in 2004 and the Seattle Seahawks in 2013.

As the Browns climbed to the top of the NFL, speculation began to mount that Brown might return to the Buckeyes. Wes Felser had resigned as the team's coach, and Brown was seen as a possible replacement.[90] But Brown had also alienated many Ohio State alumni by failing to return to the school after World War II and for signing away players including Groza before their college eligibility expired.[91] He interviewed with the university's athletic board on January 27, 1951, but the board unanimously rejected Brown in favor of Woody Hayes, who was unanimously endorsed by the board of trustees.[92]

Brown on the sideline in 1952 in the driving rain.

The Browns reached the championship each of the next three years, but lost all of those games.[93] In both 1952 and 1953, Cleveland lost championships to the Detroit Lions, who were then on the rise after decades of mediocrity.[94] Before the 1953 season, McBride sold the team to a group of local businessmen led by David Jones for $600,000 ($6.1 million in 2021 dollars). While Brown was upset that McBride did not consult him about the deal, the new owners said they would stay out of the picture and let Brown run the team. Brown saw this as a crucial issue: he felt he needed full control over personnel decisions and coaching to make his system work.[95]

Graham announced in 1953 that the following season would be his last.[96] But the team won the championship in 1954 in a rematch against the Lions, and Brown convinced Graham to come back.[97] Cleveland finished 1955 with a 9–2–1 record, reaching the championship game again.[98] The Browns beat the Rams for their second straight championship, and Graham retired after the season.[99]

With Graham gone and the quarterback situation in flux, the Browns ended 1956 with a 5–7 record, Paul Brown's first losing season as a professional coach.[100] In the next year's draft, the team selected Jim Brown out of Syracuse University. As television began to help football leapfrog baseball as America's most popular sport, Jim Brown became a larger-than-life personality.[101] He was handsome and charismatic in private and dominant on the field.[101] Paul Brown, however, was critical of some aspects of Jim Brown's game, including his disinclination to block.[102] In Jim Brown's first season, the team reached the championship game, again against the Lions, but lost 59–14. The Browns did not contend for the championship in the following two years, when a Baltimore Colts team coached by Brown's former protégé Weeb Ewbank won a pair of titles.[103]

As Jim Brown's star rose, players began to question Paul Brown's leadership and play-calling in the late 1950s. The skepticism came to a head in a game against the Giants at the end of the 1958 season in which a win or tie would have given the Browns a spot in the championship game against Ewbank's Colts. In the third quarter, the Browns drove to New York's 16-yard line with a 10–3 lead and lined up for a field goal.[104] But Coach Brown called a timeout before Groza could make the try, which alerted the Giants to a possible fake kick.[105] Brown indeed called a fake, and the holder stumbled as he got up to throw, ruining the play.[105] The Giants came back to win the game by a field goal, defeated the Browns 10–0 in a playoff for the Eastern Conference title and reached the championship, while the Browns went home without a spot in the title game for the second year in a row.[106]

Paul Brown blamed the struggles on quarterback Milt Plum, whom the team had drafted in 1957, saying the Browns had "lost faith in Plum's ability to play under stress."[107] But the players were instead losing faith in Coach Brown and his autocratic style.[107] Jim Brown started a weekly radio show, which Paul Brown did not like; it undercut his control over the team and its message. But the coach found it hard to question Jim Brown given his feats on the field, and the tension between the two men grew.[108] The team finished second in its division in 1959 and 1960, even as Jim Brown racked up league-leading seasons in rushing.[109]

Art Modell, a New York advertising executive, bought the team in 1961 for $4.1 million ($37 million today).[110] Modell, who was 35 years old at the time, bought out Brown's 15% stake in the team for $500,000 and gave Brown a new eight-year contract.[111] He said he and Brown would have a "working partnership", and began to play a more direct role than previous owners in the team's operation. This angered Brown, who was used to having a free hand in football matters.[112] Modell, who was single and only a few years older than most players, started to listen to their concerns about the coach.[113] He became particularly close to Jim Brown, calling him "my senior partner".[114] Modell sat in the press box during games and could be overheard second-guessing Paul Brown's play-calling, which drove a deeper wedge between the two men. At that time, Brown was the only coach who insisted on calling every offensive play, making use of rotating guards to ferry coaching instructions.[115] Quarterback audibles to change the play at the line of scrimmage in response to defensive positioning were not permitted.[115] When Plum openly questioned Paul Brown's absolute control over play-calling, he was traded to Detroit.[116]

The conflict between Brown and Modell reached a breaking point when Brown traded star halfback Bobby Mitchell for the rights to Ernie Davis, a Heisman Trophy-winning running back who broke all of Jim Brown's rushing records at Syracuse.[117] Paul Brown did not inform Modell of the move, and Modell only heard about it after getting a call from Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall.[114] Davis, however, was diagnosed with leukemia before the 1962 season.[118] He came to Cleveland to train after the cancer went into remission, but Brown would not allow him to play. Modell, however, wanted to give Davis a chance to play before he succumbed to the disease.[118] Ultimately, the relationship between coach and owner was never repaired, and Ernie Davis never played in a professional game, dying on May 18, 1963.[119]

As the rift between the players and Brown and between Modell and Brown grew, Modell fired Brown on January 7, 1963.[120] A controversy developed over the timing of the decision amid a local newspaper strike, which limited discussion of the move. A printing company executive, however, got together a group of sportswriters and published a 32-page magazine fielding players' views on the firing. Opinions were mixed; Modell came in for his share of criticism, but tackle and team captain Mike McCormack said he did not think the team could win under Brown.[121] Blanton Collier, Brown's longtime assistant, was named the team's new head coach.[122] Brown remained with the team as vice president and continued to receive an $82,500 salary under his eight-year contract, though the position had no true power in what he told The New York Times was a "vice president in charge of I-don't-know-what."[123][124]

Brown reportedly wished to purchase the Eagles, who were put on sale by the Happy Hundred on April 19, and he led a group of investors that offered $4.5 million.[125] Modell supported his effort regardless of their dispute, telling the Associated Press that he would "not stand in [Brown's] way if he wants to buy the Eagles."[126] Despite his success in Cleveland, the news drew mixed reaction from Philadelphians as opponents saw little reason to replace the current front office or were hesitant to see an "outsider" owning their team.[127][128] By May, however, Brown had lost interest in the bid, and an article from The Plain Dealer claimed it "remains doubtful whether Brown ever seriously considered purchasing the Eagles" and that "no attempt was made to put together a group and he hasn't visited Philadelphia since the Browns took a licking there last fall."[129]

Out of football for the first time since 1930, Brown spent the next five years away from the sidelines, never once attending a Browns contest. As the team's vice president, he spoke little to Modell, only briefly doing so in 1963 to discuss scouting; Modell explained in 1964 that he did not order Brown to carry out any major responsibilities as it "would have been ludicrous to give a man of his stature piddling assignments."[130] While he was secure financially, Brown's frustration grew with each passing year. "It was terrible", he later recalled. "I had everything a man could want: leisure, enough money, a wonderful family. Yet with all that, I was eating my heart out."[131] Because Brown was still receiving his annual salary and liked to play golf, it was said that the only two people who made more money playing golf were Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.[132]

Brown explored coaching possibilities, but he was mindful not to put himself in a position where his control might be challenged as it had been in Cleveland.[131] In 1963, the New York Titans of the American Football League (AFL) offered him the head coach job for $50,000 but failed.[133] Four years later, the AFL, which had formed to compete against the NFL, put a new franchise in Cincinnati.[134] Brown had the third-largest stake in the team, and was the front man for the ownership group. He became general manager and head coach, and was also given the right to represent the team in all league matters, a key element of control for him.[134]

Brown called his new franchise the Bengals because Cincinnati had a team of that name in the 1930s and he thought it would provide a link to the past.[135] Brown's son Mike joined the front office and became his father's top assistant and right-hand man.[135] Brown brought in other assistants including Bill Johnson, Rick Forzano and Bill Walsh. In their first two seasons in 1968 and 1969, the Bengals fared poorly, but the team appeared to be on the upswing as Brown built up a core group of players through the draft, including quarterback Greg Cook.[136]

The Bengals entered the NFL in 1970 as a result of the AFL–NFL merger and were placed in the newly formed American Football Conference alongside the Browns.[137] A career-ending injury to Cook before the 1970 season forced the Bengals to rely on Virgil Carter, an emergency backup who could make accurate short passes but could not throw the ball deep like Cook once could.[138] Brown and Walsh went to work designing an offense around Carter's limitations, a scheme that was the genesis of the West Coast offense Walsh later used to great effect when he became coach of the San Francisco 49ers.[138]

The Bengals lost their first meeting with the Browns 30–27 in 1970, and Brown was booed when he did not come on the field to shake Collier's hand after the game.[139] "I haven't shaken the other coach's hands after a game for years", Brown explained. "... I went up to him before the game, and we did our socializing then."[139] The Bengals beat the Browns later in the season. Brown called it "my greatest victory."[140]

As the Bengals' head coach, Brown took the team to the playoffs three times including 1970. Despite finding a franchise quarterback in Ken Anderson, Brown's team never got past the first round of the postseason tournament.[141] Four days after the Bengals were eliminated from the playoffs in 1975, Brown announced he was retiring after 45 years of coaching.[142] The game had changed dramatically during his time in the NFL, growing from America's second sport to the country's biggest and most lucrative pastime.[142] Brown was 67 years old.[143]