Webster - Just too good: the undefeated 1948 Cleveland Browns

Also by GARY WEBSTER AND FROM MCFARLAND

When in Doubt, Fire the Skipper: Midseason Managerial Changes in Major League Baseball (2014)

.721: A History of the 1954 Cleveland Indians (2013)

Tris Speaker and the 1920 Indians: Tragedy to Glory (2012)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

All photographs are from the Cleveland Press Collection at Cleveland State University.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-2237-8

2016 Gary Webster. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover: Cleveland Browns fullback Marion Motley scores a touchdown in the AAFC championship game against the Buffalo Bills on December 19, 1948 (Cleveland Plain Dealer/Landov Media)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

This book is the result of an off-the-cuff suggestion from my editor at McFarland who, while exchanging emails discussing possible book ideas, asked, Why dont you write something about the Cleveland Browns?

I certainly needed no prodding to write a book about the Browns, having been a fan of the team since I was eight years old. I have hazy memories of listening to the radio on December 27, 1964, as the Browns stunned the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts, 270, to win their most recent NFL championship, if 51 years ago can be considered recent. I also remember the final game of the regular season, which the Browns had to win to clinch the eastern division championship. My mother, sister and I were visiting my aunt and watching the game in her living room as we passed the time until picking up my dad from work. He wasnt happy about having to spend that Saturday afternoon on the job rather than camped in front of the television, cheering the Browns to a victory over the New York Giants, then their arch-rivals, in Yankee Stadium. I was new to sports at the time, and I couldnt contain my anxiety as the game progressed, even though the Browns were handling the Giants with ease. As touchdown piled upon touchdown, I kept asking my mother, Are we gonna win, Mom? Are we gonna win? My mother patiently assured me that the Browns were going to win, and they did, 5220. It wasnt even that close. The Giants scored on the games last play, and the officials didnt even bother with the extra point. I would probably have been just as hyper, and just as annoying, had I been able to watch the championship game against the mighty Colts. But it was blacked out within a 75-mile radius of Cleveland, so I had to settle for the radio broadcast.

Writing a book about the Browns would be a pleasure, if I could think of what to write about. So much has been written about the Browns, their great teams and their legendary coaches and players. What could I write about that hadnt been written about already? The answer came by accident. I was looking through the football section of the library in which Ive done the overwhelming majority of my research for my other McFarland books when I stumbled upon two recently published books about the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins. Each book carefully noted what football fans have been told for the past 33 years: the Dolphins are the only team to make it through an entire season undefeated and untied, including the playoffs, in modern professional football history.

Wrong! I had the idea for my book.

Yes, the Dolphins are the only NFL team to finish a season undefeated and untied, including the post-season. Theres no disputing that fact. But the Dolphins werent the first professional, major league football team to achieve that accomplishment. The Browns did it in 1948. And it was about time someone wrote about it.

No one had written about the 1948 Browns because they ran the table and won the championship of the All-America Football Conference, which the NFL to this day refuses to acknowledge ever existed, even though it absorbed two of its teams, the Browns and the San Francisco 49ers. Actually, the NFL absorbed three AAFC teams, but the original Baltimore Colts folded after one season. Apparently, because of lingering questions about the AAFCs strength compared to the NFL, even the many fine Cleveland sportswriters whose articles I grew up reading didnt feel the Browns 150 season was worthy of writing a book about.

I disagree.

To research the Browns epic 1948 season, I used the microfilm facilities of local libraries, reading the day-to-day accounts of the season written by the beat reporters who covered the team from the day training camp opened in late July until the Browns won their third straight AAFC championship in late December. Books and websites helped clear up occasional factual and statistical inaccuracies in the newspapers. What better way to chronicle the season than to rely on the eyewitness accounts of the men who watched the team every day, who knew the players and coaches, and the mood of the fans as the season progressed? What struck me most vividly was the lack of excitement over the fact the Browns were undefeated. The football writer for the Cleveland Press called the seasons final game, with the division title clinched, meaningless. Even with a historic accomplishment at stake. Such was the football juggernaut Paul Brown had built. The Browns were expected to win, all the time. The players expected to win, the fans expected to win, the writers expected to win.

Once the book was finished, it occurred to me that it could serve a useful function beyond giving long overdue recognition to a group of men who accomplished something extraordinary, actually something without equal until the 1972 Dolphins came along. That function is to tell todays generation how special the Cleveland Browns once were. Fans of my generation spend far more time than we should reminiscing about the days when the Browns truly were, as they billed themselves, the greatest show in football. When I was growing up in the 1960s, a Browns loss was cause for a Congressional investigation. I started following the Browns midway through the 1964 championship season, and I didnt experience a losing season for 10 years! My generation loses sight of the fact that fans born after 1995, since the original Browns moved to Baltimore, know nothing but humiliating failure. The Browns havent even been good enough to be dismissed as just another NFL team. Theyve been a joke, an embarrassment, a laughingstock.

This book is for those who remember how great the Cleveland Browns once were, and for those who know nothing about that era, but whod like to find out. One season, the Browns were more than the greatest show in football.

They were literally unbeatable.

The British have an expression for it. An expression, so I have read, that is frequently heard reverberating in the houses of Parliament during contentious debates over public policy: We beg to differ!

In researching this book, I came across two comments from the dust jackets of books written within the past few years about the undefeated 1972 Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins. From the book