Balt/Wash Football Thread-Ravens/Redskins Discussion

[30 Floors Up]

NFL big draw for region's wealthy, new survey says
Baltimore Business Journal - September 14, 2007by Ryan SharrowStaff

Already home to one of the National Football League's fastest-growing brands, Baltimore now also boasts one of the league's highest percentage of loyal NFL fans earning more than $100,000.

That's according to a recent survey released by New York-based market research firm Scarborough Research. The firm surveyed 220,354 residents in 75 U.S. markets asking the participants various questions.

[MasonsInquiries]

Originally Posted by 30 Floors Up

NFL big draw for region's wealthy, new survey says
Baltimore Business Journal - September 14, 2007by Ryan SharrowStaff

Already home to one of the National Football League's fastest-growing brands, Baltimore now also boasts one of the league's highest percentage of loyal NFL fans earning more than $100,000.

That's according to a recent survey released by New York-based market research firm Scarborough Research. The firm surveyed 220,354 residents in 75 U.S. markets asking the participants various questions.

....& it shows. purple passion is alive & well in b'more nowadays!!

[yamota]

Who'da thought at this point the skins would be undefeated and the ravens would be at .500?

[Liam0711]

Truthfully, I'm not that surprised considering 2 games have been played.

[yamota]

Well, better enjoy it while it lasts, I have a feeling this little winning streak ain't gonna last long.

[MasonsInquiries]

week 3's prediction...............

baltimore-24
arizona-13

[modestproposal]

Originally Posted by MasonsInquiries

week 3's prediction...............

baltimore-24
arizona-13

Sounds about right to me.


Prediction for the Skins game:
Washington Redskins: 27
New York Football Giants: 9

I came up from Atlanta to go to this game.

[MasonsInquiries]

bal-26, az-23


whew!!!!!!! that game was a nail biter!! i can't get over the way that kurt warner came into the game and figured our defense out the way he did. we were very fortunate to win that game. next week, it's on to the DOG POUND!!!!!

[micrip]

whew is right!!! This game was inches from being lost. What if Ivy hadn't gotten his hand in there, or what if that defender hadn't gonged Todd Heap with his helmet (getting a 15 yard penalty) which helped get Stover into FG range?

I am liking how Boller looks when he gets in there. Don't need to worry so much about McNair any more.

[Gsol]

The Cardnials put Warner in any what a difference. He had his way with our defense. Don't know why it took so long for the defense to readjust. What an amazing turn around. It seems like the Ravens get off to a good first half, then the offense shuts down and the defense eases up in the second. I think the Ravens play calling was better this week.

An intersting aside, I came down from NY for yesterday's game. There were a lot of Ravens fans returning to the Big Apple on my train last night. Only one Eagles fan got on in Philly. With that many deoted fans there should be a Ravens bar in NY, but haven't been able to find one yet. Many other teams seemed to stake out a haunt of their own.

[30 Floors Up]

Cleveland Browns Move to Baltimore Revisited
Cleveland Leader, 9/24/07

Each week here at the Cleveland Leader we have spotlighted Cleveland Browns' history. Today we will look at something that will most likely ruffle some feathers. Art Modell, who transcended the National Football League into the television behemoth that it is today, deserves to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It is shameful that he has been shunned. One of the main culprits that has Modell on the outside looking in to the Hall of Fame doors is the Cleveland media, which have been blatantly unfair in how they represented the facts of the Browns franchise move to Baltimore.

In these parts, Art Modell is regarded somewhere between Saddam Hussein and the Devil himself. The truth of the matter is that it wasn't Modell who single-handedly blindsided the city of Cleveland and abruptly moved, as revisionist history would make you believe. The Browns were in desperate financial trouble and Modell clearly stated the facts before he announced his departure to Baltimore.

I worked for the Cleveland Browns in the 1995 season and will never forget an interview that Modell gave to Cleveland media. I was standing about 5 feet away, when Modell clearly stated that "all options were on the table" regarding the Browns. Everyone there knew what he meant. He was saying, in a public forum, that the Browns move could be imminent. In the interview he also stated his displeasure with then-Mayor Michael White and stated that he wasn't being offered a fair deal considering the city had built a stadium for the Cleveland Indians and an arena for the Cleveland Cavaliers. The next day I picked up the Plain Dealer to see what they would say about Modell's interview. Nothing was mentioned. Zip, Zero, Zilch.

Another thing startled me in the 1995 campaign. A new advertising agency from Baltimore had been hired by the Browns to do marketing for the club. I knew this in a very low level job with the franchise. Why didn't the media who covered the Browns start to say, "What's going on here"?

Modell was clearly laying out his cards on the table. The problem was, the media and the politicians thought that he was bluffing. He was not. It should not have come as a shock when he announced that the team was moving. Isn't it the job of the media to keep the public informed of the happenings in a city? The Plain Dealer was caught with their pants down.

The thing that is really odd about the whole Browns move is how Al Lerner has been made some kind of hero by the local media. Wasn't it his plane that took him to Baltimore to sign the deal? But he is regarded as a hero nowadays. This was a headline in the Akron Beacon Journal on November 19th, 1995: "LERNER IS SAID TO BE AIDING, ABETTING MODELL MINORITY OWNER: MAY BE PROVIDING ART WITH CASH TO BUY OUT GRIES' SHARES." How quickly we forget these "minor" details of the move.

What about Robert Gries who owned 43% of the club? Couldn't he have wielded some of his business interest to block the proposed move? He was let off the hook by the Plain Dealer. When they asked about the move in 1995, which he could have probably brought a lawsuit to stop the relocation, he stated, "It would've been far more profitable for me to stay in for a few years and sell my interest after the stadium was built," he said. "But I could not be a part of the relocation of the Browns. I could never have lived with myself."

I heard a first hand report of what actually happened. Overhearing a conversation between a Browns official discussing why Gries sold his shares with one of the Browns lawyers, when Gries heard the buyout number and pretty much said, "Where do I sign?".

Professional sports are a big business. If people cannot get over that simple truth in 2007, then they have a hard time seeing reality. Modell might not have done what was popular but he did what he had to do for the best interest of his investment. Working one year for the man I can say that he was about as generous as you could ask for (his son David Modell left a lot to be desired). The city gave sweetheart stadium deals to both the Cavaliers and Indians and left Modell, who had Cleveland's most popular and successful franchise at the time, with a sub-standard offer.

Modell helped make NFL football what it is today, securing lucrative television contracts which brought the league to "Primetime" with Monday Night Football. There were a lot of guilty parties in the Cleveland Browns move: Michael White, Al Lerner, Robert Gries, the Cleveland media, and of course Art Modell. The others have been forgiven or forgotten. Isn't time to do the same with Modell?

[marc1969]

Originally Posted by 30 Floors Up

Cleveland Browns Move to Baltimore Revisited
Cleveland Leader, 9/24/07

Good article. I was always put back by the reaction of the Cleveland fans to the move. I totally understood their anger but there seemed to be a disconnect. How come we heard so much more about Modell's efforts to stay in Cleveland than the people of Cleveland? They got so much of a better deal after the move. They got to keep their name and history. They want to talk evil...Irsay!! I mean really...who trys to sneak out of town in the middle of the night with 20 moving vans!

[MobtownManiac]

Tiger Bob was the devil himself, his mother said so.

But his son isn't the fantastic guy the media's been making him out to be, either.
Modell asked Jim Irsay to sell him the Colts' colors & logo - he was very cognizant of the fact that Cleveland's pain would be substantially less retaining their colors/history & wanted to try to bring Baltimore's home.

Irsay agreed & told him that the discussion would start at $50M. Modell has just pulled up stakes from Ohio & moved to Maryland yet Irsay wanted $50M out of his pocket for something that would have made Irsay a mint.

I've heard other stories about Jimmy saying that the horseshoe doesn't belong to Baltimore but rather it belongs to his family. Which is interesting, considering the people of Baltimore created it.

IMHO, Indy had a shot to get their own identity - their own colors, their own logo, something that had even an iota of relevence to Indianapolis. Instead they won the Super Bowl for the first time wearing an homage to Baltimore's Preakness race. How stupid is that? And now it's too late.

Something for Cleveland fans to think about: as bad as you felt when the Ravens won the SB in 2000, how bad would it have sucked if it had been the Baltimore Browns that won it all? The only thing taking the sting out of last year's travesty is that Baltimore won the trophy race 6 years earlier.

BTW, I thought that Indy was cursed until last year. Baltimore certainly isn't. Who's left in the mess? Carrol Rosenbloom? Well - LA still doesn't have a team...

[jamie_hunt]

Originally Posted by MobtownManiac

IMHO, Indy had a shot to get their own identity - their own colors, their own logo, something that had even an iota of relevence to Indianapolis. Instead they won the Super Bowl for the first time wearing an homage to Baltimore's Preakness race. How stupid is that? And now it's too late.

"Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief."
--Macbeth, Act V, scene ii

Unitas, Berry, Donovan, Moore, Parker, et al: they were giants.

[MasonsInquiries]

i've met art donovan & lenny moore. cool, down-to-earth guys. art cracked me up when he told me some stories from back in the day. i think he was referring to the colts/giants 1958 overtime game. aw man, what a funny guy!!

[micrip]

Originally Posted by marc1969

Good article. I was always put back by the reaction of the Cleveland fans to the move. I totally understood their anger but there seemed to be a disconnect. How come we heard so much more about Modell's efforts to stay in Cleveland than the people of Cleveland? They got so much of a better deal after the move. They got to keep their name and history. They want to talk evil...Irsay!! I mean really...who trys to sneak out of town in the middle of the night with 20 moving vans!

Yes, Browns fans got to keep their name, and got a very nice stadium out of the deal. Who knows...the Browns could very well still be playing in the "Mistake by the Lake" if the team hadn't moved to Baltimore.

At first, I felt a bit sad for Cleveland when the team moved here....after all, fans in Baltimore knew that the team had a rabid following in Cleveland and it did leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth, at least for awhile. But it was inevitable that a team was going to move here after Baltimore was passed up in the expansion, thanks to Paul "build a museum" Tagliabue and Jack Kent Cooke. It was obvious that the NFL has learned its lesson as they very quickly put a new team in Cleveland (and Houston).

Just think about the chain of events that was sent in motion by Irsays' midnight Mayflower treachery. The move got the powers that be off their butts in Maryland and that resulted in the construction of Oriole Park, to make sure the team didn't leave also. But who knew then that OPACY would be so revolutionary that half the rest of the majors wanted a clone, and so began the biggest stadium-building boom in history. This trend spilled over into the NFL as well, with Ravens Stadium, also a revolutionary design, adding further impetus. The rest is history.

[TheGlobalizer]

And thus, Baltimore rules all.

Sweet.

[jamie_hunt]

Originally Posted by micrip

... This trend spilled over into the NFL as well, with Ravens Stadium, also a revolutionary design, adding further impetus. The rest is history.

Only regret about Ravens Stadium is that they never added the enormous Raven sculpture over the southwest corner stairwell. It would have been mounted on a swivel so that it could face incoming traffic on Russell Street during the week, and face into Ravens Stadium on game day. David Ashton, who's done a ton of great work you'd recognize, was the designer, but can't find a picture. IIRC, the price was only $250,000, a third of what the "Male/Female" sculpture at Penn Station cost.

Otherwise, much as I loved Memorial Stadium, the improvement in venue is hu-u-u-u-ge.

[MobtownManiac]

I remember that proposed statue. It was supposed to have red eyes that would light up whenever the Ravens scored a TD.

I think most Ravens fans would trade that statue for more escalators, though.

[MobtownManiac]

LET'S GO, RAVENS! CLAP! CLAP! CLAPCLAPCLAP!
LET'S GO, RAVENS! CLAP! CLAP! CLAPCLAPCLAP!
LET'S GO, RAVENS! CLAP! CLAP! CLAPCLAPCLAP!

WHAT TIME IS IT??? GAMETIME!!!