i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

DH's blog post made me think of a very weird sports franchise snafu that occurred fifteen years ago.

In the mid-nineties, Cleveland was trending towards the state it's in now: its economy was in shambles, its population was shrinking, and its weather was perpetually horrible.  The owner of its football team (the Cleveland Browns) was probably persuaded by a combination of these factors to move the franchise to Baltimore.  After his announcement, there was a major outcry from the fans, who depended upon the team to get them through the tough times.  The Cleveland Browns are one of the NFL's oldest franchises, and it wouldn't have reflected particularly well on the league to allow the team to desert a city in such dire straits, so NFL officials intervened and orchestrated a compromise.  The Cleveland Browns would be 'deactivated' for three years.  Then, the team would be resurrected from scratch via an expansion draft.  The 'old' Cleveland Browns would now be called the Baltimore Ravens, and retain all players and personnel associated with the former Browns (but none of its history).

Generally, when a sports franchise switches cities or names, it retains all of the associations of its former self: the retired numbers, the "local" hall of fame, the championship banners, etc.  In this case, there were several cultural variables that forced this interesting departure from convention.  For the newly christened Baltimore Ravens, shedding this association was probably a good thing: they won the Super Bowl four years later, whereas the Cleveland Browns have never, in any inception, even MADE the Super Bowl.