Why your team sucks

[JS-Steelerfan]

(08-18-2015, 12:00 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: Like I said, it's a technicality.  

When someone agrees to a legal settlement, that settlement is legally binding.  The person who entered into it can't just say 'Oh, well this doesn't count because I only did it to avoid a lawsuit.'  (Please re-read this sentence as many times as it takes, because it's true)

At some point, someone (who knows - maybe even Modell himself) proposed that he relinquish the franchise and start a new one with his current personnel.  Whoever proposed it, Modell found it acceptable.  The fact that a potential lawsuit brought about the agreement is irrelevant.  He agreed to it, and it was done.  The league then suspended the franchise until new ownership and new personnel could be brought in.  End. Of. Story.

Quote:If those championships belong to the Browns, then explain how those championships, and the entire former Browns, shaped who the Browns are today.

The new Browns were connected to the championships in the same way the old Browns were.  How does any person become a member of a pro sports team?  Are they invited by past players?  Do they get interviewed by those who won championships for that franchise in the past?  Does a soothsayer proclaim their identity as a member of that team at their birth?  Does a witch doctor confirm that they played for the championship teams in a past life?  

No.  They sign a legal contract to play for the organization.  That's their only link.  A contract, by the way, which is no less a legal technicality than Modell's compromise with the league and The city of Cleveland.  That is the one and only way they are connected to the past.  

So when Modell agreed to the technicality that separated his team from the Brown's franchise' he also nullified the technicalities that's were his players' contracts to 'The Browns' as well.  What is done with a stroke of a pen can be undone with a stroke of a pen.

So, to answer your question more directly, the new Browns were connected to the championships of the 1950s by the fact that they were employed by the legal entity known as ' The Cleveland Browns'. And that is EXACTLY the only connection that the Browns of the 1990s had.

I mean seriously, you keep talking about the Old Browns connection to the past, but what other connection did they have other than that they were employed by the franchise which owned that past?At the time Vinny Testaverde (one of the original Browns who turned Raven), first signed with the Browns, do you really think he had any more knowledge or emotional connection to the 1950s than did Tim Couch, one of the 'new' Browns?