2:53 p.m. EDT, September 7, 2012
The funeral of former Ravens owner Art Modell has been scheduled for Tuesday morning at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation.
The 11 a.m. service will be followed by an invitation-only luncheon and a private interment.
In lieu of flowers, the Modell family is asking that contributions be made to The SEED School at 200 Font Hill Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21223 or [www.seedschoolmd.org]
A silent viewing and fan tribute to Modell is being held Saturday at M&T Bank Stadium between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
[Modell's casket will be on the field] with the Vince Lombardi Trophy next to him that the Ravens earned with a victory over the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV.
Free parking is available to fans in Lots B and C with fans asked to enter the stadium through Lot A via Unitas Plaza.
Modell, the former majority owner of the Ravens and Cleveland Browns, died at age 87 at 4 a.m. at Johns Hopkins Hospital on Thursday morning.
[A moment of silence] will be held before each NFL game this weekend.
[awilson@baltsun.com]
CLEVELAND (92.3 The Fan) - The family of Art Modell has requested that the Cleveland Browns do not honor the former owner Sunday.
Modell’s son, David spoke with Browns president Mike Holmgren and made the request on behalf of the family.
The NFL asked home teams Friday to pause for a moment of silence or other appropriate tribute in honor of Modell prior to kickoff but it was not a mandate from the league a Browns team spokesman said.
The Browns had planned to offer condolences to the family in the form of a simple PA announcement during pre-game ceremonies.
The Brows were not planning a video tribute, scoreboard mention or moment of silence in an effort to minimize negative fan reaction.
Browns officials debated what would be appropriate to do prior to kickoff in an effort to be respectful of Modell’s family as well an angry fan base still bitter over Modell’s relocation of the franchise to Baltimore following the 1995 season.
Modell passed away at the age of 87 Thursday morning in Baltimore
best thing me thinks 
I saw a picture of it . how does that miserable SOB deserve a American Flag drapped on it ..he is not a veteran ? nor a former President .[Modell's casket will be on the field] with the Vince Lombardi Trophy next to him that the Ravens earned with a victory over the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV.
.. yup disable the cameras !
In lieu of flowers, the Modell family is asking that contributions be made to The SEED School at 200 Font Hill Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21223 or [www.seedschoolmd.org]
..it would be a contribution in Modells name
On my refrigerator growing up, next to the rotating report cards and detritus of a busy life, hung two permanent decorations. The first was [ the rare Sports Illustrated cartoon cover], in which a bespectacled, white-haired man with a glower sucker-punched a bipedal dog wearing a [Cleveland Browns] jersey and helmet. The second was a bumper sticker with a simple phrase: "Will Rogers never met Art Modell."
My dad put them there just in case a day went by and he didn't think about what Art Modell had done to Cleveland. They turned into subliminal cues, kindling to a fire that Browns fans promised themselves to keep alive when Modell absconded with our football team.
Ours. Cleveland's. Not Art Modell's, even if he was the majority owner. Not Baltimore's, even if that city understood better than any other the hurt of losing a football team to a greedy businessman. Professional sports franchises are public trusts, bound to their cities by symbiosis. Don't give up on us and we won't give up on you, the relationship goes, and Cleveland always wore the Browns with pride, maybe more than anything in a city that needed something to cheer about.
[Jason Cole: [ Complicated legacy for Art Modell]]
Sports in Cleveland have mirrored the city as much as any in the [United States]: filled with loss, heartbreak and an unrelenting pride that neither trials nor travails nor anything, frankly, can break. Its spirit, sporting and otherwise, is strong, steeled by its sadness. Because of the Internet and Twitter and other vehicles of vitriol available, the world got to see Cleveland at what seemed like its nadir, when LeBron James left for Miami. Jerseys burned. Words blistered. [Comic Sans MS made its triumphant return.]
And here's the thing: For those of us who experienced the Cleveland Browns morphing into the Baltimore Ravens, this was a sin far less damning, one that would melt away because players are meant to move and teams aren't.
LeBron James broke Cleveland's heart. Art Modell stole its soul.
Art Modell [died Thursday morning]. He was 87 years old. I felt nothing.
Some friends in Cleveland celebrated like they do in Oz when the Wicked Witch dies, and other friends around the country lamented the loss of someone whose reputation evolved from mediocre-and-indebted owner and devil-dealing charlatan to one of the great owners in NFL history.
The shift of Art Modell's personal narrative over the 6,148 days since he announced the Browns would move to Baltimore continues to confound. He was influential in growing football on television, the godfather of Monday Night Football, and for this his benefactors not only applaud him but look past what he did to Cleveland as if it were but a blip on his legacy and not the defining moment. A man is defined by the body of his actions, and to ignore the effect Modell's selfishness had on a city that loved football, loved its team and needlessly had both thieved is the worst sort of revisionism, the sort in which Joe Paterno's supporters engage: don't let the defining moment of the man's life color all of the good things he did.
While his sin was nowhere near as egregious as Paterno's, Modell did slim-jim his way into the Baltimore market through backdoor politicking, vote-rigging and shady 1 percenter maneuvers. He had run the Browns tens of millions of dollars into debt and had neither the savvy nor the business acumen to rescue them from it without a bailout. So he made sure nobody else sought the Baltimore market, leeched a sweetheart deal out of the city for a new stadium and then tried to explain to Cleveland with an even uglier turn of phrase than LeBron taking his talents to Miami: "I had no choice."
He did, of course. He could've waited. He could've sold to his friend Al Lerner. He busted out, and instead of doing what was honorable, Art Modell defaulted to selfish and landed on Baltimore's golden parachute a hero to those still scarred by Mayflower trucks.
[Related: [ Forbes' NFL billionaire owners list ]]
The Ravens won the Super Bowl five years later and are run by Ozzie Newsome, whose autograph I still have from a Browns training camp when I was 6. They routinely destroyed the new Browns, who have been one of the worst franchises in the league since they returned as an expansion team in 1999.
Winning may change this, but this odd feeling still permeates the new Browns. They're a real NFL team. They play in a nice stadium. In the tradition of the old Browns, they make stupid personnel moves. And yet something just isn't right about them. It's like they're imposters, delivered by pity to placate Modell's conscience.
Maybe that's why I felt nothing when Art Modell died. If there's a word to describe the new Browns, it's soulless.
I was 15 years old when I wrote my first story. My father worked at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, and every Monday the newspaper ran a section of local teenagers' work. Cleveland's mayor at the time, Michael White, had negotiated a deal for the Browns to return by 1999. To a 15-year-old, someone who didn't understand big business and big money and corporations and greed, this was not good enough.
"There was a way the team – not only the name and colors – could have stayed where it belongs," I wrote, and I genuinely believed that. Naïveté and hope and youth were like drugs on which I couldn't stop tripping. I didn't want to believe this was happening. I couldn't understand how it did.
I vowed not to forget.
Only I did. Life took over. My parents moved. The bumper sticker and the SI cover didn't fit in the new house. LeBron left Cleveland, and I was mad, but not once did I think of Art Modell. He had sold the Ravens to a man named Steve Bisciotti in 2003. Modell kept 1 percent of the franchise.
[Yahoo! Sports Radio: [ Jeff Passan on passing of Art Modell]]
Word filtered out late Wednesday that Modell was gravely ill. I called my dad. We had watched so many Browns games together, him yelling at the TV, me learning to do the same, him diagnosing defensive schemes and taking notes on his yellow legal pad for his radio show, me trying to understand what all of it meant. He never kicked the habit. Even though he lives thousands of miles from Cleveland, he still drives to a local sports bar and meets up with Browns fans every Sunday for what has turned into more of a weekly lament than a party.
He tries to cheer for the Browns, too, the same way he did for the team that debuted in 1946 and won eight championships. Instead, he sees this bastardized version and cannot reconcile it. Almost 20 years after one man stole Cleveland's soul, my father's fire still burns.
And when I told him Art Modell was dying, he didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
The second was a bumper sticker with a simple phrase: "Will Rogers never met Art Modell."
[# Browns] K Phil Dawson will become 5th player in team history to play in 200 games for team Sunday. C Matthews holds record with 232
Congrats Phil . 200 games in orange & brown ..most of them you were the only scoring . i hope that trend ends this season .
if he was on any other team automatic Phil might be a HOF Candidate when his playing days are over with . he still might get some consideration and i think he should . a class act on and off the field .
We're paying for
Modell's army of debts
BY TERRY PLUTO,
Beacon Journal sports columnist
November 8, 1995
Art Modell used to joke that he was a lousy businessman.
He wasn't kidding.
So he sold out Cleveland and the Browns' fans to pay the Bills .
Checking around, I've heard that Modell is more than $28 million in debt.
That is why he grabbed the sweetheart deal from Baltimore -- a deal that could be worth $75 million in "moving expenses," along with a rent-free, $200 million stadium from which he also would receive all concession, parking and loge revenues.
But I kept asking myself, "How was Modell $28 million in the red while running a franchise that draws more than 70,000 fans a game?"
Or how about this?
Modell's credit was so shaky, he went to five banks before he found one willing to lend him the $5 million needed to pay Andre Rison's signing bonus.
Someone on the inside told me this and more, painting a bleak mosaic of Modell's financial landscape. In essence, Modell was leveraged to the eyeballs when he bought the team back in 1961, and he never really climbed out.
Instead, he used goodwill toward the Browns' franchise and the huge crowds it attracted as collateral to keep borrowing money, be it to pay off a fired coach (Sam Rutigliano) or a wasted draft pick (Mike Junkin).
"Imagine a house with three mortgages on it," I was told. "That is the Browns now."
Sinking deeper
Modell fell deep into this sinkhole in 1974, when he took over control of the Stadium for $10 million. He says he has poured more than $67 million into that 80,000-seat pit by the lake -- and maybe he has.
And the Gateway complex, with its luxury suites, has hurt his loge sales.
But the Browns' record and controversial personnel moves in the 1990s haven't helped much, either. For whatever reason, 24 of the 102 loges (at $35,000 to $55,000 each) were not sold for 1995, despite the Browns coming off a playoff season.
At his press conference yesterday, Modell blamed escalating player salaries, especially the outrageous signing bonuses given to free agents to circumvent the salary cap.
Of course, the salary cap was supposed to contain all this. But Modell couldn't control himself. He just spent and spent in his lust to build a winner.
He also blindly allowed Coach Bill Belichick to hire an embarrassing number of assistants, scouts and other hangers-on -- all in the hope that this coach would be Modell's own Paul Brown, that Belichick could deliver Modell a Super Bowl that would make Cleveland love him.
More than anything, Modell wanted to be loved by Cleveland. He longed to be seen as a "good guy."
His complex in Berea has an incredible number of front-office types doing Lord-Knows-What for their money. Some of them work there simply because Art likes them and gave them jobs.
Speaking of the training camp compound, Modell supposedly owes about $2 million to Berea for that.
With Modell, the money came in and the money went out -- and interest payment piled upon interest payment as the bank bills grew.
Suddenly, Modell was 70 years old, and realized that if he dies, his family couldn't afford to keep the football team. The weight of the debt and inheritance taxes would force his family to sell.
Modell also refused to consider selling the team to someone who might have kept it in Cleveland. As much as life itself, Modell wants to hang onto the Browns and then turn them over to his son, David.
Rather than leave football, he took football out of town.
Snoozing, losing
Modell's revelations at his press conference in Dallas also demonstrated his lack of business savvy.
He allowed himself to be saddled with that albatross of a stadium. When Gateway began, he was asleep at the switch, trying to convince the Indians to join him at a renovated Stadium when Tribe owner Dick Jacobs had no interest whatsoever in that project.
And he hardly said a word when the Gateway folks lured Gordon Gund and the Cavaliers from Richfield to downtown Cleveland.
Modell is right. He was pushed aside and not treated with the same respect as Jacobs or Gund.
But the sad truth is that he didn't play the corporate, political or public-relations games as well as they did.
Modell should have had this kind of press conference a year ago. He should have taken his case to the public, making clear that the sin tax and the other parts of the crazy quilt financial package would not pay for a new or renovated stadium.
He could have shown pictures of everything from the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame to the Science Museum to Gateway, along with the price tag for each.
Then he could have shown a photo of that dump on Lake Erie where he is sentenced to play football.
He should have told the fans and government leaders: "It is my turn, and we need a real stadium deal to pay the bills.
"If not, I'm outta here in a year."
If nothing else, he would have scored points for candor.
Instead, he imposed a moratorium on the stadium discussion -- all the while talking to Baltimore behind the backs of his fans.
"I didn't want to go public with all my demands, because I didn't want to look like an extortionist," he said yesterday.
Instead, he looks like a traitor. A man who can't even come home to the town where he has lived for 35 years.
Just take the money, Art, you...
After 35 years, it's just a `business decision,' and the Browns are on their way to play in Baltimore.
BY TERRY PLUTO,
Beacon Journal sports columnist
November 7, 1995
BALTIMORE: The man who stole the Browns from Cleveland looked like he was about to pass some very bad gas.
Then Art Modell took the microphone and talked about "being in pain."
Then the owner of the "Baltimore Browns" introduced his "Maryland banker."
We can assume the money made Modell feel better.
How else can Modell explain turning his back on the town he called home for 35 years? How else can he rationalize selling out millions of fans who have supported his team?
How else can he find the bluster to dance so far around the truth that it makes it nearly impossible for anyone to take his word about anything again?
Sitting on that podium next to a bunch of political hacks from Maryland and in the shadow of Camden Yards, Modell looked 70-years-old going on 90. His face was red and puffy, his voiced cracked from fatigue.
He knew he didn't belong there. He knows the Browns have no more business in Baltimore than the Colts do in Indianapolis.
But he "had no choice," he said.
He made a "business decision," he said.
Today, "making a business decision" is a code word for doing what you want – then exonerating yourself from the responsibility of the broken hearts and lives you leave behind.
These "business decisions" are made by guys in expensive suits -- faceless guys wearing reflector sunglasses and beepers on their belts. They are the suits behind the governors, mayors and team owners -- and these guys may be the most scary of all.
You don't know who they are, your gut just tells you that they are up to no good. These men in suits often make us feel helpless -- and the suits were everywhere in Baltimore yesterday afternoon.
Gag me with a field
Modell arrived at yesterday's press conference in a limousine. He was led up to the podium by the suits, a podium in the parking lot where his new 70,000-seat football stadium will be built.
It will be called "Browns Field."
Try not to gag.
Modell watched a governor of Maryland, a suit named Parris N. Glendening, wave a 30-year lease, a legal kidnapping of the Browns to Baltimore. Modell knew that 28-page document meant he could no longer insist, "I'm not a rich man," yet he didn't look happy.
Modell listened as the good governor sounded like an absolute twit when he compared this day to Cal Ripken's Ironman streak.
Cal Ripken should sue for libel, his name being dragged into the middle of this field of schemes. Ripken is about loyalty, hard work and staying through the hard times.
This was about an owner who cut and ran, and about a city that stole another's team. Yes, the city knew it was wrong, but it had been wronged before by the Colts scampering to Indianapolis so somehow, that makes all of this OK.
It was nothing personal, just a "business decision."
Then this great statesman from Maryland screamed, "It's a great day to be governor" and introduced Modell as "Baltimore's newest resident."
The writers from Northern Ohio had a pool going, picking how long it would take for Modell to invoke the name of old Colts quarterback Johnn Unitas.
The answer was two minutes.
Then Modell said something strange: "I won't steal the Al Davis line about a commitment to excellence."
No, instead he borrowed a page from Davis' business playbook: He took the money and ran.
Real hate
After a while, you just hate all these guys -- the governor, the mayor, Modell, the suits and the 100 or so Baltimore fans who were chanting "Art... Art...Art!"
You look at Modell and think about how he attacked Dallas owner Jerry Jones and the other "new breed" of owners who are making their own "business decisions" that may not necessarily be in the best interests of the NFL.
Then Modell does this.
At least Jones was upfront about his deals with Pepsi and Nike, and dared the NFL to stop him.
Meanwhile, Modell actually signed away the Browns back on Oct. 27, and he did it under the cover of darkness in a corner of the Baltimore-Washington Airport. The governor talked about meeting Modell on a private jet, then joked about secret knocks and passwords.
Then he laughed about the wild and desperate media speculation -- while Modell sat behind the governor and stared at his shoes as he forced a smile.
What great fun it was, stealing a team on the sly.
Then it was revealed that Modell planned to wait until the end of the season to soak the last dollars out of Browns fans before letting them in on the deal -- only there were too many leaks.
So he had to come clean -- or whatever this was -- on this sunny Monday. Is this how one of the NFL's "great" owners makes "business decisions?" Is this what the NFL is all about?
Before the Browns finally play a game in Baltimore, there will be charges and countercharges -- suits and more lawsuits.
It won't matter. The Browns are gone.
Then we'll find ourselves in the same position as Baltimore. And one day, the suits and rich guys will show up at some parking lot in downtown Cleveland, and out of the limousines will come someone such as Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown or some other guy looking for a fast buck and a better stadium.
Yes, we'll have another football team. But in our hearts, we know it won't be the same.
Yes, we'll have another football team. But in our hearts, we know it won't be the same.
Suddenly, Modell was 70 years old, and realized that if he dies, his family couldn't afford to keep the football team. The weight of the debt and inheritance taxes would force his family to sell.
i lost something in 95 that will never come back .Alot of us lost something that year, but i havent given up on finding it again, my hope is one day Cleveland will be the hard hitting, high scoring team that no-one wants to face, as of last year it seemed they only played hard against the Steelers, hopefully soon they will play that way against every team they face.
..sometimes MOS Stops by .
maybe if the Browns turn things around some of that feel good will come back as they say winning cures everything . right now i will settle for a compentent football team . i have very low expectations so anything will be a positive this season .There’s a strange sort of irony in Cleveland today, as the passing of former Browns owner Art Modell coincides with the unofficial launch of new owner Jimmy Haslam’s tenure with the team.
Yes, Haslam still hasn’t been officially approved by the league. But Randy Lerner has surrendered the keys and left town and Haslam already was a minority owner of the Steelers and it’s just a matter of time before the owners give the thumb’s up to Haslam.
As explained by Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, [Haslam brings real hope to Cleveland]. Though Browns fans initially were leery about his Pittsburgh ties, they have since seemed to accept that a guy who seems to care deeply about building a competitor will be far better than his predecessor, who didn’t seem to care at all.
In the short term, turmoil is lurking. Cabot believes that team president Mike Holmgren and his regime will be gone, with former Eagles president Joe Banner (who may be wearing a Laura Quinn-style Browns-Eagles jersey today) helping Haslam build a new organization. Barring the kind of success in 2012 that would give Haslam no choice but to embrace the men responsible for it, look for major changes to come in Cleveland after the coming season.
It may take time to make it all come together. Over the long haul, however, Browns fans may have much more to celebrate than the single one-and-done playoff appearance since the Browns returned to the NFL in 1999.
