[LitlBuck]

Dispatch

When Hall of Famer Dante Lavelli died last week, the Cleveland Browns didn't even send out a news release. Steve King wrote a story about Lavelli for the team's Web site; the next day he was one of 15 employees laid off by the team.

A Browns insider said that if King had been laid off a day earlier, the team likely wouldn't have had even done that much.

The Browns' oversight is another example of the team's ham-handed tactics since the firing of coach Romeo Crennel and general manager Phil Savage and the hiring of their replacements. The team is going to pay approximately $20 million to Crennel and Savage for not working, yet they are lopping off the low salaries of many of their loyal and long-standing personnel.

While on the topic of Browns Hall of Famers, there's this: When coach Eric Mangini landed the Cleveland job, he made a big deal about the team's tradition and history. But one of his first acts was to have a huge mural of the team's Hall of Famers, located at the team's Berea practice facility, taken down.

What's left in the place of images of Jim Brown, Otto Graham, Paul Brown, Marion Motley, Lou Groza, Leroy Kelly and Lavelli? Simply a white wall.

Mangini has not lost one game yet for the Browns but if this is any indication of how he is going to handle the history of the Browns I do not like it