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Alex Trabek: </p>"Bill Belichick, Art Modell, but not the Cleveland Browns franchise" </p>Ken Jennings: "What is a Super Bowl champion?"
"I remember the final home game, it was surreal day,'' Pioli said. "The city's anger had peaked that day. And during the fourth quarter, they actually had to stop the game every time a team was driving toward the one end zone nearest the 'Dawg Pound', where the stands were so close to the field. The refs were making the two teams turn around once they got close to the Pound, because fans were heaving bleacher seats from the Pound and from the upper deck.
"I remember hearing this cracking noise, this sound, this unnatural sound for a football game. And it was people in the upper deck actually ripping up the wood and the metal from these seats and throwing them out on the field. You'd hear a cheer every time another one would go over the rail.''
Belichick said he has watched the game film from that day, and it's jarring to see the teams changing directions so often, in essence playing on a 50-yard field.
"We changed directions four times in that game,'' he said. "To stay away from the Pound. And I'll never forget seeing those seats, and they were like four seats together, and must have weighed 70 or 80 pounds, watching as they would get pitched over the upper deck. There were guys who actually brought their tools to the game and were literally taking the stadium apart. It was bizarre.''
Asked if had any regrets about the Browns' '95 season being the casualty of his franchise re-location, Modell scoffed.
"They knew what was going on,'' he said of the team's front office and coaching staff. "They had a job to do and they didn't get it done. I can't buy into that. I had to do it sooner than later. I knew the squeeze was on. I would have loved to sell the team and keep it there, but who was I going to sell it to in that situation, with that stadium? Who was going to step up and buy the team under those conditions?''
For Belichick and the rest of the Browns, the ugliness of that last home game summarized their entire lame-duck experience in Cleveland. The season's final two months was a slow, steady depressing descent.
"Art had no concept of how bad it was there during those two months, because he was gone,'' Belichick said. "I didn't feel bad for myself, because I knew I'd get another job somewhere else in the league. But it was hard for my family. And it was for all those people in the organization, the people who had worked there for years and who bled Cleveland Browns for him. They didn't deserve being flat out dumped.''
Belichick implored Modell to address the team and the organization, offering something in the way of a definitive timetable for the move, and who would be asked to go with the team to Baltimore. But other than a brief, cursory pep talk to the team on the Wednesday following the relocation announcement, Modell said little and clarified even less. Modell at that point left the city for his home in West Palm Beach, Fla., making quick trips to Baltimore as well, and never again that year returned to Cleveland. He barely kept in contact with the team's front office.