Loyalty Doesn’t Buy Any Respect

It was all a crock, as we suspected from the start, but Art Modell and the NFL finally came clean on the deal this week.

It didn’t matter if we attended Ram games or not, although John Shaw rationalized a once-proud professional football franchise from here to St. Louis on the flimsy charge of rampant community “apathy.�

It made no difference if Anaheim Stadium was packed or not; if blindly loyal faces were painted blue and gold or not; if the box office phones were always jammed or not; if the media covered the team on two bended knees or not; if the fans unfurled banners reading “Georgia We Love You And Your Media Guide Photo, Too� or not.

Sell out the Big A eight Sundays every autumn--autumn after autumn after autumn?

The Rams would have sold you out anyway.

Give your heart to a team that gave you nothing but heartache in return?

Georgia and Shaw would have trampled it on the road out of town, regardless.

We now know this to be the truth, beyond any shadow of any doubt, now that Modell is moving the Browns out of Cleveland.

Because if the Browns can leave Cleveland--where Brown football has been a religion for 50 years, even with Vinny Testaverde as High Priest--then the Packers can leave Green Bay and the Bears can leave Chicago and the Steelers can leave Pittsburgh, because “allegiance� and “community ties� just went the way of leather headgear in Paul Tagliabue’s bold new NFL.

Which, if you happen to reside in a city that presently has a team, stands for Not For Long.

During the Anaheim Rams’ long farewell--roughly November 1993 to May 1995--Shaw frequently trotted out the Cleveland Browns as an example of how an NFL team should be supported and why the Rams had no other choice but to leave Orange County.

Shaw’s argument went as such:

In Cleveland, the fans don’t care whether the Browns win or lose or make the playoffs or fold in the final two minutes in the AFC title game against Denver--they show up, regardless, the way Real Football Fans do.

In Cleveland, the ticket buyers don’t care if it’s snowing or sleeting or hailing or if Cleveland Stadium slides into Lake Erie during one rainy home stand. If it did, the Dawg Pounders would just strap on the thermal scuba gear, float a few oversized plastic dog bones and take the plunge, on the off hope that Andre Rison might still be down there, waiting for someone to throw him a line, or a pass, because he had to have gone somewhere , right?

Orange County wasn’t Cleveland, Shaw lectured us, as if we needed reminding. In Orange County, you have to win --Shaw would wince when he said the word--or the people will find something else to do, because in Orange County, the sun shines and the waves lap and nothing here ever freezes, except the occasional Ram quarterback in the odd NFC championship game.

Orange Countians were fickle.

Orange Countians were front-runners.

Orange Countians, therefore, didn’t deserve the NFL.

Shaw played the ambivalence card to the hilt and sold it to the jury. When he and Frontiere uprooted the Rams, the rest of the country nodded its approval. Oh, yes, Shaw was right--the Rams had no fan support. Oh, right, Georgia had no choice--if she didn’t move to a “football town,� she was going to go out of business.

(At some point amid all this hooey, St. Louis was christened a true-blue “football town,� which was utter lunacy--St. Louis lost the Cardinals to Phoenix and an expansion bid to Jacksonville--but ultimately, this was just an annoying misdemeanor in the face of the greater crime.)

Now, Modell is pulling the Browns out of Cleveland and all hell has broken loose. He is committing heresy, a sacrilege--the Cleveland Browns are a hallowed tradition dating back nearly 50 years.

So were the Los Angeles Rams; in fact, the Browns came into existence when the Rams left Cleveland in 1946. The Browns were a response to the Rams’ move west. The two franchise have parallel histories, too--both peaked in the ‘50s, neither has won a Super Bowl, both have run their fans through the postseason wringer so often that rooting for either team became a health risk.

And within the same calendar year, both have announced plans to move east.

So why was the Rams’ trek to St. Louis hailed as “good business,� while the Browns departure for Baltimore decried as treason?

It is the same act--desertion. Turnstile counts don’t matter. Season-ticket figures don’t matter. Fan club membership cards don’t matter. Team leaves Town A for a better deal in Town B. The deal is the great equalizer--it can ambush any supposedly rock-solid NFL city at any time.

Anaheim and Cleveland won’t be the last to lose. Houston is next, with Seattle moving up on the waiting list. Nashville wants a team. San Antonio wants a team. Memphis wants a team. Baltimore’s vacancy has just been filled. Now, Cleveland is on the make. Welcome to the club, say Orange County and Los Angeles.

The owners in the NFL are now the real free agents, bouncing from city to city, on a whim or a bad hair day, and there is no salary cap in this game. St. Louis can out-bid Anaheim, Baltimore can out-stadium Cleveland, and Anaheim and Cleveland have no right to match.

Anarchy has come to the NFL and from this point forward, no fan from Green Bay to Dallas to Miami to Washington can feel safe. Because if it can happen in Cleveland, it can happen anywhere.