Paul Brown
Paul Eugene Brown (September 7, 1908 – August 5, 1991) was an American football coach and executive in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and National Football League (NFL). Brown was both the co-founder and first coach of the Cleveland Browns, a team named after him, and later co-founded the Cincinnati Bengals. His teams won seven league championships in a professional coaching career spanning 25 seasons.
This article is about the American football coach and owner. For other uses, see Paul Brown (disambiguation).Personal information
September 7, 1908
Norwalk, Ohio, U.S.
August 5, 1991 (aged 82)
Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
213–104–9 (.667)
9–8 (.529)
33–13–3 (.704) (college)
222–112–9 (.660) (pro)
Brown began his coaching career at Severn School in 1931 before becoming the head football coach at Massillon Washington High School in Massillon, Ohio, where he grew up. His high school teams lost only 10 games in 11 seasons. He was then hired at Ohio State University and coached the school to its first national football championship in 1942. After World War II, he became head coach of the Browns, who won all four AAFC championships before joining the NFL in 1950. Brown coached the Browns to three NFL championships — in 1950, 1954 and 1955 — but was fired in January 1963 amid a power struggle with team owner Art Modell. In 1968, Brown co-founded and was the first coach of the Bengals. He retired from coaching in 1975 but remained the Bengals' team president until his death in 1991. The Bengals named their home stadium Paul Brown Stadium in his honor. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1967.
Brown is credited with a number of American football innovations. He was the first coach to use game film to scout opponents, hire a full-time staff of assistants, and test players on their knowledge of a playbook.[1] He invented the modern face mask, the practice squad and the draw play. He also played a role in breaking professional football's color barrier, bringing the first African-Americans to play pro football in the modern era onto his teams.[2][3][4][5][6] Despite these accomplishments, Brown was not universally liked.[7] He was strict and controlling, which often brought him into conflict with players who wanted a greater say in play-calling. These disputes, combined with Brown's failure to consult Modell on major personnel decisions, led to his firing as the Browns' coach in 1963.[8]
Early life[edit]
Brown grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he moved with his family from Norwalk when he was nine years of age.[9] His father, Lester, was a dispatcher for the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad.[10][11] Massillon was a shipping and steel town obsessed with its high school and professional football teams, both called the Tigers.[12] Massillon's main rival at both levels was nearby Canton, a bigger and richer city.[13] When the professional teams folded in the 1920s, the rivalry between the high school teams took center stage.[14]
Brown entered Massillon Washington High School in 1922. Although he played football as a child, Brown was undersized for the game at less than 150 pounds and at first focused his athletic energies on the pole vault.[15] Harry Stuhldreher, who went on to be one of Notre Dame's legendary Four Horsemen, was then the high school quarterback.[11] But Massillon coach Dave Stewart saw Brown's determination to be a good vaulter despite his small size and brought him onto the football team; as a junior in 1924, he took over as the starting quarterback. Massillon posted a win–loss record of 15–3 in Brown's junior and senior years as the starter.[16]
Brown graduated in 1925 and enrolled at Ohio State University the following year, hoping to make the Buckeyes team.[11][17] He never got past the tryout phase.[18] After his freshman year, he transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he followed Weeb Ewbank as the school's starting quarterback. Under Coach Chester Pittser, Brown was named to the All-Ohio small-college second team by the Associated Press at the end of 1928.[11][18] In two seasons at Miami, Brown guided the team to a 14–3 record. He was a member of the Kappa chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon. [18] He married his high school sweetheart Katie Kester the following year.[19][20] Brown had taken pre-law at Miami and considered studying history on a Rhodes Scholarship, but after college he instead took his first job as a coach. On Stewart's recommendation, Severn School, a private prep school in Maryland, hired him in 1930.[21]
High school coaching career[edit]
Severn School[edit]
Brown spent two very successful years at Severn. The team was undefeated in his first season and won the Maryland state championship.[22] In 1931, the team's win-loss-tie record was 5–2–1.[22] Brown's overall record was 12–2–1. After his second year, Massillon's head coaching job became available, and Brown took the position.[23]
Massillon Tigers[edit]
Brown returned to Massillon in 1932, when he was 24 years old and barely two years out of college. His assignment was to turn around a Tigers team that had fallen into mediocrity over the six seasons since the departure of Stewart, Brown's old coach. In 1931, the year before Brown arrived, the Tigers finished with a 2–6–2 record. Brown's strategy was to build up a disciplined, hard-working team. He fired an assistant early on for arriving at a practice late because he had to work on his farm.[24] No Tigers player was allowed to sit on the bench during a game; Brown made them stand. At Massillon, Brown put in an offense and blocking scheme he learned from Duke's Jimmy DeHart and Purdue's Noble Kizer. He emphasized quickness over strength.[25]
In his first season at Massillon, Brown's team posted a 5–4–1 record, better than the previous year but far from Brown's exacting standards.[26] The Tigers improved again in 1933, ending with an 8–2 record but losing to their chief rivals, the Canton McKinley High School Bulldogs. In 1934, Massillon won all of its games until a 21–6 defeat to Canton in the final game of the season.[27] As the pressure on Brown grew to turn the tables on Canton, Massillon finally accomplished the feat the following year in an undefeated season, the first of several with Brown at the helm.[28]
By then, Brown had put his system into place: a strict, systematic approach to coaching combined with a well-organized recruitment network that drew promising young players from Massillon's junior high school football program.[29] He paid no attention to race, and brought several African-American players onto the team at a time when many northern schools excluded them.[30]
In the ensuing five seasons, Massillon lost only one game, a 7–0 defeat at New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1937 after several players came down with the flu. As the Tigers' prestige grew, Brown in 1936 convinced the school to build a new stadium almost triple the size of the existing 7,000-seat facility. The stadium was finished in 1939, and is now named after Brown.[31] The pinnacle of Brown's career at Massillon was a victory in the 1940 season against Toledo's Waite High School.[32] The Tigers and Waite both went undefeated in the 1939 season, and both claimed the state championship. The teams decided to settle the score the following year, and Brown's team won 28–0.[32] The Massillon 1940 squad is still regarded by historians as one of the best in the history of state high school football.[33] In a pre-season scrimmage, the Massillon Tigers played the Kent State University Golden Flashes, and defeated the older college team 47–0.[34]
During his nine years at Massillon, Brown invented the playbook, a detailed listing of formations and set plays, and tested his players on their knowledge of it. He also originated the practice of sending in plays to his quarterback from the sideline using hand signals.[35] His overall record at the school was 80–8–2, including a 35-game winning streak.[36][37] Between 1935 and 1940, the team won the state football championship five times and won the High School Football National Championship four times, outscoring opponents by 2,393 points to 168 over that span. After the early losses to Canton, the Tigers beat the Bulldogs six straight times.[36]
Brown's legacy in Massillon is still honored to this day: the Tiger teams wear his initials on the front shoulder of their uniforms, and a portrait of Brown is permanently displayed on the scoreboard of Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.
College and military career[edit]
Ohio State Buckeyes[edit]
Brown's success at Massillon raised his profile in Ohio considerably; people started calling him the "Miracle Man of Massillon."[38] When Ohio State was looking for a new coach in 1940 – Francis Schmidt left after losing to the rival Michigan Wolverines three times in a row – Brown was a candidate for the job. Ohio State officials were skeptical about the 33-year-old making the transition to college football but were worried that they might lose talented high school recruits loyal to Brown if they did not sign him.[39]
Ohio State offered Brown a $6,500 salary ($130,000 in 2023 dollars), about $1,500 above his Massillon pay.[40] He accepted in January 1941 and immediately began to institute his rigorous system.[41] Players were drilled and quizzed, and Brown focused on preparing the freshmen to take starting roles as graduating seniors left.[42] He conditioned his players to emphasize quickness, adopting the 40-yard dash as a measure of speed because that was the distance players needed to run to cover a punt.[42]
Brown's first year at Ohio State was a success. The Buckeyes won six of eight games in 1941; the only loss was to Northwestern University and its star quarterback, Otto Graham.[43] The final game of the season was a 20–20 tie with Michigan, which the school's supporters saw as a good outcome given that Ohio State was a heavy underdog.[44] The Buckeyes tied for second place in the Western Conference, a grouping of college teams from the Midwestern United States (now known as the Big Ten), and finished 13th in the AP Poll. Brown was fourth in balloting for national Coach of the Year.[45]
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, threatened to derail the 1942 season, but most college teams played on, adjusting schedules to include military teams composed of players serving in the military.[46] The Buckeyes opened the season by beating a Fort Knox team 59–0, followed by two more wins against Southern California and Indiana University.[47] In the first AP Poll of the season, Ohio State was ranked best in the nation, the first time the school had achieved that mark.[47] The 1942 team was the first composed mainly of players hand-picked by Brown, including Bill Willis, Dante Lavelli and star halfback Les Horvath.[48] In the middle of the season, the Buckeyes lost to the University of Wisconsin after numerous players drank bad water and got sick.[49] That was the team's only loss of the season, which culminated with a 21–7 victory over Michigan. The Buckeyes won the Western Conference and claimed their first-ever national title after finishing the season at the top of the AP Poll.[50]
The 1943 season was a disaster for Brown and the Buckeyes. Depleted by the military draft and facing tough competition from teams on Army and Navy bases, Brown was forced to play 17-year-old recruits who had not yet enlisted.[51] Ohio State had affiliated itself with the Army Specialized Training Program, which did not allow its trainees to participate in varsity sports, while schools such as Michigan and Purdue became part of the Navy's V-12 training program, which did. The Buckeyes ended with a 3–6 record. In three seasons at Ohio State, Brown amassed an 18–8–1 record.[11]
Great Lakes Bluejackets[edit]
Brown was classified 1-A in 1944 and commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.[52][53][54] He served at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station outside Chicago as head coach of its Bluejacket football team, which competed against other service teams and college programs.[55] The station was a waypoint for Navy recruits between training and active service in World War II, but its commanders took athletics seriously and saw winning as a morale-booster and a point of personal pride.[56] Brown could have been called up for active duty – Tony Hinkle, his predecessor, was already serving in the Pacific – but the war began to wind down as Brown arrived.[56] Brown had little time to institute his system, and instead adopted Hinkle's offensive scheme, borrowed from the Chicago Bears.[57] He had a smattering of talented players, including defensive end George Young and halfback Ara Parseghian.[57] In 1944, the team lost to Ohio State and Notre Dame, but finished with a 9–2–1 record and was among the top 20 teams in the AP Poll.[58]
In September 1944, Arch Ward, the influential sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, proposed a new eight-team professional football league called the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) to compete against the more established National Football League (NFL) once the war was over.[59] Ward lined up wealthy owners for the new league, which included teams in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and Cleveland.[60] Arthur B. "Mickey" McBride, a taxi-cab magnate who made a fortune in the newspaper business, was the owner of the Cleveland franchise.[61] As Brown was preparing for the 1945 Bluejackets season, Ward came on McBride's behalf to ask Brown if he wanted to coach the new team.[62] McBride offered $17,500 a year ($300,000 in today's dollars) – more than any coach at any level - and full authority over football matters. He also received a stake in the team and a stipend while he was still in the military.[62][63]
On February 8, 1945, Brown accepted the job, saying he was sad to leave Ohio State, but he "couldn't turn down this deal in fairness to my family."[64] Brown was still Ohio State's head coach in absentia, and the decision surprised and outraged school officials who expected him to return after the war.[64] The AAFC did not start play until after the war, however, and Brown continued to get ready for the 1945 season at Great Lakes.[65] That year, many of his best players were transferred to bases on the West Coast as the focus of the war shifted to the Pacific.[66] The team started with a 0–4–1 record, but rattled off six straight wins after the war ended and players returned from service overseas.[67] Within weeks of Brown's final Bluejackets game, a 39–7 victory over Notre Dame, he set off for his new job in Cleveland.[68]
Professional coaching career[edit]
Cleveland Browns in the AAFC (1946–1949)[edit]
By the time Brown arrived in Cleveland, the team had signed a number of players to its roster, including quarterback Otto Graham, whose Northwestern squad had beaten the Buckeyes in 1941.[69] Many of the players came from Ohio State, Great Lakes and Massillon teams that Brown coached. Lou Groza, a placekicker and tackle, played for Brown at Ohio State before the war intervened. Receiver Dante Lavelli was a sophomore on Ohio State's championship-winning team in 1942.[70] Bill Willis, a defensive lineman whom Brown coached at Ohio State, and Marion Motley, a running back who grew up in Canton and played for Brown at Great Lakes, became two of the first black athletes to play professional football when they joined the team in 1946.[71] Other signings included receiver Mac Speedie, center Frank Gatski and back Edgar "Special Delivery" Jones.[72] Brown brought in assistants including Blanton Collier, who had been stationed at Great Lakes and met Brown at Bluejackets practices.[73][74]
The name of the team was at first left up to Brown, who rejected calls for it to be christened the Browns in his honor.[75] McBride then held a contest to name the team in May 1945, which yielded the name "Panthers," which had previously been used by an earlier team that had played in Cleveland in the 1920s. However, the nickname was scrapped soon afterward. Depending on the source, Brown rejected it after learning that the Panthers had failed (according to this version, Brown said, "That old Panthers team failed. I want no part of that name."[76]), or McBride balked at paying the owner of the original Panthers for the rights to use the name.[63] Whatever the case, in August, McBride gave in to popular demand and christened the team the Browns, despite Paul Brown's objections.[77]
For years, however, Brown claimed that the second name-the-team contest yielded the name "Brown Bombers," after then-world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, whose nickname was "The Brown Bomber." According to this version, when Brown rejected the nickname "Panthers," he decided that the team needed a nickname befitting a champion, and felt the nickname "Brown Bombers" was appropriate. The name was reportedly shortened to simply "Browns." This alternate history of the name was even supported by the team as being factual as recently as the mid-1990s,[78] and it continues as an urban legend to this day. However, Paul Brown never held fast to the Joe Louis story, and later in his life admitted that it was false, invented to deflect unwanted attention arising from the team being named after him. The Browns and the NFL now both support the position that the team was indeed named after Paul Brown.[63][79]
With the roster fixed and the team's name chosen, Brown set out to build a dynasty. "I want to be what the New York Yankees are in baseball or Ben Hogan is in golf", he said.[80]
After a training camp at Bowling Green State University, the Browns played their first game in September 1946 at Cleveland Stadium.[81] A crowd of 60,135 people showed up to see the Browns beat the Miami Seahawks 44–0, then a record attendance mark for professional football.[82] That touched off a string of wins; the team ended the season with a 12–2 record and the top spot in the AAFC's western division.[83] The Browns then beat the AAFC's New York Yankees in the championship.[84]
Cleveland won the AAFC championship again in 1947 behind an offensive attack that employed the forward pass more frequently and effectively than was typical at the time.[85] The Browns' offensive success was driven by Brown's version of the T formation, which was gradually replacing the single-wing formation as football's most popular and effective scheme.[86]
The Browns won every game in the 1948 season, a feat that went unmatched until the Miami Dolphins (coached by Brown disciple Don Shula) did it in 1972.[85] Cleveland then won the AAFC championship for the fourth time in a row in 1949. By then, however, the league was struggling for survival, due in part to the Browns' dominance.[87] Attendance at games dwindled in 1948 and 1949 as fans lost interest in lopsided victories, and at the end of the 1949 season the AAFC dissolved. Three of its teams, the San Francisco 49ers, the Baltimore Colts and the Browns, merged into the NFL.[87] The Browns picked up a few good former AAFC players from other teams, including offensive guard Abe Gibron and defensive end Len Ford, but some observers saw Brown's team as the lone standout in an otherwise minor league.[88]
Cleveland Browns in the NFL (1950–1955)[edit]
The Browns' first game in the NFL in 1950 was against the two-time defending champion Philadelphia Eagles in Philadelphia.[89] They won the game 35–10, the first of 10 victories that year.[90] After beating the New York Giants in a playoff game, the Browns went on to win the championship game against the Los Angeles Rams on a last-minute field goal by Groza.[91] "The flag of the late lamented AAFC flies high, and Paul Brown has the last laugh", the Plain Dealer's editorial page proclaimed.[92] Brown said his was "the greatest football team a coach ever had, and there was never a game like this one."[92] In 16 seasons, Brown had led his teams to 12 championships. He was the first head coach to win both a college and NFL championship, a feat not repeated until Jimmy Johnson and later Barry Switzer did it with the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s,[93] and Pete Carroll who accomplished the feat with USC in 2004 and the Seattle Seahawks in 2013.
As the Browns climbed to the top of the NFL, speculation began to mount that Brown might return to the Buckeyes. Wes Fesler had resigned as the team's coach, and Brown was seen as a possible replacement.[94] But Brown had also alienated many Ohio State alumni by failing to return to the school after World War II and for signing away players including Groza before their college eligibility expired.[95] He interviewed with the university's athletic board on January 27, 1951, but the board unanimously rejected Brown in favor of Woody Hayes, who was unanimously endorsed by the board of trustees.[96]
Assistants under Paul Brown who became college or professional head coaches: