Cleveland Browns Have No Players or Stadium, but Have Plenty of Fans

The Indians aren’t the only miracle in Cleveland.

There is this huge hole in the ground on the edge of downtown, hard on the banks of Lake Erie, a spot where the wind whips off the water with amazing ferocity, a place sometimes described by visitors as the mistake by the lake.

A stadium stood there once and some day soon, one will stand there again.

They began pouring concrete for the new stadium’s superstructure last week. The big sign in the middle of the city counts down the number of days until Aug. 21, 1999, the date the new home of the new Cleveland Browns opens for business.

There are a lot of people who can’t wait.

Cleveland has been in football withdrawal for two seasons now, ever since owner Art Modell packed up the original Browns and shipped them off to Baltimore as a replacement for the original Colts, now playing in Indianapolis.

Now there are stirrings in the city where Otto Graham and Jim Brown once won championships, a renewal of a football legacy that once made the Browns a national franchise, a sort of the Notre Dame of the NFL.

Fans remember. They’re buying tickets with nothing more to cling to than the team name, its traditional brown and orange colors and that big empty hole where Municipal Stadium once stood.

Bill Futterer, caretaker president of the franchise, reported to the league owners last week that the player-less, stadium=less Cleveland Browns had received 52,449 season-ticket applications. That means this invisible team has sold tickets to more fans for football than splashy Jacobs Field holds for baseball.

In 1995, the last season of their previous incarnation, the Browns sold 39,100 season tickets. More than 90% of those people have applied for tickets to the new stadium, which will hold between 68,000 and 72,000. The 10,000-seat Dawg Pound, a bawdy bleacher section with an anything-goes reputation, appears to be sold out.

All this for a team that doesn’t exist and a stadium still to be built.

Futterer’s report to the owners came just a couple of days after the Tennessee Oilers drew 17,071 to the Liberty Bowl for a game against Cincinnati, and the Arizona Cardinals packed 38,959 into Sun Devils Stadium for the New York Giants.

And those teams were selling real live games with real live players.

The Oilers are becoming a major problem for a league that is accustomed to sellouts. This is a lame-duck team, stuck for two seasons in Memphis, Tenn., while it awaits a fancy, new stadium in Nashville. Does it surprise anybody that Memphis isn’t exactly embracing this caretaker role?

The Oilers were welcomed by a crowd of 30,171, half the capacity of the Liberty Bowl, for their home opener. That’s about how many showed up to light candles at Graceland without a football game and without Elvis, either.

The team’s attendance elevator has been stuck in the down position ever since with just over 17,000 fans rattling around the 62,000-seat stadium in each of the next two games.

The Cardinals, of course, have been struggling in the Arizona desert for a while now. Only twice in nine years has the team averaged more than 47,000 fans per game and that’s with Dallas consistently contributing crowds of better than 70,000 for the last six seasons.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the success story under construction in Cleveland is the diversity of the ticket applications. So far, fans from 38 states have placed orders, paying anywhere from $250 to $1,500 for their personal seating licenses and up to $400 per seat beyond that.

Included in this outpouring of affection and checks are two applications from Hawaii and 10 from Alaska. Those could be world champion road trips. And the resulting tailgate parties ought to really be special.