Arthur B. Modell (born June 23, 1925, Brooklyn, New York) was a National Football League team owner with the Cleveland Browns from 1961-1995 before transferring the team to Baltimore, Maryland, where they were renamed the Baltimore Ravens and served as principal owner from 1996-2004. He is considered by most Cleveland natives to be the most hated man in Cleveland, Ohio.

As Browns owner

During the 1940s and 1950s, he worked in advertising, public relations and television production in New York City. He purchased the Cleveland Browns in 1961 for $4 million, investing only $250,000 of his own money (he borrowed $2.7 million and found partners for the rest).

Unlike the Browns' previous owners, Modell immediately took an active role in the management of the team, and fired legendary coach Paul Brown on January 9, 1963. He did so partly because Brown mostly ignored him and partly because the Browns' players, especially star running back Jim Brown, no longer wanted to play for him due to Brown's autocratic style.

Modell quickly named Brown's assistant, Blanton Collier, as the new coach on January 16, 1963. The team's success continued under Collier, winning the 1964 championship and playing in three other title games.

Using his background in advertising to market the team, Modell also showed a flair for promotions, with one popular innovation coming in 1962 with the scheduling of pro football preseason doubleheaders at Cleveland Stadium. In addition, Modell became active in NFL leadership, serving as NFL President and using his television connections to help negotiate the league's increasingly lucrative television contracts. Modell was also willing to provide his team as an opponent for both the first prime time Thanksgiving game in 1966 and the opening Monday Night Football broadcast in 1970.

Modell took an active role in Cleveland community life and was a leading fundraiser for charities and various Republican Party candidates. He married TV soap opera star Patricia Breslin in 1969, having previously established himself as a well known man about town before that. For many years, he was able to disarm newspaper and TV reporters with his quick wit. For example, with regard to the NFL's innovative policy of sharing all network television revenue on an equal basis per team, so that the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants each got an equal slice of the revenue pie, he joked, "We're 26 Republicans who vote Socialist!"

However, that ingratiating manner did not always translate into smooth relationships with his employees. In 1967, five African American members of the Browns involved in a contract dispute refused to report to training camp. Modell eventually traded or released four of the players, with only standout running back Leroy Kelly staying. Kelly would go on to play out his option, but the restrictive nature of free agency in the NFL at the time severely limited his options.

Subsequent contract battles with defensive end Jack Gregory in 1971 and second round draft pick Tom Skladany in 1977 only served to damage Modell's image among Cleveland fans. Feeling that the constant sellouts the team had enjoyed should be used to bolster the team, fan animosity manifested itself with anti-Modell stadium banners that were quickly removed by Cleveland Stadium management.

As stadium landlord

Modell took control of Cleveland Municipal Stadium in 1973, which had been owned by the City of Cleveland but had become too expensive for the city to operate or maintain. He worked out a deal with the city whereby his newly formed entity, dubbed Stadium Corporation, would rent the stadium from the City for $1 per year, assume all operating and repair costs and would sublease the stadium to its two primary tenants, the Browns and the Indians.

In so doing, Modell effectively became the landlord of the Cleveland Indians. This was a good business decision even though Indians were unsuccessful throughout the 1970s and 1980s and drew small crowds during this period, because the Browns were essentially paying rent to themselves and because Modell, by constructing luxury suites in the ballpark, generated large cash flows from the suite rentals which he did not share with the Indians. Stadium Corp also promoted very successful rock concerts, promoted as The World Series of Rock, at the stadium. These events drew large crowds that damaged the playing field. Modell later alleged that the suites were unsuccessful because he had borrowed the money for construction at the high interest rates that then prevailed, however, he has not accounted for why the revenues the suites generated wasn't used to pay down the debt.

Stadium Corp and Modell were implicated in a lawsuit brought by Browns' minority shareholder Robert Gries of Gries Sports Enterprises, who successfully alleged that Stadium Corp manipulated the Browns' accounting records to help Stadium Corp and Modell absorb a loss on real property that had been purchased in the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville as a potential site for a new stadium. The lawsuit, Gries Sports Enterprises v Cleveland Browns Football Co, 26 Ohio St. 3d 15 (1986), was a leading Ohio case concerning a corporate officer's fiduciary duty towards shareholders.

By the 1990s, Modell was disturbed at what he saw as the financial distress of the Browns and Stadium Corp, as recounted in detail in the book Fumble: The Browns, Modell, & the Move by Michael G. Poplar with James A. Toman (ISBN 0936760117) which was written by a Modell associate and long-time Browns' employee. A less charitable portrait of Modell is contained in the book Glory for Sale: Inside the Browns' Move to Baltimore & the New NFL by Jon Morgan (ISBN 096312465X).

Simultaneously with Modell's concerns, the Cleveland Indians were dissatisfied with Modell's Stadium Corp as their landlord because Modell did not share the suite revenues from baseball games with them, because the rock concerts damaged the baseball field, and because Modell did not expend any funds to repair their locker room. As a result the Indians alleged that they could not attract high quality free agent players to play for them. Eventually the Indians prevailed upon the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County to subsidize a new baseball park (which became known as Jacobs Field) for their exclusive use so that they could get out from under Modell's thumb.

In turn, Modell was dissatisfied with the Indians new ball park because Stadium Corporation's suite rental renvenue decreased once Jacobs Field opened. Many suite customers switched their business from Cleveland Stadium's older suites to Jacobs Field's newer suites, especially because Modell's Stadium Corporation refused to decrease the annual rent for the suites even though the events the suites could be used at decreased substantially with the loss of the Indians as a tenant.

Modell declined to become a tenant in Cleveland's new Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex, instead asking for improvements to Municipal Stadium. Because Modell's Stadium Corp still controlled Municipal Stadium, it may have made more business sense for Modell to try to keep the Indians at Municipal, particularly as the baseball team began to show signs of improvement both on the playing field and at the box office. (The Indians went on to play in the World Series in 1995 and 1997, and sold out 455 straight games at Jacobs Field from 1995 until 2001.)

Move to Baltimore

When the Indians and the City of Cleveland declined to abandon the Gateway Project and improve Municipal Stadium as Modell asked, Modell broke off negotiations with the City and County and decided, in secret, to move the team to Baltimore for the 1996 season. He was assisted in the move by Alfred Lerner, who would go on to become the owner of the new Cleveland Browns franchise in 1998. Modell's move returned the NFL to Baltimore for the first time since the Colts left for Indianapolis after the 1983 season.

The reaction in Cleveland was, not surprisingly, very hostile. Modell had promised numerous times never to move the team. The Brooklyn native mentioned numerous times how saddened and betrayed he and other Brooklynites had felt when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. In fact, he had loudly criticized the Colts' move in 1983, as well as the Oakland Raiders' move to Los Angeles a year earlier. The City of Cleveland sued Modell, the Browns, and Stadium Corp for breach of the Browns' lease, which required the Browns to exclusively use Cleveland Stadium for their home games for several seasons after 1995. Surprisingly for Modell, many Baltimore fans sympathized with Clevelanders' outrage. Baltimore was still smarting from Colts owner Robert Irsay's behavior in the run-up to the Colts' move a decade earlier, culminating in the team being literally sneaked out of town in the middle of the night in the fall of 1984. Many people in Baltimore felt that Irsay stole Baltimore's football history as well and didn't think it was fair for them to steal Cleveland's history in the circumstances.

Eventually, the NFL, Modell and the two cities worked out a deal. Modell was allowed to take his players to Baltimore as the Ravens. However, it would be treated as an expansion team, as Modell had to leave behind the Browns' name, colors and heritage. Cleveland was promised a replacement franchise, in the form either of a new team or another relocated franchise and received a loan from the NFL for new stadium construction. The Browns were resurrected in 1999. Many sportswriters and commentators in and outside of Cleveland reviled him, saying that the honorable course would have been to sell the team to local interests. It is widely believed that the acrimony from the move has kept Modell out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame (he was an also-ran in the 2006 voting). He is considered to be the most hated man in Cleveland, and has not returned to the city since 1996. For example, when his longtime friend, Browns kicking legend Lou Groza, died in 2001, Modell didn't feel safe attending the funeral.

Soon after Modell moved to Baltimore he sold a minority interest to Maryland businessman Steve Bisciotti. After owning an NFL team for 44 seasons, Modell sold controlling interest of the team to Bisciotti in 2003, citing ill health. However, Bisciotti had the option to buy the team at that point after becoming a minority owner in 1999. Modell retains a 1% share and has an office at the Ravens headquarters in Owings Mills, Maryland.

He retained an interest as a maneuver to avoid a claim by the family of a former business advisor who sought to collect an estimated $30 million finder's fee upon Modell's sale of the team to Bisciotti. The family had claimed that under a 1963 agreement Modell owed their father a finder's fee for his original purchase of the team, which fee was to be paid when Modell sold his entire interest.

Modell has no connection to the Modell's chain of sporting goods stores.

External links

*Baltimore Business Journal article following sale

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