Browns' move catches the modern mood

Some wept. Others cursed. Before the game started, instead of tearing tickets ushers stamped them with a commemorative seal. When it was over, out on the Dawg Pound bleachers where the fans are the fiercest and the winds from Lake Erie the most frigid, they let off firecrackers and hurled rows of ancient wooden seats on to the field. And everyone wanted to get their hands round the throat of Art Modell, owner of the Browns, betrayer of the entire city of Cleveland, and understandably nowhere to be seen.

This year of 1995 has been one to drive the best adjusted Cleveland sports fan into the arms of his psychiatrist. Just two months ago there was the joyous spectacle of the Indians, baseball's eternal laughing stock, turning history on its head and reaching the World Series for the first time in 40 years. Now, instead of rapturous disbelief, terminal despair.

Sporting goods stores across the city are knee deep in unsold Browns bric-a-brac. But who wants to buy a dead man's clothes? The Cleveland Browns, part of the landscape of northern Ohio for half a century, among the oldest, most famous and well supported franchises in the National Football League are leaving town - uprooted by their owner and the irresistible appeal of mega-bucks in Baltimore. Such though is the norm in this era of the wandering US major league sports franchise.

On Sunday the Browns played their 344th and almost certainly their last game at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, that gelid sandstone cavern better known as the Mistake By The Lake, lovable precisely because it was so awful. The game was an all-Ohio affair against the Cincinnati Bengals. For the record the Browns won 26-10, their first win in six games since Modell did the deed with Baltimore. Theoretically, NFL owners could veto the move when they meet next month. Just possibly Congress will pass a proposed "Fan Protection Act" that would have the same effect. The Cleveland city fathers, meanwhile, are taking Modell to court in a last ditch effort to make him honour a lease which runs until 1998.

In fact, however, it will take not an Act of Congress but an Act of God to prevent the Browns from becoming merely the latest casualties of the demented but ruthless sporting economics that are sending tremors through the established orders of not just American football, but hockey and baseball as well. Art Modell claims to lose more than $10m (pounds 6m) a year on the Browns at antiquated Municipal Stadium. Baltimore however has virtually guaranteed him annual profits of $30m - not to mention the privilege of playing in a brand-new purpose built arena, whose $200m bill is being footed by the taxpayers of Baltimore and the state of Maryland. A generous bridging loan from a local bank is even taking care of the moving costs. And there is nothing Cleveland can do about it.

Forget Senators, Congressmen and the mightiest big city mayor. They are putty in the hands of the true dictators of modern America, the owners of the major league sports franchises. The reason is quite simple: there are too few teams for the cities that would like to have one. Hence a bidding war and from the owners' point of view, the seller's market to end them all.

No matter that week in, week out for five decades, 70,000 Clevelanders have turned out on Sunday afternoons to cheer the Browns. Such loyalty counts as nothing against the huge revenues to be generated from the $100,000- a-year skyboxes for corporate dignitaries, with which any modern stadium necessarily bristles. Too late did Cleveland wake up to the fact. Last month, the city approved a $175m "sin tax" on alcohol and cigarettes, to modernise Municipal Stadium. A couple of days earlier, Modell had signed up with Baltimore.

There is at least a certain rough justice in the destination. Back in 1984 Baltimore was at the wrong end of its own team relocation, which hit home like this one - when the Baltimore Colts were moved, literally overnight, to Indianapolis. Now such moves threaten to become commonplace. "If the Browns can go, then no professional sports team is safe," insists Michael White, Cleveland's Mayor, with some justification.

As the final whistle sounded in Cleveland and Browns players ran over to salute the Dawg Pound faithful a final time, the Houston Oilers were playing perhaps their final NFL game at the ageing Astrodome before switching to Nashville, where a state of the art $290m arena awaits. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Arizona Cardinals may be on the move as well. In hockey, teams from Winnipeg and Quebec have migrated south of the 49th parallel. And only an anti-trust exemption dating from 1922 prevents a complete redrawing of the baseball map.

The Houston Astros, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Minnesota Twins are among teams which would move if they could. Indeed, the Astros ownership had signed away the team to a North Virginia investors' group, before the deal was vetoed by the league. Even the most famous franchise of them all, the New York Yankees, could be in danger. George Steinbrenner, the Yankees' owner, threatens to take the team from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, its home for 72 years, to the richer pastures of New Jersey unless he gets a new arena - paid for, naturally, by the taxpayer.

But even for Cleveland, all is not lost. The Bengals are said to be angling for a new stadium in Cincinnati. If they do not get one, their rumoured destination is ... Cleveland. Enter therefore the Cleveland Bengals. True, they won't be the Browns. But at least it is a team.