David Rosenthal

They

And the game becomes boring.

There's no drama.

It's a foregone conclusion that the Browns are going to win.

If your team is playing the Browns, and the Browns do great at home, but when they're on the road, they're like, well, the fans are like, why am I even going to go?

Well, the current Browns are not the same Browns as the old Browns.

That's some serious rewriting of history there by the NFL.

Yes.

It's even more important back then because there was radio, but there wasn't really TV yet.

Even though we're in the post-World War II era, these first few years, five years after the war...

the install base of TV was just starting to roll out across America.

So this is still an in-person game.

And so the business model of professional sports was ticket sales, in-person attendance at the games.

I don't think the AAFC model of the Browns being dominant would work ever, but at least today you could watch the games on TV.

They'd be like, oh, I'm always going to see a show when the Browns are playing.

That wasn't the case back then.

You had to get butts in seats.

That was the only way you were going to make money.

This becomes a feedback loop.

If you don't make money as a team, you can't afford to put a quality level of play on the field, which further tips the competitive dynamic out of balance.