One Week Shy Of 50 Years Since A Memorable Browns/Giants Game

The reason I do not consider the current, 1999 NFL expansion team, the “real” Cleveland Browns is not that they are (0-11), a far cry from the old/real? Browns’ sustained minimum good, and at times great play from (1950-1973) in the NFL, (before that, they won  All American Football Conference titles in all 4 years of that league’s existence), but the fact that the original team moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens, subsequently winning two Super Bowls, an overblown game for NFL supremacy the old/real? Browns never even qualified to play in.

Yet, I cite the fact that today when the New York Giants face the Cleveland Browns, it is one week shy of exactly 50 years since a memorable game between teams from the same city, if not the same teams, that was also played in Cleveland.

This year’s calendar is the same as the one in 1966. On Sunday December 4, 1966 (why did not the NFL, which if nothing else, is good for creative scheduling, slate this tilt for next week?) the Browns, in their first year sans the great Jim Brown, since #32 arrived on the Cleveland scene for the 1957 season, overcame a (34-14) third quarter deficit, and won (49-40).

Cleveland destined to fail to win the NFL Eastern Conference crown, raised their record to (8-4) but at the day’s end trailed the (9-2-1) Dallas Cowboys by a game and a half with just two games remaining in the then 14 game “reg” season.

The Giants’ record  fell to a horrendous (1-10-1), but surely deserved credit for their effort that day in (I looked this up) 18 degree (Fahrenheit temperature scale) Cleveland.

Huh?? I just know it was truly cold in Cleveland that day, one week shy of 50 years ago today. PS as I typed the headline which includes “50 years ago,” a program “promo” on WNYC included “50 years ago” or was it “over 50 years ago,” that concerning the tragic death of Kitty Genovese, 52 years ago.