Cleveland To Get Expansion Team

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 23, 1998 / 8:07 PM EST / CBS Sportsline

The NFL approved an expansion team for Cleveland on Monday, returning the Browns to the field in 1999 in an unprecedented move that restores one of football's storied franchises.

With unanimous support from owners, the league will expand to 31 teams for the 1999 season, keeping its commitment to put a club in Cleveland after the Browns moved to Baltimore in 1995.

The Browns will return to the AFC Central, playing their first exhibition game against Dallas in the Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio, next year. The first regular season game is supposed to be played on Aug. 21, 1999 in a new stadium being built on the same site as old Cleveland Stadium, which was torn down after the move.

The $247 Million,72,000-seat stadium is expected to be completed in time for the Browns' first game.

NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue also announced that the league hired Joe Mack as player personnel director of the Browns. Mack held that position with the Washington Redskins form 1989-94 and helped build the Carolina Panthers expansion team as assistant general manager in 1994.

The swift approval came as a surprise because a few owners, including Jerry Jones of the Cowboys, were apparently not sold on expansion. Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, who toured Cleveland's new stadium recently, was one of the owners who made a strong pitch for expansion at the meeting.

"It was partly what we saw in Cleveland, that the stadium is becoming a reality," Tagliabue said. "Partly, it was our conversations with the mayor and how the fans feel and their desire for an expansion team."

The league will now focus on taking applications for an owner, setting a franchise fee, which is expected to be in the $350 million range. The front office will be assembled by George Young, retired general manager of the New York Giants and a league vice president.

Owners decided not to let those unsolved issues delay announcing expansion for Cleveland any longer.

"There was so much speculation about teams possibly moving there, I think we need to put that behind us," said Detroit Lions owner William Clay Ford Jr., who attended the meetings for the first time in years.