headquarters, countless more faxes and phone calls
demanding injustice be righted. Modell fled on a private
jet and never returned.
“... I took three days off work just to fax letters.”
“I didn’t watch football for four years.” “A piece of us
was taken.” “It’s our team.”
Now these six men sip their beers and reflect on
the past, on the decades when they had to bribe their
grandchildren to attend games. But they also envisionDepression to do so—the stadium remained packed.
That was the era of Brian Sipe and Bernie Kosar, and
the fans were desperate then. The Browns imbued them
with a pride they couldn’t often find elsewhere, even
with all the heartbreak. Red Right 88. The Drive. The
Fumble. So when Modell called a noon press confer-
ence in November 1995 and announced he was moving
his team, the city responded with fury: lawsuits, pro-
tests, thousands of orange postcards mailed to leagueON THE WORST day
of the worst year of
his life, after the Browns
fired him as their coach
last Oct. 29, Hue Jackson
told Cleveland’s owner
and GM to “get the f---
out” of his office. He
grabbed a few things and
drove home as fast as he
could, windows up, no
radio. Then he went down
to his basement guest
room, turned off the lights
and didn’t come upstairs
for three days. “I could
have laid there for
months,” he says.
Nine months later it all
still hurts, in part because
Jackson defines himself
as a football coach, and
his bosses decided to
pay him to sit at home
rather than to lead their
team. It also hurts,
though, because he is
human. Everyone knows
why Jackson was fired.
The 3-36-1 record in 21/2
seasons with the Browns
is there for all to see. “I
failed tremendously,” he
says. “Regardless of how
you look at it.”
But few see the private
pain. Jackson never felt
depressed before last
fall, never descended
so deeply into unending
gloom.
Jackson, 53, ponders
this all as he reclines
on his backyard patio in
Cleveland, beside his pool,
with a river sparkling in
the distance. A sliver of
tequila fills the bottom of
his glass. Chino, a golden
doodle, settles at his feet.
Not all is well, though.
Twenty-five minutes to
the southeast the Browns
are beginning trainingcamp, their Super Bowl
prospects brightened by
rainbows of optimism.
Jackson, meanwhile, will
be moving to a new home
in Cincinnati in a few
weeks. Everything feels
unnatural, out of sync. For
each of the previous 32
summers he reported to a
football field, identified as
a football coach. Until now.
This summer Jackson is
a Dance Dad who drops off
the youngest of his three
daughters, nine-year-old
Haydyn, at practices; he’s
a voracious reader and a
budding businessman and
a workout fanatic who hits
the gym twice a day. In the
months since he finally
started to climb out of his
funk—his wife, Michelle,
says the dark period “is
still going on”—he’s killed
his newfound free time
by following the Lakers,
familiarizing himself with
his finances, changing a
few lightbulbs and getting
closer to the family he
ghosted for so many
seasons. In most ways life
has never seemed more
normal. And he hates that.
This is the realityof a coach watching
for the first time in an
eternity as a season
starts without him. But
Jackson’s record as a
head coach complicates
any sympathy he might
garner. He is not just a
gridiron lifer but also a
two-time former NFL
coach who never posted
a winning season, who
went 0–16 in ’17 and who
holds an 11-44-1 career
mark, the second-worst in
history.
Jackson declines
to trash his old team;
he won’t get into the
Cleveland tanking
operation that he took
over, when management
would regularly cut good
players to shed salary
and traded down in
drafts to stockpile future
picks. He knows that
such sentiments would
only sound like excuses,
that his many detractors
would point out that the
Browns went 5–3 after
he left.
He’s not asking for
sympathy, though maybe
he deserves some,
considering that he’s aFORMER CLEVELAND COACH
HUE JACKSON IS
GRAPPLING WITH LIFE
IN THE SHADOW OF THREE
TELLING NUMBERS: 3-36-1
by GREG BISHOP