Brown, businessman Arthur B. McBride, and Robert H Gries formed the team in 1945 as a pioneer part of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC).
The Cleveland Browns are a Cleveland-based professional American football club. They compete in the National Football League as a member team of the American Football Conference North division, and are named after initial coach and co-founder Paul Brown.
Arthur B. McBride
Arthur B. “Mickey” McBride born on March 20, 1888, in Chicago, Illinois, United States –Died on November 10, 1972) was the founder of the Cleveland Browns, an All-America Football Conference and National Football League professional American football team.
From 1944 to 1953, when McBride was the Browns’ custodian, the team won seven championship games and five league championships, making it the most dominant period in Cleveland sports history.
Robert H Gries
Robert H. Gries, a descendant of Cleveland’s longest-running Jewish family, was a founding investor in both the Cleveland Rams and the Cleveland Browns.
Gries hosted the other owners of the American Football League for weekly lunches in 1936 as general manager of the May Company department store in downtown Cleveland, where they totaled expenditure on a napkin and put in cash to cover the team’s bills.
Fearing that their investments would be lost if World War II closed down the NFL, the Cleveland-based owners sold the club to Reeves, a New York City grocery magnate, who quickly considered and then retreated the face of local outrage and the condemnation of the other Team owners.
