Uncovering the Championship Legacy: Rich Shmelter Talks 1964 Cleveland Browns

It's the Cleveland Browns.

Rich Smelter is here to tell us all about this and his Dynasty series coming up in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hays, is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And it is time to go into another author's book, and we have a great one on pro football history.

Rich Smelter is our friend that has come on quite a bit on our show and talked about a lot of different things, mostly from the California area.

But he's got an interesting book that's non Californian.

I'll let him introduce it in a second.

Rich, welcome back to the Pig Pen, Darren.

Thank you so much.

I cannot wait to get back in that pig pen.

I missed it so much.

I want to get all nice and dirty.

Well, we're.

That didn't come out good.

You know what I meant?

Yeah, yeah.

There's no dirty talk here, Rich.

Come on now.

That's right.

But we are going to get down.

We're going to get down and dirty in some pro football history today.

You have a book that just came out that's catching everybody by storm, and I see it all over social media.

People are excited about this.

And why don't you tell us the title of the book and where folks can get it to start off with.

It'S part of my championship diary series, and it's called Drive to Conquest.

This was an NFL championship two years prior to the Super Bowl.

They actually did play championship games between, you know, before the super bowl, so.

And the Browns were one of the last ones to win this.

Win the championship before the Super Bowl.

Well, that.

That is cool.

And that's actually.

That's the Browns last NFL title, correct to date.

Yes.

Okay.

And I don't know if they're going to make one this year, but.

But, no, I don't think so.

Unfortunately.

But you know, you always have that championship and some of the other ones to keep people warm.

Right, right.

So what, what made this, this season and this particular Cleveland Browns team interesting to you to want to write a.

Book on this was this goes back to when I was in junior high.

I remember I got a.

For Christmas, I got a punt passing kick, the old punt passing kick library and was called championship teams of the NFL.

My folks got it for me for Christmas, so I took it to junior high.

And every day in study hall, I read one of the.

One of the stories and there were five of them in there.

The last one was the 64 Browns.

And again, I was, you know, in the pre Super.

I was in the super bowl era.

And I at that time, and I couldn't understand what that was all about.

Like, how could the Browns win a championship when they were never to the Super Bowl?

Well, then it all made sense.

I started to fall in love with that team and started to talk to, you know, some relatives that were there and everything.

So that love affair started then.

And then around in the later 80s, early 90s, I told my wife, I said, I go, I really would like to try to write a book.

And I was encouraged by some good friends of mine and my wife also.

So I put this project together and it was, it was a labor of love, but it was kind of not, not, not as professional as you would want it to be.

So then I got involved in other projects and that kind of got put on the back burner.

It was still on a floppy disk.

And back in, I believe it was February.

I told my wife, I said, you know what, I have that book.

It's going to be 60 years.

So.

So we got a device that could transfer it from a floppy disk onto the Apple.

I got it, I put it onto the Apple and the manuscript came up.

Well, I had to shine it up a little bit and I dissected it quite a bit.

I basically rewrote it and it came out to be a really interesting book.

I don't mean to be arrogant about it, but I was looking at it.

I even told my wife and friends, I said, this is really pretty good.

It really came out good and I just had a wonderful time doing it.

And I've always loved that team.

That team is my, one of my all time favorite teams of any team in NFL history.

Just, just fantastic.

You know, they came out of nowhere.

And to me, I believe it was the greatest upset in NFL history pre Super Bowl.

They beat the Colts also.

The Browns beat the Colts in 64 for the championship.

But not only did they beat them, but they shut them out and they annihilated them and they weren't supposed to win.

So why don't you, why don't you give us a little bit of background about how, how their season went.

Why you, why you say that?

Why the such a miracle?

Give us a little bit background how they did that year.

They were, they were called the laugh champs even though they wound up going 10, three and one and they were slow at many positions.

Their, their past defense was ranked last in the NFL.

They were, they, you know, minus, with the exception of Jim Brown, the offense.

You had Paul Warfield and Jim Brown.

You also had Gary Collins, that was a five phenomenal receiver, a Pennsylvania guy, I'm sure, you know, and Frank Ryan at quarterback, who was a steady, steady game manager.

But he didn't stand out like a Johnny Unitis did.

Of course, not too many people did.

And they went through the season and when they won the Eastern Conference at that time, there was an Eastern Conference and the Western Conference dividing up into the NFL.

And when they won it, they, they won on the last week of the season.

And people were saying, oh, they're the laugh champs.

They're, you know, they're, they're only honor is to go into the championship game and get annihilated by the Baltimore Colts.

Who did they play in the Eastern Conference championship game?

There was no, there was no championship at that.

It was just, you know, basically they.

Had the two best teams, the best of the east versus the best of the West.

Right, Exactly.

There was no playoff at that time.

Those playoffs started a few years later when the super bowl era started.

That's when they had that playoffs for the Eastern Conference championship and all.

And then you met the chant, the champion of the west to go to the Super Bowl.

So there were two playoff games at that time, but with this, with this game, unless this, unless the conference ended in a tie, then you were the champion of that.

So they went into the championship game.

Now at that time, the Baltimore Colts were 12 and 2.

They were a wrecking machine.

The Browns were 10, 3 and 1.

However, the Browns got to host the championship game because it was on an alternating basis for the hosting.

So it just so happened that it fell on the Eastern Conference.

Whoever was going to win the Eastern Conference was going to host the national NFL championship game, so wound up being in Cleveland and the Colts came here and it was just, you know, the Baltimore Colts, they were the number one ranked offense.

They had an incredible team with Lenny Moore, he was the comeback player of the year.

Scored 20 touchdowns.

Johnny Unitis, Raymond Berry, I mean this team was just loaded, just loaded.

And the Cleveland Browns had a slow secondary.

They, they didn't, you know, they weren't respected as far as the defensive line.

And again, the only person that he had any respect was Jim Brown.

And yet they went in there and they had an incredible game pro, a game plan that set up things.

They always said head coach Blanton Collier and it's like you give this guy a pint of ice cream, pint of vanilla ice cream and a projector and he will dissect anything and turn into an incredible game plan.

And along with Bernie Parrish, the one defensive back and Walter beach, the other defensive back, they started to watch these films and they said, you know, if we, if we give a little bit of a bump to these, to these receivers because Johnny Unitedus had timing, he would go back seven steps, boom, fire a pass.

And that receiver had to be right where that was.

That was pure timing.

And they just knew each other so well.

They disrupted it and they said they had a, the Cleveland Browns had a charging line as opposed to a reactionary line.

They just charged right in there.

So they said if they could apply pressure on unit and the linebackers could drop back and plug up those holes and those defensive best could just do that little nudge and throw them off, they had a chance and darn if they didn't, they shut them out.

Johnny United has had the worst day of his professional career.

Only through for 95 yards, which usually for that in one quarter and.

Right.

Yeah.

And the Browns just, just let loose and you know, Gary Collins caught three touchdown passes.

Jim Brown ran for over 100 yards.

And he wound up saying at the end that that was the greatest thrill of his life.

You know, just to go back on, to clarify to the listeners.

So back in 64 when they had the.

The east and The west for 14 teams in the NFL is before the merger, like you said.

Well, the, the Baltimore Colts were in Baltimore, but they were in the Western division with the packers and the Vikings and the Lions and the Rams, bears and the 49ers.

So they were really the only.

They were an east coast team in the west where you had the Chicago Cardinals at the time.

I believe they're still in Chicago at that time.

Oh, St.

Louis.

They were saying were they St.

Louis.

Okay, so but you had Dallas in the east and in St.

Louis in the East.

Yeah, and the East.

So it's kind of weird.

So the NFL is just as screwed up back then as it was now where they had teams at.

So.

So.

Okay, so yeah, you had, I mean you had some amazing players and believe.

Wasn't that the year.

Jim Brown had an amazing season that year too, didn't he have Jim.

He ran for 1,863 yards.

Set the all time at that time single season NFL rushing record for, for that he won the player of the year that your most valuable player on 5th 64.

He ran four.

And so he had, he had a solid year.

I mean, Jim Brown had a solid.

Year every year he played for 14 game season.

That's, that's pretty good.

14 over 100 yards a game.

Oh yeah, he was outstanding.

He was just dominant, absolutely dominant.

And he had a, he had a great championship game.

And if Gary Collins didn't catch two touch or three touchdown passes, Jim Brown probably would have been the MVP of that game.

Wow.

So, so this, this resonated to you.

How many years later when you were reading that punt pass and kick, you know, was this, you know, I know you're, you're in your late 20s now, so I'm trying in my late 20s.

Yeah.

So I didn't graduate in the late 20s in case.

No, I'm in my late 20s.

I, a lot of people say I'm the oldest, 21 year old.

They know.

So I'm just going with that.

So, so you were, I mean this is like a decade after I was.

About 13 and then I decided to.

I was 13 in junior high and then I decided to write it.

I was, I was, I was always interested in reading different things and everything.

And I said, you know what, I want to try it.

I want to take a shot at writing something.

And I said, you know what?

At that time I only had access to the Cleveland newspapers and all, so I said, you know, I love the 64 Browns championship team.

So I went down to the library, got all the information I could out of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Cleveland Press, and every single article I could find on this.

And I had it all put together in a nice little scrapbook and then I decided to write and I wrote the book out and like I said, I sent it to a couple publishers in early night in the early 90s and all.

And that was before you could publish things yourself.

And it was, it was.

It was a different business at that time.

And it got rejected.

And I got a little, you know, like, oh, geez, you know, I mean, you don't.

You don't expect.

You just expect this grand, you know, grand entrance.

They were just going to come and hoist you up on their shoulders and be so happy that you saved their company.

And that didn't happen.

So I decided to shift gears and went on to other things.

And, and, but that.

But then as time went on, I always kind of had that in the back of my mind.

And every other project that I did, I said, you know, that book is still.

Book is still looming around somewhere.

And I kept looking at that floppy disk, and then finally this year, I was like, you know, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

And like I said, I cleaned it up.

And so it really came out great.

It really.

I was very.

I'm very, very pleased with it.

And it's an honor to see that finally come out like that.

It was something that if I could have looked back, if I could go back into the past and look at how it was going to turn out, I wouldn't have believed it.

You have such access to do so much more now in the publishing field, and it was just incredible to see it made into a book and being well received.

So I appreciate the kind words that you said earlier about that.

I think the other.

I guess what I was trying to get at, though, Rich, is that when you said that you read about this Cleveland team, this isn't like two years after it happened.

This is more like a decade after they.

They won the championship, right?

Oh, yeah.

I was, I was 13 when I read the book, and the Browns were already.

That was, let me see, 64.

It was about nine years, nine or 10 years after the Browns championship that I read the.

Read the book.

Is that what you were going for?

Yeah, that's a go for it.

That's okay.

You've got some interesting stuff in there.

And I think, you know, one of the things I think that's maybe we don't realize, you know, because this is like almost a decade, I think, after the Browns, three previous NFL championships and of course, their AAFC titles before that.

But.

But this is the second year that, that Collier is their coach.

Paul Brown's, you know, he.

He's unseated, you know, by ownership a year before that.

So Collier has.

He's in his second year and takes his Browns team to the championship game and they win it.

I mean, I.

That's.

It's another amazing thing.

You know, the.

It's not.

There's some stragglers, players from the Brown, Paul Brown era, but this is a blatant Colliers team at that point.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, Paul Brown was a naturally a fantastic coach, but he got stagnant and he didn't want to change ways.

You know, the NFL was changing a little bit.

He didn't want to change.

Other teams were catching up to him and a lot of teams were taking their.

Taking his assistant coaches to coach their teams and they were becoming successful a lot like you saw player, you know, people like, let's say from the Bill Belichick coaching tree.

Now, maybe those players didn't become as successful as Belichick, but let's say Bill Parcels, you know, he had some people that won Super Bowls, you know, Bill.

Bill Belichick one of them.

But people were, you know, he had Wee Bubank as a coach and we bunk got very successful with the, with the Colts and then later with the Jets.

So he had quite a few, quite a few people that were going off and he just refused to change, you know, and his old coaches were.

Were expanding their horizons and he just thought his way was the only way.

And all the other previous ownership, they didn't want nothing.

You know, they.

They minded their own business.

They, you know, Paul Brown's word was.

Was.

Was it.

So then here comes Art Modell as the owner when he bought the team, and I believe it was 61.

And all of a sudden he wanted to ask questions, well, why is this?

Why is this?

And Paul Brown was very stoic to him.

Didn't really want to deal well with him.

He didn't like having this man meddle in his business and he refused to change.

Jim Brown voiced his opinion and is not that pop.

Not that Jim Brown didn't get along with Paul Brown, but the relationship was strained and it probably would have come to.

He wanted to get out of Cleveland.

And you know, you're not, you know, if it came down to Paul Brown or Jim Brown at that time, Paul Brown was going to go and Art Modell did something that was probably the second worst thing that he did to the city of Cleveland, you know, beside moving the team 95.

He got rid of Paul Brown.

So, you know, you get rid of this legend and you bring in his Blanton Collier gentleman and who is also an assistant under Paul Brown for years.

And all of a sudden this man turns around and he was.

He was more of a listener.

You know, if a player would come up to Paul Brown and say this and that, he didn't want to hear it.

It was, you know.

You know, he wanted to go abc.

He didn't want to go from A to Z.

And he didn't care about anything in between.

Where Blatt and Collier was different like that.

If Jim Brown said something or Frank Ryan, he listened to him.

Of course, Frank Ryan was a, you know, PhD.

He was.

He was a doctor of mathematics.

So you kind of wanted to listen to him a little bit.

And so Blanchard was willing to listen.

He was an incredible, incredible game planner and all.

And he was just a kind gentleman.

He used to always say, you know, shake my left hand, it's closest to my heart.

You know, he just had that, that.

That Kentucky gentleman aspect about him.

And the players just, you know, flocked to him like that.

And it just all clicked.

It all clicked a year after he took over as coach.

And I said, it's just an incredible story.

Just incredible story.

So who were.

Okay, we know that the Colts were their ultimate opponent in the championship game.

Who are some of the rivalries that they had that year, you know, during the regular season?

The St.

Louis Cardinals, now the Arizona Cardinals, they were the team, actually.

The St.

Louis Cardinals were supposed to win that division.

Cleveland was supposed to finish in third place.

And that's what made it, again, so.

So amazing.

Third place at best, you know, and St.

Louis was supposed to win that division, I'm sorry, that conference.

And then you had the New York Giants, who won many champions.

You know, they.

They were division champions for.

They just wrote a crest of winning championship, you know, winning at least conference championships.

They won one NFL championship, but they just couldn't get past the Colts or the packers in a couple of the championship games.

And of course, the Bears in 63.

And then age caught up with them, but they were still a fierce rival of Cleveland, but it wasn't there anymore.

I mean, they only won two games that year.

So the Giants.

The Giants were kind of out, but I would say St.

Louis was.

And Dallas was coming up on the rise.

And they gave.

Dallas gave them a tough, tough time, a real tough scare in one of the games.

But it was St.

Louis that they fought.

They fought to a 33, 33 tie in week two.

And then just as the Browns were ready to clinch the Eastern Conference title, they went down to St.

Louis.

It was a muddy game, and they had Champagne waiting in the locker room.

And the champagne didn't get popped because St.

Louis beat them.

So St.

Louis almost snuck in there.

If the Browns did not win against the Giants, then St.

Louis would have gone to the championship game.

But they annihilated the Giants in the season finale.

Just nine, 11, I think.

I believe it was 52 to 20.

Yeah, that was.

I'm looking at the standings, you know, Cleveland with that 10, 3 and 1, the Cardinals 9, 3 and 2.

So that was a two horse race because the Eagles were next and they were like 6 and 8.

They weren't even at 500.

But in the west, you know, the Colts were, you know, they were top dog at 12 and 2.

But then you have a log jam of the packers, the Vikings and the Lions, all with five losses and seven or eight wins.

So it's amazing.

These are Lombardi's Packers.

That's what I was first saying.

I was looking.

I'm like, where are Lombardi's packers at?

You know, they.

Oh, yeah, they're like sandwiched in between championships here in that year.

Yeah, they were.

They.

They fell.

They fell after they won in 61, 62, then 63.

Paul Horning got suspended for gambling.

Fell, fell on a fence.

And then age was starting to catch up with them a little bit, too.

So Lombardi was kind of.

It's funny because, I mean, he went 9 and 5, and he actually beat the Cleveland Browns that year.

They beat the Browns later in the season, the regular season, and it was like, you know, you still had Jim Taylor, who was a tough runner and everything like that, but again, he was starting to show wear and tear, and the packers were getting a little long on the tooth.

But again, another great story is the year after that.

And that's a future project of mine, by the way.

The 65 packers in my championship diary series.

I can't help it, man.

Some of the.

I just love these human interest stories with these, with these teams.

Just amazing.

Well, since you're segwaying into it, why don't you tell us a little bit about what the championship series is and, you know, where you, where you're at so far with, with the series and, and where you plan on going.

What's your, your utopia situation for it?

I did the championship.

And then I turned this 64 Browns into a championship diary.

And I'm going to do one with the 65 packers coming up.

I already have the outline all set for it and all.

So that hopefully that should be coming out early next year.

Well, maybe March or April.

I have some other things in the fire.

We'll talk later.

But I have some other things in the fire.

But I just kind of like to look at some teams, the human interest stories and just, you know, just some of these older, older teams that I like to try to bring to the forefront.

And I'd like to do one maybe on the 56 giants, another great team.

I mean they, you know, Frank Gifford and Charlie Connerly and they just had Sam Huff and Lombardi and Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry were assisting coaches on that team.

So.

And you know, it was in the big city of New York.

It was.

And that they always said that the 58 title game was the turning point of professional football.

You know, they could go into any restaurant, they were, you know, young, good looking guys and they would just go in there and they just, you know, women were crazy about them and all.

So that was kind of like a.

And it was.

And it was in a big city like that.

So that's an interesting story for me.

And I just try to like cherry pick some of these teams and I'll probably do some more Super Bowls, also some more super bowl teams.

But I like that pre super bowl, those pre super bowl stories are fascinating.

Yeah.

And it's stories that most modern football fans don't know about, you know, and you know, you and I, well, maybe I definitely wasn't alive then.

And you know, there's a lot of people younger than me that are football fans and we don't know about.

So all we know is what we read and what video tape is left of it.

Well, you know, Darren, the amazing thing is that, that I noticed was maybe 15 to 20 years ago when you talked about professional football history writing, a lot of people didn't gravitate toward it.

And they were more gravitated toward baseball.

I mean, baseball, baseball history.

Because it's baseball history.

And now all of a sudden, I started to notice a trend, I'd say maybe over the past five years, that all of a sudden professional football history is catching up like that, and more people are interested in that.

You see a lot of these books coming out.

Such is the case with yours, the great books that you.

That you're writing and, you know, and folks, if you didn't get Darren's first book, I mean, it's.

It's amazing.

I'll let Darren share more about it, but you can almost smell.

Smell the environment that he's trying to describe, and it's just incredible writing.

So kudos to you, Darren.

Thank you.

Very kind words.

My pleasure.

Awesome guy.

But I just.

I just like that.

I just like those.

Those stories.

And I.

I think a lot of people, especially now over in Europe, a lot of people over there, are starting to really find out about the NFL over there, you know, professional football over there now, American professional football.

And people are really interested in it over there, and now they're starting to take an interest in this more and more over there.

So, you know, if your favorite team is the Cleveland Browns or the Las Vegas Raiders or Pittsburgh Steelers, maybe you want to know a little bit about the history.

And I know when I was.

When I was coming up and I would read those punt passing kick books, you'd see these books.

And I all of a sudden got interested in the 64 Browns because of that and some of the other teams that are listed in there and the 51 Rams.

And then I wrote that book on professional football Goes Hollywood, and it was geared up toward.

Toward the 51 Rams.

So everything stems from something, you know, And I just think professional football history is really interesting right now, and people are trying to suck them up like sponges.

Yeah, I think that's definitely right.

And I think this is a great book for people.

They want to take that jump and get some holiday reading in.

I think it's a great opportunity.

So, Rich, why don't we take this opportunity again to tell the name of your book and where folks can get it?

Yeah.

And you just go to Amazon Books and punch in Drive to Conquest, and it'll come up.

It's an ebook as well as a physical copy.

All right, get either or.

All right.

Well, Rich, we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing this history of your book and writing the book to preserve the football history.

And you know, we're excited about your next venture and your books on your championship series and can't wait to talk to you about that, too.

So thanks for joining us today.

Thank you, Darren, so much.

And Merry Christmas to everybody.

Have a happy holiday.

And I hope if you do get the book, I hope that you enjoy it and thank you so much for listening and I love coming on your show, Darren.

Anytime.

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