Former NFL player Chris Canty makes shocking claim about Browns fans’ loyalty

The Cleveland Browns Fans have remained loyal to their team even during some of the lowest points in franchise history.

The 0-16 season in 2017 comes to mind. A 1-32 record in two seasons with Hue Jackson at the helm. The Johnny Manziel experience. The list goes on and on. No moment was worse than Art Modell’s disastrous decision to move the franchise to Baltimore.

This fact still doesn’t sit well with a large portion of fans and remains a sensitive subject. When former NFL player Chris Canty began spreading falsehoods about why the team was taken from Cleveland nearly 30 years ago, Browns fans called him out in force.

“If the fans were so good, why did the team leave in the first place?” Canty asked on his ESPN radio show “Unsportsmanlike Radio” with Michelle Smallmon and Evan Cohen. The conversation began with Smallmon making a list of the best fan bases in football, inexplicably leaving out – in Cohen’s eyes – Cleveland.

As the segment continued, Canty continued to question the team’s departure.

“Their team was removed because of the lack of interest of the fans!” he later exclaimed. “They couldn’t get money for a new stadium. The fans are the ones who ultimately vote on the politicians who decide whether to build a new stadium or not.”

Tell us you don’t understand Cleveland without telling us you don’t understand Cleveland.

The only thing Canty got right about the Browns’ move in 1995 was that, like most NFL team moves, the situation was embroiled in a lot of legal wrangling over how to finance a new stadium. But it certainly wasn’t due to a lack of “fan support,” as the former defensive tackle claims.

Modell’s decision to hoard the revenue from Cleveland Municipal Stadium’s suites came back to haunt him when the Gateway project was approved and the Cleveland Indians moved out of the facility and into their own complex. Modell now had to struggle to pay off the debt he had incurred to buy the team. Eventually, he persuaded city politicians to put a referendum on the ballot that would allow a $175 million sin tax to be levied to rehabilitate the aging stadium.

All the while, Modell was making questionable plans to move the team to Baltimore. He even announced the move before the referendum in the hopes that the vote would fail, but it didn’t. Cleveland fans came out and approved the plan, but Modell moved the team anyway.

The true story of the Browns’ move to Baltimore directly refutes everything Canty claimed about the so-called “lack of support” of Clevelanders for their team.