The Cleveland Browns are a NFL team based in Cleveland, Ohio. The team was founded in the 1940s as a charter franchise in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC). Paul Brown, the team's namesake and a pioneering figure in professional football, was its first coach. Under his watch, the Browns won the AAFC championship in all four years of its existence and continued to succeed after moving to the NFL in 1950. Cleveland won the championship in its first NFL season, followed by two more in 1954 and 1955. By then, the team had appeared in 10 straight championship games and won seven. The Browns were NFL champions again in 1964, but have since been only moderately successful, reaching the league's single-elimination playoffs 15 times and appearing in the AFC championship game three times. In 1995, Art Modell, who had purchased the Browns in 1961, announced he was relocating the team to Baltimore, Maryland. The outrage and controversy that erupted, as well as the NFL's desire to keep a team in Cleveland, led to an agreement whereby Modell was cleared to move his team but relinquished ownership of the Browns' name, colors, logos and history. That paved the way for the formation of a reconstituted team that resumed play in 1999 after three years of suspended operations.
