Why Do the Cleveland Browns Have an Elf?

For as long as the Cleveland Browns have existed, they’ve had Brownie the Elf as a mascot.

Programs for the team’s first game, Sept. 6, 1946, against the Miami Seahawks at Cleveland Municipal in the old All-America Football Conference, show a fierce-looking elf giving a stiff-arm while carrying the ball.

It was an artistic rendering for a relatively nebulous concept. The team’s name was taken from its coach, Paul Brown, which didn’t lend itself to a mascot. Thus, the elf was born.

The Plain Dealer artist Fred Reinert was credited with the initial mascot, but the look of the elf changed over the years. Reinert’s successor at The Plain Dealer, Dick Dugan, drew a different elf. The one that appeared on team gear and football cards looked like neither.

In 1961, Art Modell bought the Browns, and reportedly said, “My first official act as owner of the Browns will be to get rid of that little f---er.” And Brownie was phased out. Eventually, so was Paul Brown in January 1963.

“Modell got rid of it because it was tied to Paul Brown,” says Steve King, the team’s unofficial historian. “Modell wanted to carve out his own niche.”

Modell’s role in Browns history is as the man who moved them in 1996, and when the team returned in 1999, the new owner, Al Lerner, brought back Brownie. In 2006, the elf appeared on a patch to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the team’s founding.

The Haslams, who bought the team in 2012, have also given the elf a prominent role. An elf mascot debuted in 2015, and in 2022, thanks to a fan vote, Brownie was painted at midfield at the stadium. The appeal isn’t hard to understand.

“A lot of teams have these streamlined logos, and they do their tests and focus groups,” King says. “This is something somebody drew 80 years ago, and there’s an appeal to that.

“You can’t look at it and not smile. It’s like nothing you see anywhere else.”

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