I’m too young to remember the career of Otto Graham, but it still warmed my heart to read these reflections by area sportwriters Terry Pluto and Don Detore.

In a week filled with buzz about a receiver who celebrated a touchdown by pretending to use a cell phone, a true sportsman is called away. Can you imagine Graham ever making a self-aggrandizing remark? Nope. Not even when he threw for three touchdowns and ran for three more to win the 1954 NFL Championship.

In this age of free agency, league parity, and salary caps, is it even possible to believe that a quarterback could lead a new team to ten straight championship games in a ten-year career, the last of which he was cajoled out of retirement for a salary of $25,000 (equal to $171,455 today)?

This shows not just how far we’ve come, but how great was the stature of the man we mourn today. Who else could have challenged Paul Brown’s decisions and still earn his praise as “the best of them all?”

If any one player was responsible for establishing the Browns as a premiere football institution, inspiring a tradition so strong it would transcend even the departure of the franchise itself, it was Otto Graham. And with its focus on the individual rather than the team, Graham would surely reject the very premise of that assertion.

I hope that the Browns honor Graham with some sort of patch on their uniforms for these last two weeks, starting with the game against the Ravens, who of course embody the anti-Browns more than anyone. But if any Cleveland player wearing that “OG” or “14” emblem then dishonors it with a boastful display of ego, the coach should walk onto the field, personally rip the patch off his jersey, disconnect his face mask, and force him to wear the open-faced helmet while sitting on the bench. When the game is over and the rest of the team has left the field, the player would then have to repeat the offending gesture at the 50-yard line of the emptying stadium before being allowed back into the locker room, where he would spontaneously apologize for upstaging his teammates and the sport itself.