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Brownie the Elf, the Cleveland Browns’ new midfield logo, explained

Thanks to a fan vote, the field at FirstEnergy Stadium will feature the running Brownie logo at the 50-yard line, giving the Browns their first midfield logo since 2016. (Photo by Aerial Agents courtesy the Cleveland Browns) Courtesy Cleveland Browns

• Joey Morona, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Brownie the Elf will make his 2022 debut as the Cleveland Browns midfield logo when the team takes on the New York Jets in Sunday’s home opener at FirstEnergy Stadium. The choice was met nationally with a collective “huh?”

On his radio show, NFL Network host Rich Eisen wondered “what the hell” the Browns were thinking by putting a “huge a-- Elf” at midfield. On Twitter, New York Giants beat writer Pat Leonard mocked the design, saying it looks like it belongs on a cereal box. And TikTok personality Jordan Schultz described the move as “a massive L.”

But it isn’t as if the team pulled Brownie out of a hat. Die-hard fans know the lovable Elf’s origins go way back even though his emergence might seem like a new development to the rest of the country. So what do we know about Brownie the Elf?

DEBUT OF BROWNIE THE ELF

The character made its debut in the team’s first season in the old All-America Football Conference (AAFC) in 1946. Owner Arthur McBride named the team after its coach, Paul Brown, but needed a mascot to market it. The name Brownie comes from Scottish folklore. They’re described as cantankerous and mischievous spirits with elf-like features who come out at night to do chores around the house and who invented the chocolate sweet treat we now know as brownies. According to Barry Shuck of dawgsbynature.com, the first iteration of the logo was inspired by a Sears and Roebuck advertisement.

Another version of Brownie -- the now familiar one of the Elf running with the football -- first appeared in an advertisement and program promoting the Browns’ inaugural game against the Miami Seahawks on September 6, 1946.

During the 1960s, a story in The Plain Dealer about the Cleveland Browns was often accompanied by a drawing of Brownie the Elf by sports cartoonist Dick Dugan.

THE GLORY YEARS

Even though the Browns have never had a logo on their helmet, Brownie the Elf officially remained the team’s primary mark from 1946 to 1969, a period during which it won four AAFC and four NFL championships. The character, as drawn by Plain Dealer sports cartoonist Dick Dugan, often accompanied stories about the team in the newspaper.

Things began to change after Art Modell purchased the team in the early 1960s.

“In one of his first command decisions after buying the team in 1961, Modell said, ‘Get rid of the little fellow.’ Or something like that,” longtime Cleveland sports journalist Dan Coughlin wrote in a 1999 book, “Back Home Browns.”

BROWNIE’S COMEBACK

The Elf’s return to prominence began in the late 1990s, appearing on a popular jacket during the three years the city of Cleveland was without a football team, Coughlin wrote. When the team returned in 1999, the new owners, the Lerner family, embraced the character, bringing it back occasionally in team branding and on select merchandise. In 2006, Brownie the Elf was used on a training camp patch commemorating the team’s 60th anniversary. An Elf mascot has been a fixture on the sidelines at FirstEnergy Stadium for several years now, pumping up the crowd during home games.

Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski wears a hoodie featuring Brownie the Elf. Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com

The “angry” version of the character -- the one that’s now painted at the 50-yard-line -- reemerged in 2018 as the logo for training camp. But its real resurgence in popularity can be attributed to head coach Kevin Stefanski.

In 2020, the only season the team has won a playoff game in the last 27 years, Stefanski began wearing a hoodie featuring the running, stiff-arming Elf. It quickly became one of the most sought-after items in the team shop. Then, earlier this summer, in an effort to engage with fans more, Browns executive vice president and partner JW Johnson included both versions of Brownie in a poll in which fans could select the field design used at FirstEnergy Stadium this season. The team hasn’t had a logo at midfield since 2016, but in previous years the Browns helmet occupied that spot.

100,000 votes later, the choice was clear.

“We love the helmet logo, but Brownie has been around for a long time,” Johnson told clevelandbrowns.com. “I think people enjoy him, and we haven’t really showcased him as much as we’d like to. Between myself and (Browns Senior Vice President of Marketing & Media) Brent Rossi, we decided that we should bring him back. It’s been well-received.”

The team believes this is the first time Brownie has been painted at midfield since at least 1999 and perhaps as far back as the start of the Super Bowl era in 1966, if not the first time ever.

Cleveland Browns

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• Official Site of the Cleveland Browns
• Case Western Reserve University - Encyclopedia of Cleveland History - Cleveland Browns
• Pro Football Hall of Fame - Cleveland Browns

• Cleveland Browns - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Official Site of the Cleveland Browns
• Case Western Reserve University - Encyclopedia of Cleveland History - Cleveland Browns
• Pro Football Hall of Fame - Cleveland Browns

• Cleveland Browns - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.

One of the most fascinating features of a magic beach towel is its ability to transform. When it is dry, the towel appears like a regular beach towel, often displaying vibrant colors or stylish patterns. However, when it comes into contact with water, it showcases a hidden design or image that was not visible before.

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Cleveland Browns, American professional gridiron football team based in Cleveland that plays in the American Football Conference (AFC) of the National Football League (NFL). The Browns have won four NFL championships (1950, 1954–55, 1964) and four All-America Football Conference (AAFC) championships (1946–49).

The Browns were founded in 1946 and, as the result of a fan contest to choose their moniker, were named after their first head coach, Paul Brown, who was already a popular figure in Ohio, having coached the Ohio State University to a national collegiate football championship. The Browns were originally members of the AAFC and won the league title in each of the four years of the AAFC’s existence. The most notable of these title-winning teams was the 1948 squad, which went 15–0 to become the first undefeated team in organized professional football history. The Browns were integrated into the NFL along with two other former AAFC teams in 1950, and—despite the prevailing expectations—they continued to have success in the new league. The Browns’ first game in the NFL was a symbolic 35–10 victory over the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles. The early years of Browns football were defined by the stellar play of quarterback Otto Graham and the innovative coaching of Brown, both members of the Hall of Fame, who guided the team to 10 divisional titles in its first 10 years and seven championships between the two leagues. These early Browns teams also featured Lou (“The Toe”) Groza, a kicker and offensive lineman, and Marion Motley, a bruising running back who was one of the first African Americans to play professional football.

In 1957 Cleveland drafted Syracuse University running back Jim Brown, who would set every major NFL rushing record during his nine-year career and gain the status of possibly the greatest football player of all time. Cleveland’s plans to pair Brown in the backfield with another remarkable running back from Syracuse, Ernie Davis, winner of the 1961 Heisman Trophy, came to naught when Davis contracted leukemia and never played a game for the Browns. Nevertheless, Brown helped the team reach four league championship games, one of which they won (1964). Cleveland advanced to the NFL conference championship game twice in the five seasons after he retired in 1966, but the Browns entered into their first prolonged period of mediocrity in the 1970s, from which they emerged briefly in the 1980 season due to the frequent last-minute heroics of a team dubbed the Kardiac Kids.

Quarterback and Ohio native Bernie Kosar was drafted in 1985 and led the Browns to five appearances in the playoffs in his first five years in the league. The Browns lost two memorable AFC championship games to John Elway and the Denver Broncos during this span, each of which is remembered by Browns fans by an epithet describing the last-minute events responsible for Cleveland’s downfall: “The Drive” (1987) and “The Fumble” (1988). The mid-1980s also saw the advent of the Dawg Pound, a section of the end-zone bleachers of the team’s home stadium where a rowdy group of often-costumed fans sat, solidifying the image of Browns supporters as some of the most vocal and devoted fans in the NFL.

The 1990s brought much darker times for the Browns. Owner Art Modell—who had been losing money for years because of an unfavourable stadium lease with the city—orchestrated a move that sent the team to Baltimore in 1996, breaking the hearts of Cleveland’s many loyal fans and shocking many football observers nationwide. The NFL arranged to keep the Browns’ name, logo, colours, and history in Cleveland, and the league promised the city a new team in the near future. Cleveland was without a franchise until 1999, when local businessman Al Lerner purchased an expansion team that assumed the Browns’ name, uniforms, and history.

The expansion Browns earned a playoff appearance in 2002 (a loss to the rival Pittsburgh Steelers) but soon became by many counts the worst franchise in the NFL, tallying 12 seasons with double-digit losses in the 14 years following that postseason berth while cycling through numerous management and coaching regimes in the process. The franchise bottomed out in 2017 by becoming the second team in NFL history (after the 2008 Detroit Lions) to finish a season with an 0–16 record. After a mid-season coaching change, in 2018 the Browns underwent an encouraging turnaround behind the play of rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield, who led the team to its best record in over a decade (7–8–1).

Iconic Cleveland: The History Behind the Browns Helmet Design

The orange-clad, white-striped helmet is known by Browns fans internationally. How did its design come to be?

Several months after the Denver Broncos and one loose football dashed our Super Bowl hopes, Browns owner Art Modell was gearing up for a new season and talking about the excited shiver he still felt each Sunday afternoon.

“It’s a thrilling moment,” Modell told a public relations staffer who was penning an article for the pages of Browns News/Illustrated. “When that first orange helmet pops onto the field, a chill goes up my spine.”

His words may seem hollow to you now, with all that’s gone on since. Except deep down, you believe them. Because you’ve felt this way, too. You still do.

That helmet, as orange as a late-October pumpkin with a fat white and brown racing stripe rolling across it, is part of all of us in one way or another. For some, it was emblazoned on the winter stocking caps and coats of their youth. For others, it’s shorthand for a galloping Jim Brown or a scrambling Bernie Kosar. The helmet means so much to so many because for 58 years, it has remained wonderfully unadorned and unchanged.

Of course, there were experiments along the way that sullied the helmet’s clean orange canvas. From 1957 through ’60, the team put each player’s number on the side, a touch that is periodically — but thankfully rarely — revived for the sake of nostalgia. (It only serves to remind us why it was a bad idea in the first place.)

The Browns also once had a dalliance with an actual logo. A stylized “CB” decal showed up on helmets during training camp in 1964, but the players promptly peeled them off. There was no reason for it. A logo would have provided a marketing image, but the team’s signature was its legacy as a winner — one that was built while wearing plain orange helmets.

While teams such as the New England Patriots, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Denver Broncos have all been forced to trade their old, dated team logos for new, digitized versions (that will also end up looking dated, given enough time), the Browns helmet is an unwavering constant. Orange never goes out of style.

It’s too bad Art Modell didn’t recognize that we felt the same way about his team as he did on those crisp Sunday afternoons. He never even realized the team’s colors and traditions were ours before they were ever his — a fact he learned when he pulled the ultimate version of taking his ball and going home. (He became the owner of a football team that dresses in the black and purple colors of a bruise and is named after a bird representing death.)

Yet keeping the Browns’ colors and history here is the win we fans never consider while tabulating the sports pain we’ve endured. It was the opposite of the disappointment we expect. It’s the victory in which we should always revel.

The start of this season will be the Browns’ 11th since returning from NFL exile, and there is an anniversary looming — one that explains the hold this team has over the city. Dec. 27, 2009, will mark the 45th anniversary of the Browns 1964 NFL championship — and Cleveland’s last sports title. Victory came in a lopsided 27-0 win over the Baltimore Colts.

Jim Brown rushed 1,446 yards that championship season and will always be the face of that ’64 Browns team. He is our current-reigning, last champion. It’s a mantle all of us want to see him pass on, perhaps to a young man from Akron. When you catch a glimpse of Brown sitting courtside watching LeBron, you wonder if he’s thinking the same thing.

The next time someone asks why the Cleveland Browns still mean so much to this city, point them to the footage of Jim Brown tearing through defenders — inevitable, unstoppable, unbelievable. We’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.

Only then will they understand why, until we’re convinced otherwise (and that day may be coming), football is our game, fall is our season, and orange is our color.

Who is Brownie the Elf? Inside the rise, fall, and revival of the Cleveland Browns' beloved -- and bemusing -- mascot

CLEVELAND -- Nobody, at least still living, knows for sure how Brownie the Elf came to be the first official mascot of the Cleveland Browns some 76 years ago.

Yet one fact is certain: It was Art Modell who put the elf on the shelf after buying the team in 1961.

"My first official act as owner of the Browns," Modell told newspaper reporters at the time, "will be to get rid of that little f---er."

Brownie is back -- and bigger than ever.

Topping a preseason online fan vote, Brownie has returned as the team's midfield logo, an oversized rendition of his original mysterious appearance preceding Cleveland's inaugural season in 1946.

The latest caricature of Brownie spans the 45-yard lines horizontally, exceeds the hashmarks vertically, and can be easily spotted from airplanes passing overhead.

And if you're bemused about Brownie's existence as an NFL mascot, well, you're not alone.

"I don't know what to think about it," Cleveland pass-rusher Myles Garrett said. "It's original, it's unique. But I've always been more of a fan of the dog. I mean, we're the Dawg Pound, but we've got an elf?

"I think we're a little bit confused on what route we want to go creatively."

One of the most inexplicable losses in franchise history sullied Brownie's grandiloquent midfield debut on Sunday. Cleveland became the first team in 21 years to blow a 13-point lead in the final two minutes. With 1:55 to play, the New York Jets scored a 66-yard touchdown, recovered an onside kick, then scored another touchdown to stun the Browns, 31-30. In another fan poll via 850 ESPN Cleveland, more than 5% of voters actually blamed Brownie for the defeat.

Brownie might be 0-1 as Cleveland's midfield logo heading into Thursday night's clash with the Pittsburgh Steelers (8:15 p.m. ET, Prime Video). But more than seven decades ago, Brownie was the boyish face of pro football's most dominant dynasty. So prolific, he very nearly once became the logo on the helmet.

Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski has worn Brownie the Elf gear almost every day since becoming Cleveland's head coach in 2020. Photo by Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire

THE LEGEND OF the Brownies began in Britain and dates back to at least the early 16th century. According to John T. Kruse, an author and blogger of British fairy lore, the first published reference to the Brownies came in 1522.

"He's a small, hairy . creature that lives in houses and farms with people," Kruse told ESPN of the mythical beings. "He undertakes a range of domestic and agricultural chores on the understanding that he gets free board and lodging from the humans."

As Brownie The Elf re-debuts onto the field for @Browns home games, we look back at the first time Brownie debuted.

It was the day the Browns played the first game in team history. pic.twitter.com/5l9UaOhcDT

Despite their diligence, Brownies can be quite finicky.

Kruse noted that Brownies appreciate milk and fresh bread being left out for them at night. But they detest being spied on, whether working or eating. And they especially despise both compliments and criticisms.

"Any gift of clothes really antagonizes him. It's seen as an insult or some sort of subjection," Kruse said. "The usual result of this is that he'll undo everything he's done, make a mess in the house, then leave forever."

The Dobby character in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books is derived from the Brownie legend, which began to surface in America in the early 20th Century. In 1916, the Girl Scouts, referencing the same Brownie legend, started calling their members ages 7-9 "Brownies," taken from the story "The Brownies and Other Tales" by Juliana Horatia Ewing, which was originally published in 1870.

In 1929, the Atlas Beverage Company in Detroit began producing a Brownie caramel cream root beer, whose bottles were adorned with an elf. The company soon put a sign advertising the soda on the side of a building in downtown Massillon, Ohio.

Off that, so the story goes, Brownie the Elf was born.

The legend of the Brownies began in Britain and dates back to at least the early 16th Century. David Richard/AP Photo

BEFORE PAUL BROWN was winning NFL titles as coach of the Cleveland Browns, he was stacking state championships at Massillon High School.

Going into his final season at Massillon in 1940, Brown commissioned a local artist, A.D. Small, with creating a logo for the Tigers -- Obie (which stands for orange and black, Massillon's colors).

After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Brown was hired to coach Cleveland's new pro football franchise. Owner Mickey McBride and the team held a fan contest to determine the nickname. "Browns" was the winning submission, in honor of the first coach. Brown initially vetoed it. Another submission -- the "Panthers" -- was chosen instead, until a local businessman informed the team that he owned the rights to "Cleveland Panthers." Brown finally relented on the name "Browns."

Next, the team needed a logo.

"But what does 'Browns' represent?" said Browns historian Barry Shuck, who's been pursuing the Brownie the Elf origin story for years. "Mud? A dessert? Dog poop?"

Brownie first appeared in an ad promoting ticket sales days before the Browns’ first game against the Miami Seahawks in 1946. Barry Shuck

Did Brown come up with the idea for Brownie the Elf from that root beer sign in Massillon? And did he, again, have Small produce the drawing?

"If you look at Obie and you look at Brownie, it's the same character," said Shuck, who also writes for the Browns site DawgsByNature.com. "They're both running. They both got a stiff arm. They're both wearing a hat."

The Cleveland-area newspapers made no mention of Brownie until he appeared in an ad promoting ticket sales days before the Browns' first game against the Miami Seahawks in 1946.

Steve King, a longtime sportswriter in Northeast Ohio who subsequently worked for the Browns from 2004-13, has also spent years digging into Brownie the Elf's conception. He even once asked Paul Brown's son, Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown, if he knew where Brownie came from (Mike Brown didn't).

Yet through his research, King came to the same conclusion as Shuck.

"I'm sure I've gotten as close as anyone was going to get," King said. "The truth is buried in a cemetery somewhere -- and I don't know where. . but the mystery of Brownie is what makes it so cool."

Did former Cleveland coach Paul Brown come up with the idea for Brownie the Elf after seeing a Brownie caramel cream root beer sign in Massillon, Ohio? Barry Shuck

PROPELLED BY PAUL BROWN, Otto Graham, Lou Groza and, yes, Brownie the Elf, the Cleveland Browns won four consecutive All-America Football Conference titles from 1946-49.

Tommy Flynn, an assistant equipment manager, would dress up like Brownie on game days and emulate Brown on the sidelines.

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