Apparently,  moving a team, trading a star player, and firing a coach are things other NFL owners can do and still get in the hall of fame. But not Art Modell.

Cleveland – The guess here is that 2013 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Jonathan Ogden and former Cleveland Plain Dealer football reporter Tony Grossi are not on the same page about who should be inducted to that select club.

Ogden, who played 12 years for the Baltimore Ravens and was the team’s first round draft pick in 1996, was the Ravens’ initial draft after the team moved from Cleveland after the 1995 season.

In his induction speech Ogden proved to be the good soldier during his induction speech last month in Canton.

As the story goes, Art Modell, who moved his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, had to be talked out of selecting Nebraska running back Lawrence Phillips and into choosing Ogden by former Browns tight and and current Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome.

Ogden went fourth overall in the first round to Baltimore while Phillips was a bust who had numerous problems with the law after going two picks later to the St. Louis Rams.

Ogden smiles today at Modell’s ability to trust the thinking of Newsome and during his induction speech pushed for Modell to become a Hall of Fame inductee.

Which brings us to the reasons Grossi, a Hall of Fame voter, is against the Hall of Fame accepting Modell. For years Grossi has pushed hard to keep Modell out of a spot in Canton after Cleveland’s most hated person served the NFL as an owner for over 50 years prior to his death last year.

Grossi, currently working for WKRK-FM as Browns beat reporter, has gone to print and broadcast to document his three reasons for continuing the battle to keep Modell out, even after his death.

In defending his vote, Grossi has often pointed to Modell’s trading of Hall of Fame wide receiver Paul Warfield, moving the Browns to Baltimore, and firing Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown. That holy trinity of reasons have been good enough to help Grossi gain enough support among other voters to deny a Modell induction.

Well, with Ogden becoming another to voice his reasons for Modell to get into the Hall of Fame, let us examine Grossi’s diminished reasons for such a campaign that has so far been successful in keeping him out.

First, to the point. There are fans and media members in Cleveland who will never get over Modell moving the Browns to Baltimore. The reasons for the move are more complicated for this space, but trust me, Browns fans don’t want to debate. They just want to hate.

But Modell isn’t the first to move his team and later be honored with Hall of Fame induction.

The list includes Al Davis, who had a solid resume that also included moving his Raiders up and down the California coast not once, but twice.

And if you want to get really picky, look to Lamar Hunt, a founding member of the famed Fools Club, a name given to the original owners of teams who formed the American Football League in 1960.

Many don’t remember, but Hunt, a Dallas native, owned the Dallas Texans who played in the Cotton Bowl. Hunt’s AFL team also butted heads with the infant Dallas Cowboys of the NFL for attention and fans in what is called The Metroplex for three years before moving the team to Kansas City and re-naming it the Chiefs.

Hunt gets bonus points for being credited with coining the phrase Super Bowl and seeing his Chiefs win Super Bowl IV against the powerful Minnesota Vikings. But he left his own home town with his football team and years later went on to wear a gold jacket on the steps of the Hall of Fame in Canton years before his death.

The firing of Paul Brown following the 1962 season by Modell  came after the Browns went 7-6-1. It marked the fifth consecutive year in which the Browns failed to secure the NFL Eastern Division crown, giving way to the New York Giants, who won four of those five Eastern Division titles.

The other Eastern Division title went to the Philadelphia Eagles, who won the 1960 NFL crown over the up and coming power house Green Bay Packers.

In some corners, especially the players on the Browns at the time, it was the right move. The Browns, under Blanton Collier, nearly won the NFL East in 1963 and raised the flag with an NFL crown in 1964.

Hey, Browns fans, remember 1964. Yep. It’s been nearly 50 years since Frank Ryan found Gary Collins for three touchdown passes in that 27-0 win over the Baltimore Colts. And that long-ago title was won by Collier and Modell, not Paul Brown.

Brown, who later was the man behind the birth of the Cincinnati Bengals, had taken the Browns to a first place finish in 10 of the first 11 seasons he led the Browns. But as coach of the Bengals, Brown never won a playoff game and retired as coach with four AAFC championships and three NFL titles, all with the Browns.

But the one Grossi argument against Modell that’s failed the smell test is Modell’s trading future Hall of Fame wide receiver Paul Warfield to Miami for a better draft position to take Purdue quarterback Mike Phipps.

Even at the time the trade was still regarded as a risk and proved to be a bold stroke that didn’t turn out the right way for the Browns. However that long-ago trade pales when compared to the trades Paul Brown made in his 13 years as Browns coach in the NFL.

I have to thank a trip to the public library and the research of Dan Daly, whose book  “The National Forgotten League” points out Brown was much worse than Modell in the player trade department.

Daly, who has covered the NFL for 30 years includes working for “The Washington Times,” tells of the ill-fated trades Brown made over a period of years that sent away four Hall of Fame defensive linemen.

It’s hard to imagine anybody trading four Hall of Famers and not getting as much as a little heat, and Modell being tagged to the wall for what turned out to be one most would say missed the mark by a wide margin.

The trades by Brown proved to be a big reason that the 10-year run of Cleveland playing in a championship game came to a sudden halt in the mid-1950s. The Browns had been in each and every championship game from 1946 through 1955 with seven championships under Brown’s direction.

But from 1956 until his firing after the 1962 season, the Browns were in just one title game appearance.

That mediocre conclusion to his days with the Browns and no playoff wins as coach of the Bengals didn’t keep Brown from accepting a gold jacket and making an induction speech in Canton.

In “National Forgotten League” is a great read about little known stories through the years about teams and players in the NFL. And under that formula Daly gets very specific about the failures of Paul Brown.

Brown, who built the Browns into a powerhouse beginning with four titles in four years in the AAFC, drafted and later traded Hall of Fame players Art Donovan, Doug Atkins, Willie Davis and Henry Jordan. Daly details the trades which produced virtually nothing in return.

The Browns selected Donovan in 1951 (actually a dispersal draft from a defunct team, the original Baltimore Colts, after the 1950 season), chose Atkins in the first round in 1953, Davis in the 15th round in 1956 and Jordan in the fifth round in 1957.

The names of the players Brown received are important only to those players. Brown gave away those four and also traded former Ohio State standout Jim Marshall, an-all pro with Minnesota after being Cleveland’s fourth round pick in 1960.

That group collectively earned 15 all-pro honors, 24 Pro Bowl selections and 13 rings.

You can’t think of NFL football in the 1950s and 60s, especially the play of the Green Bay Packers, Baltimore Colts, Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings success without those trades with Cleveland’s Paul Brown.

Daly concludes he still isn’t sure what Brown got for his trading efforts, which far out distanced the failure of Modell giving away Warfield to draft Phipps.

What it does say is that there are a number of ways to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I guess moving a team, trading a star player, and firing a coach are things other guys can do but still get in.

But not Art Modell.