https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-In5CvSMTuI&t=202s
YEAR: 1946
SIGNIFICANCE: The Cleveland Browns defeated the New York Yankees in the inaugural AAFC Championship Game
Before growing into one of pro football’s greatest dynasties, the Cleveland Browns dominated the All-America Football Conference during its four-year existence. Beginning on this date in 1946, Paul Brown’s team would win all four AAFC titles before joining the NFL in 1950, where he would lead them to the title game in each of their first six seasons, winning three. Their eighth and final championship would come in 1964, Jim Brown’s second-to-last season before retirement.
On December 22nd, 1946, the Cleveland Browns and New York Yankees (who merged with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949) squared off in the AAFC’s very first championship game. Featuring pro football’s first black players since the early APFA days (FB Marion Motley, DL Bill Willis), Cleveland rolled to a 12-2 record while 10-3-1 New York was the Eastern Division’s only team with greater than three wins. Motley, their leading rusher, would score the game-winning TD in the fourth quarter to deliver Cleveland its first of many titles over the following years before today’s generation grew up to know CLE as notorious losers in the 21st century.