The Building:
Construction on Tiger Stadium started in December of 1938 and was finished in September of 1939. The Stadium was dedicated on September 15, 1939 vs. Cleveland Cathedral Latin. In 1976 Tiger Stadium was renamed Paul Brown Tiger Stadium to bear the name of the Greatest Football Coach to ever live. Right now the biggest project is the reface of the west side of Paul Brown Tiger Stadium. The project includes the new Walk-of-Fame and a Statue of Paul Brown to placed in front of the main entryway to the Stadium.
The Person:
Paul Eugene Brown (September 7, 1908 - August 5, 1991) was a coach in American football and a major figure in the development of the National Football League. A seminal figure in the game's history, Brown is considered the "father of the modern offense", and one of the greatest of football coaches in history, achieving success at every major level—high school, college, and professional—and introducing numerous innovative coaching methods still in use today. He is also credited with founding both the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals franchises, with the former named after him and the latter naming their stadium in his honor.
Born in Norwalk, Ohio, Brown's family moved to Walshingham when he was nine. His father Lester, a dispatcher for the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad, was described as "very meticulous, serious-minded and highly-disciplined," all of which characterized Brown's later approach to coaching. Brown graduated from Washington High School in Massillon, Ohio in 1925, having played varsity quarterback in the wake of Harry Stuhldreher (one of Notre Dame's legendary Four Horsemen).
Brown went on to Ohio State University, but later transferred to Miami of Ohio to play football. Brown played two years and was named to the All-Ohio small college second team by the AP at the end of the 1928 season. In 1930, he graduated from Miami with a B.A. in Education. He would complete his academic career in 1940 when he received an M.A. in Education from Ohio State University.
As his academic credentials indicate, Brown was as much a teacher as he was a coach. He qualified for a Rhodes Scholarship in 1930, but he had married Katie Kester, his "high school sweetheart", in 1929 and with the coming of the Great Depression, he needed employment. His coaching career began in 1930 when he was hired as a teacher/coach at Severn School, in Severna Park, Maryland, at the time a Naval Academy prep school. Tasting success with a 16-1-1 mark in two seasons at Severn, Brown gave up a brief attempt at law school in 1932 to become at age 23 the head football coach of his hometown Massillon Washington High School Tigers. In his nine years at Massillon Brown posted an 80-8-2 record which included a 35-game winning streak. After his first three years, he had improved the fortunes of the Tigers, but still had been unable to defeat the team's bitter rival, Canton McKinley High School, losing all three meetings by at least fifteen points per game.
Brown not only ended that frustrating losing streak, but also won the next six games with McKinley, and an overall total of 58 of the next 60 contests, tying one, and was voted to six straight Ohio poll high school football championships. (1935 through 1940) for Massillon. The Tigers outscored their opposition 2,393 to 168 during those six years. The 1940 team outscored its opponents 477 to 6, with the lone score against them made by Canton McKinley. During this period, Brown's achievements also helped build a new stadium for the high school that seated 20,000 people, and drew crowds that surpassed every football program in Ohio except Ohio State University.
Brown had achieved this success by implementing a system at Massillon based on techniques developed by Dr. John B. "Jock" Sutherland, head coach at the University of Pittsburgh. Sutherland had played professional football for the pioneer Massillon Tigers club when Brown was a boy and had gone on to success as a coach. Brown planned every phase of his program, detailing practice schedules, assigning assistant coaches (which he dubbed "position coaches") specific duties, and installing his entire system in Massillon's junior high schools so that players would already know his system when they reached high school.
Brown moved into the college ranks by becoming head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes on January 14, 1941. Under Brown, the Buckeyes went 18–8–1 (1941–43). Brown's players were known for speed, intelligence, and contact; his teams for execution and fundamentals; and he was dubbed "Precision Paul" at Ohio State.
Reference: Wikipedia.