Arthur B. McBride

Arthur B. "Mickey" McBride (March 20, 1888 – November 10, 1972) was the founder of the Cleveland Browns professional American football team in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and National Football League (NFL). During McBride's tenure as owner of the Browns from 1944 to 1953, the team won five championships in seven appearances, by far the most successful period for any Cleveland sports team in the city's modern history.

McBride was also a real estate developer and investor active in Cleveland, Chicago and Florida. He owned taxi-cab companies in Cleveland and a horse racing news wire that sold information to bookmakers. He had ties to organized crime figures arising from the wire service, but was never arrested or convicted of a crime.

Early career McBride was born in Chicago, where he worked as a newsboy from the age of six. His first real job was for publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst's organization in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. He moved to Cleveland in 1913, when he was in his mid-twenties, to be circulation manager for the Cleveland News. It was a time when circulation battles over newsstands and street corners often turned violent. He started with the News on a $10,000 salary ($ in today's dollars) and was charged with organizing the paper's newsboys. "This meant choosing strong young men comfortable fighting with fists, clubs, knives, chains and, when they could get them, handguns," author Ted Schwarz wrote. "They were the business equivalent of the street gang, and McBride's salary depended on how well he organized his newsboys to avoid losing their corners to one or more violent rivals."

Having built up a fortune in newspapers and purchased apartment buildings in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, McBride in 1930 went into business for himself. In 1931, he bought a majority stake in Cleveland's Zone Cab Company, which later merged with the Yellow Cab Company to form the city's biggest taxi operator. The allegations were based on federal laws that forbade interstate transmission of lottery results; prosecutors treated the race results as lottery lists.

McBride's tenure as owner was viewed favorably, partly because of the Browns' on-field success but also because he gave Paul Brown a free hand to coach and sign players. One of the new ownership group's first acts was to assure Cleveland fans that Brown would retain complete control over the football side of the operation.

Later life and death McBride continued to direct his taxi and real estate businesses after he sold the Browns, but he kept out of the public eye. He died of a heart attack at the Cleveland Clinic and was buried in Cleveland's Holy Cross Cemetery. He was married to the former Mary Jane Kane. They had three children: Arthur B. Jr., Edward and Jane. The McBride family's most visible present assets are a media group in Fort Myers, Florida. McBride bought Fort Myers' first radio station, WINK, in 1946, and signed on Fort Myers' first television station, WINK-TV, in 1954.