Should Art get the call to the Hall?

Here's the script from this week's Sports at Large, which airs each Monday at 5:30 p.m. on WYPR (88.1 FM) and again the next morning during the 9 a.m. hour. If you don't live in the Baltimore area, you can hear the show live on streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

You get the feeling that Rod Woodson was the kind of kid who would go around stirring up a nest of hornets, then would stand and dare the insects to sting him.

In his Hall of Fame enshrinement speech Saturday, Woodson, who anchored the defensive backfield at safety in the Ravens Super Bowl season, told the crowd that former owner Art Modell belonged with him in Canton.

That would be Canton, as in Ohio. That would be Canton, as in an hour south of Cleveland. And that would be Cleveland, the city where Modell once owned the Browns, before he moved them to Baltimore.

So, Woodson stood in front of a crowd of Ohio football fans and told them that the guy who ripped their hearts out of their chests deserved to be honored among the greatest figures in the history of the sport.

And when the predictable boos rained down on him, Woodson stood there and told the crowd they were wrong, that despite what their feelings told them, Art Modell was a football legend, and should be eternally recognized as such.

In a world of complexities, of nuance, of shades of gray, we come to sports for the simplicity they offer. The guys in our uniforms are heroes. The guys in the other uniforms are the villains.

The trouble comes when the roles change, when the saints become sinners.

That day, for football fans in Northeast Ohio, came in November, 1995, when Art Modell decided to pick up his team and move them east.

From that point forward, Modell became the Cleveland version of Cain, a man who couldn't go home because of one misdeed.

Of course, Modell didn't kill anyone. And unlike another son of Ohio, Pete Rose, Modell didn't commit an unpardonable sin against his sport. All Art Modell did was move his team.

Actually, Art Modell's record in the NFL is a remarkable one.

It was Modell nearly 50 years ago who approached his friend Wellington Mara, the owner of the New York Giants, and sold him on the idea of sharing television revenue among the league owners.

Without that, there would be no way that cities like Green Bay or New Orleans or Baltimore would be able to compete with New York and Chicago or New England for players. The rich in football would get richer the same way they do in baseball.

And without Modell, the longtime chairman of the NFL's television committee, there might not have been Monday Night Football, as he convinced ABC and advertisers to take a chance on a new concept.

But here's where that shading comes in. The Browns were highly successful when Modell moved them.

And for long suffering Baltimore fans who see Modell as a savior, remember he voted against granted Charm City an expansion team, then struck a quiet agreement on a private plane with former Governor Glendening for the same stadium deal he voted against.

On balance, Rod Woodson is right; Art Modell should be enshrined in Canton.

Putting him there, however, would stir up a mighty big hornet's nest, and the voters may wait until the ire of the hornets of Cleveland has died down, and Art Modell has left this mortal coil before they do what's right.