Blanton Collier Blanton Long Collier ( July 2 , 1906 – March 22 , 1983 ) was an American football coach who led the University of Kentucky ( 1954 – 1961 ) and the Cleveland Browns ( 1963 – 1970 ) . His 1964 Browns team is the most recent Cleveland team to win a professional sports championship . Career . After graduating from Kentucky ' s Georgetown College , Collier went to work at Paris High School , where he coached several sports . After enlisting in the Navy during World War II , he was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago , where he met Paul Brown , who was in charge of the station ' s football team . When Brown took charge of the new Cleveland Browns after the war , he took Collier along as an assistant . Collier served under Brown from 1946 to 1953 , a period in which the team won all four titles in the fledgling All - America Football Conference ( AAFC ) before moving to the National Football League ( NFL ) in 1950 . That season the Browns captured the NFL title and then reached the championship game in each of the next five seasons , winning two more championships . University of Kentucky . When Paul " Bear " Bryant left the University of Kentucky after the 1953 season , Collier accepted an offer to return to his home state . Collier had several future star coaches serve as assistants under him at Kentucky , including Don Shula , Chuck Knox , Howard Schnellenberger , Bill Arnsparger , Ermal Allen , Ed Rutledge , John North , and Bob Cummings . Standout players at Kentucky under Collier included Lou Michaels and Schnellenberger . UK went 41 – 36 – 3 , and 5 – 2 – 1 against arch - rival Tennessee , under Collier . Notable wins included a victory at # 15 Georgia Tech in 1954 and defeats # 8 Ole Miss , # 17 Tennessee in 1955 , # 12 Tennessee in 1957 , and # 20 Tennessee in 1959 . However , Bear Bryant ' s shoes were hard to fill and Kentucky fired Collier in January 1962 . Collier returned to Brown ' s staff in Cleveland . Collier is the last coach at Kentucky to have a career winning record there . The core of the team that Collier recruited formed the basis of the Thin Thirty . Collier ' s successor , Charlie Bradshaw , thinned the ranks from 88 to 30 players , that brutal season being chronicled in a book , " The Thin Thirty " , by Shannon Ragland . Cleveland Browns . The Cleveland Browns that Collier returned to did not resemble the championship teams of the 1950s . Other teams had caught up to coach Paul Brown ' s strategies . New owner Art Modell felt Brown had too much control and did not respect Modell ' s authority as team majority owner . Brown and Modell skirmished over the team ' s treatment of Ernie Davis and Brown ' s old - school discipline had stopped going over well with the players , especially Jim Brown and Bernie Parrish . After a 7 – 6 – 1 season in 1962 , Modell fired coach Brown and offered the head coaching job to Collier . Collier only took the job at Paul Brown ' s insistence , as Brown acknowledged that Collier had a family to support and thus could not refuse the opportunity ; nonetheless , Brown himself had hard feelings toward Collier for replacing him . Coach Collier earned his players ' respect by giving them more leeway both on and off the field . He let quarterback Frank Ryan change plays at the line of scrimmage and allowed more flexibility in pass routes and blocking schemes . The changes paid off . In 1963 , the team finished 10 – 4 , and Jim Brown broke the NFL ' s single - season rushing record with 1 , 863 yards . The following season the Browns went 10 – 3 – 1 and upset the heavily favored Baltimore Colts , 27 – 0 , in the league championship . Another Eastern Conference title followed in 1965 , but the team lost the title game to the Green Bay Packers . Despite Jim Brown ' s retirement after the 1965 season , the Browns ran off another four consecutive winning seasons and went to the NFL championship game in 1968 and 1969 . Collier was a quiet but emotional man . When a player fell asleep during a film session , Collier did not yell at the player as Paul Brown would have done , but instead criticized himself for not making the session interesting enough . Collier had great respect for black players , which helped endear him to Jim Brown and his teammates . Browns ' fans remember Collier ' s tenure as a golden age of Browns ' football . The team was not shut out in any game and giant Cleveland Stadium sold out for almost every game played during Collier ' s stint in Cleveland . Somehow Collier managed to achieve his success while going nearly deaf . Hearing loss forced him out of the head - coaching job after the 1970 season . He continued to work for the Browns as a college scout . Quotes . “ You can accomplish anything you want as long as you don ’ t care who gets the credit . ”