ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Andre Rison is a poor excuse for a villain these days. Twenty years have changed that, and much more.
In 1995, he was Cleveland Public Enemy No. 2 behind Art Modell, his relationship with a jilted fan base far more combative than the Browns were on Sundays after Art Modell announced Nov. 6 he was moving the team to Baltimore.
Now, there's gray in Rison's beard, a paunch pushing at his elastic waist band, the hint of a sermonizing pastor in his voice.
"God gave me a gift," he says.
He's come to football practice at Skyline High in gym shorts over gym shorts, and a green wool Ralph Lauren cap.
Two decades ago, his hat might've passed as a fashion statement (he preferred "Planet Hollywood" headwear back then) by a Pro Bowl receiver with money, fame and a hip-hop connection. Now, worn by a high school offensive coordinator of a 4-4 team, it's simply a prevent defense against the coming chill of a Midwest October night.
"God gave me a great gift," he repeats. "He blessed me. He gave me a gift for relating to people."
Let's be fair all these years later and say it's possible Andre Rison came to this realization post-1995. Or, kinder still, that God's gift was obscured that season by a calamity of circumstances surrounding the Browns move to Baltimore.
Let's mention any and all extenuating circumstances, because that particular blessing Rison claims is nothing anyone would recognize from his time in Cleveland.
What is remembered about him far more distinctly:
"Baltimore, here we come."
*****
Andre Rison is now offensive coordinator for Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, Mich., where his son also plays.
"Baltimore, here we come," and Modell's "I had no choice" are scarred into memory. Rison hears me repeat the words he shoved in the face of a grieving Browns fan base after another ugly day at the stadium.
We're standing behind the end zone watching a freshman game between Skyline and Dearborn. The varsities will play the next night. His eyes never leave the field. He nods.
"I had reason to say what I said. After the death threats, I'd had enough. Let alone the terrible play calling, the way I'd been lied to ..."
Death threats? Did he report them? Rison says no, that he relied on his own "security" for protection.
"The threats started right after Modell made that statement about needing to take out a loan to pay my signing bonus. He made me the scapegoat. I was real bitter with Art for a long time, because I didn't know anything about (his financial issues) coming and I just walked into blazing flames.
"He turned his back on me from the beginning. 'You didn't acknowledge it to me? You let me buy a massive house?' I had planned on finishing my career there. I loved Cleveland."
Rison's version of walking into blazing flames isn't so much revisionism as selective memory. He handled the season the way he handled a personal life that included bankruptcy, unpaid child-support judgments (for which he spent a month in jail in 2005), and a prominent role in the ESPN series "Broke." He squandered an estimated $19 million in career earnings.
Andre Rison's Alpharetta, Ga. home smolders after being destroyed by a fire Thursday, June 9, 1994. Rison's girlfriend, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of the musical group TLC, was found to have set the fire.
He walked into blazing flames, for sure, then fanned them by flapping his arms when fans booed him. He fanned them with postgame tirades out of an Andrew Dice Clay monologue, and by calling the fan reaction "childish."
The metaphor that defined his relationship with the fan base: The bathtub fire girlfriend Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes -- of the musical group TLC -- started in 1994, using his shoes as kindling, that spilled out and burned their Atlanta mansion to the ground.
His '95 season got quickly out of control, too.
"He kept getting booed that season," former Browns running back Earnest Byner remembered recently. "And he kind of played up to it."
Byner said he doesn't remember Rison's "Baltimore, here we come" quote. "I just remember he was a guy who came in with a lot of credentials and talent and that he made some plays for us," he said.
I mention Rison's name to a friend who worked for the Browns, tell him I'm still fascinated all these years later by how a player with Browns roots managed to become such a villain in such a short time.
"Worst free-agent signing in Browns history" he texts back.
Was it? Rison was coming off three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons in which he caught 34 TD passes in Atlanta. That '95 season with the Browns, he caught 41 passes for 746 yards and three touchdowns.
He had a couple monster games: seven catches for 173 yards against Cincinnati on the road; six for 126 in a win over Buffalo. In the final home game, during which he was booed every time he touched the ball or trotted out of the huddle, he caught six passes for 73 yards.
Statistically, there are worse hauls for a free agent in his first year in Cleveland. (But enough about Dwayne Bowe).
"Leading up to the move," said former Browns center Steve Everitt, "I was for anything that helped us succeed. I wanted the bad-ass Andre Rison to show up and be that guy he was in Atlanta on the field. I was cool with him."
*****
Andre Rison sees a pass broken up in the end zone by Green Bay's George Teague in the fourth quarter of a game Nov. 19, 1995.
After Modell's announcement, every Rison mistake was magnified by his insistence that fans were booing the players when players had nothing to do with the move.
More accurately, they booed him. Some of it was performance-related. Some of it was because he represented Modell's mismanagement - under-producing on a five-year, $17 million deal that was at the time the most lucrative contract ever given to a wide receiver.
"He's the biggest star we've signed," Modell announced to the media in 1995. "He's the first home-run hitter we've had in a long time. He is truly a potential Hall of Famer. Since Jim Brown, Leroy Kelly and Paul Warfield, we have not had the caliber of player offensively like Andre Rison."
Rison caught five passes in his first three games. It was halfway through the season before he had a game that matched Modell's hyperbole. He was an especially bad fit for robotic quarterback Vinny Testaverde.
Bill Belichick benched him for missing a team meeting. Reports of Rison habitually missing meetings in Atlanta surfaced. On the field, Rison showed little faith in coordinator Steve Crosby's offense.
"I saw Bill Belichick when I went to the Super Bowl with Green Bay (in 1997)," Rison says. "It was media day. He saw me coming and said, 'Hey pipsqueak, why didn't you play like this for me?' " I said, 'Because you had no offensive coordinator.'
"People want to know what happened to me that year. Two years later I was back in the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl. Look at what (Belichick) went on to do. Ask me what I went on to do.
"A lot of good players left and went on to do a lot of great things. Lot of coaches left and did a lot of great things. And that all belonged to Cleveland.
"Those Super Bowls that Baltimore won. Those are Cleveland Browns Super Bowls, man. Real tough."
In 1995, Rison told The Plain Dealer he "used to cry when I went home." But by the time he finished talking, he'd left the impression it was more about how he was being used in the offense.
Not everything he said became instantly flammable. Once he told reporters, "I understand every bit of bitterness and every bit of hurt (felt by fans)."
But something always got lost in his delivery. Fans booed Rison so often and so loudly he began alternately joking ("I thought they were saying 'Moon'") and cursing reporters who kept bringing their postgame questions to him.
"Do I hold anything against Cleveland fans?" the man once known as Bad Moon says now. "No. Do I cheer for the Cleveland Browns?"
Loooong pause.
"I still take a peek at it."
Rison took more than a peek some years ago. He says he lived in the Cleveland area for a year after briefly moving the administrative side of his football academy to Ohio.
"You can find the exact year on my website," he said.
I couldn't find it on his website, andrerison.com. But I found a category dedicated to the memory of Lopes, who was killed in 2002 accident in Honduras where she attended a spiritual retreat. The couple had planned to marry that same year.
I found a YouTube video of Rison's highlights: Atlanta, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Green Bay, Oakland. No Cleveland.
There is a section called "Hall of Fame Career," complete with testimonials from believers who think he belongs in Canton. Many are alums of the Andre Rison Football Academy.
"Got a new website going up," he says. "And an endorsement from Fred Biletnikoff."
Rison says he kept his head down when he lived here. He played hoops (he was a point guard at Michigan State). He didn't go out much other than to get some chicken wings and watch a game. He says Browns fans hardly noticed him, let alone bothered him.
"When you're 5-11, 6-foot and you're quiet, you blend right in," Rison says.
*****
Andre Rison works with some players during a practice at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he is an assistant coach.
Rison claims former Browns head coach Pat Shurmur ("my center at Michigan State") considered hiring him to coach the receivers before another regime change in Berea got in the way. When Rison tells me about his "gift," the context is Josh Gordon. He says he'd love to share his skills for relating to people with Gordon.
What would he say to Gordon, who lost the 2015 season to suspension for violating the league's substance-abuse policy?
"It's not so much what I would say as what I would do. Certain meetings you take with certain people. I think he could use (that help).
"In my book, I talk about a lot of players I've helped throughout their careers. Not just off-the-field actions, on-the-field actions as well, performance-wise."
Rison has spoken at the NFL rookie symposium. If all he does is repeat what he told ESPN in a 30-for-30 special, "Broke" -- that he spent a million dollars on jewelry alone -- his message is an important one.
"I'd be lying on the bed knocked out (after getting back from the club) with $10,000 lying on the floor," he said in "Broke." "I've got another $5,000 in my pocket. You might find another $7,500 in the pocket in my coat.
"When you have cash, you create debt,' Rison added. "You spend until you've got nothing left. ... I should have saved a lot more money. I should have saved a lot more money."
On a chilly fall night three years later, Rison says to me, "I live a great life. (Married) a beautiful lady. Four years. She got me right. She got me right. I concede. I concede."
His son, Hunter, is a star wide receiver at Skyline High. Ranked as a Top 50 wide receiver in the 2017 class by 247Sports, he recently rescinded his verbal commitment to Michigan State, saying it was too early in the process to make a decision.
Andre Rison shares his thoughts during a practice at Skyline High, where his son, Hunter, plays wide receiver.
Rison, who went into the Michigan State Hall of Fame this summer, moved his big family from his hometown of Flint to Dexter, near Ann Arbor.
Jeremy Barkey, the Skyline athletic director and former scout-team quarterback at Michigan State (long after Rison's years there), calls Rison "a passionate person whose heart is with the kids."
Barkey believes there's an element of "redemption" in Rison's life and work.
Fifteen years after Rison's NFL career ended, the kids he coaches occasionally turn to YouTube for verification of a talent that carried Rison to five Pro Bowls, 84 career touchdowns and a Super Bowl win with Green Bay.
"They 'ooh' and 'wow' when they see my highlights," Rison says. "They say, 'Coach, is that really you?' "
Rison laughs and rubs his stomach.
"I tell them that was me before the beer gut."
Rison introduces me to a Skyline assistant coach.
"He's from Cleveland," Rison tells him. "I had a little bit of the LeBron Effect when we were there. Like the jersey burn. Funny how LeBron is back home playing in Cleveland.
"No jerseys being burned now. People who said they hated him and people who said they didn't love him no more, all of a sudden he's a hometown hero again.
"With us, with the Browns, there was no coming back."
I ask Rison what he would say if he were suddenly transported to the 50-yard line for a Browns game at FirstEnergy Stadium and handed a microphone.
"I probably would say, 'Congratulations.' Getting a football team back in that city was well deserved. That was my favorite team, you know.
"(I'd make an) apology from not only myself, but speaking of my former teammates, on their behalf, if they'd let me, I would say we were sorry for the actions of another man.
"Go Browns."
Probably not the confessional fans would want from Rison for the Baltimore comments. He never actually played for the Ravens, who cut him when Modell needed money to pay his top 1996 draft picks (Ray Lewis, Jonathan Ogden).
The Cleveland Sports Grudge is a powerful force. Would Rison be booed all over again? Probably. And he might not understand why any more now than he did then. He isn't the only player from that turbulent season, though, who felt victimized by circumstances.
"Hey, man," Rison calls to me after we say our goodbyes, "that really is good that LeBron came back. That really is good."