LeBron and Cavs will try to erase a 52 year championship drought for Cleveland hinging on their game seven performance in Oakland tonight. 1964 was the last year Cleveland won a professional sports championship, and it was under the coaching of Kentucky’s very own, Blanton Collier.
The ex-UK head coach was fired three years prior to winning a championship as the coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1964. In that game, Collier not only won a championship, he also beat a former assistant from his 1959 staff at UK, Don Shula. Just three years removed from his position at Kentucky, Collier coached his 1964 team to a NFL Championship on the shoulders of Jim Brown against the Baltimore Colts, two years before the Super Bowl was created.