CLEVELAND -- It has been three long years -- 21 if you're counting in Dawg years.

	The suffering is over for Browns fans, who finally have their team back.

Life without the NFL was tough on Cleveland. Sundays weren't the same here. Neither were Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

Heck, even hating the Pittsburgh Steelers wasn't the same. The Baltimore Ravens became the new enemy.

"It was as if you'd lost your best friend," said John Thompson, a k a Big Dawg, the leader of a 10,000-member pack of rabid fans known as the Dawg Pound.

"But now he's coming home."

In the Year of the Retirement, finally a stirring comeback. One of the most storied names in American sports, the Cleveland Browns, are returning after being forced into retirement when former owner Art Modell took his team to Baltimore in 1996.

You remember the Browns. Orange helmets with white stripes and no logos. White home jerseys. Paul Brown. Otto Graham. Jim Brown. Bernie Kosar. Dreary old Cleveland Stadium.

Well, the Browns are back as an expansion team in 1999. They'll look pretty much the same as they always did, but these aren't your dad's Browns.

They've got a new owner, a sparkling new $283 million stadium -- built on the same spot as the old place -- a front office with a Super Bowl blueprint, rookie quarterback Tim Couch and a proud city so pumped to have football back that 30,000 fans showed up for the new Browns first practice in their new home.

"We're back," Big Dawg said. "It's exciting. It's almost like the resurrection. It's not like an expansion team. It's like the same team is coming back with new life. And look at Cleveland, we're not the Mistake on the Lake anymore."

Cleveland has changed dramatically. One of the country's great industrial cities, it became a national joke during the 1970s when the polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire, and the Cleveland Indians averaged 100 losses a year.

But the city has undergone a remarkable renaissance. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has brought in tourists, who dine in the renovated Warehouse District, and if they can get a ticket, catch the Indians in sold-out Jacobs Field.

All that had been missing were the Browns, who for years were the best thing about the town. Cleveland was always Browns Town, the unofficial capital of football-crazy Ohio.

"It's in our blood," said linebacker Chris Spielman, an Ohio native forced to retire two weeks before the Browns' opener because of a neck injury. "Like Louisiana has gumbo, we have football."

That changed on Nov. 6, 1995, when Modell, upset with city officials' refusal to build him a stadium as they had for the Indians and Cavaliers and unwilling to sell his team, announced from Baltimore he was moving the team there.

Back in Ohio, grown men raised on Browns football, wept openly.

"I can't tell you how much that hurt," bricklayer Richard Holloway said during the summer after putting in a tough day helping build the Cleveland Browns Stadium. "Talk about shock."

Shock and pain. A deep, deep pain. And a feeling of betrayal.

"It was as though they'd been cheated," said Browns president Carmen Policy, who got five Super Bowl rings working for the San Francisco 49ers. "People refer to it like a death in the family. But it wasn't just a death in the family. It was like a family member had been murdered. It wasn't just a loss, it was a cruel and unfair loss."

Cleveland, though, wasn't about to let its heart get ripped out without a fight. And with Mayor Michael White leading the effort, Browns fans bombarded the NFL with faxes and marched on owners meetings trying to persuade the league to restore, not replace, their beloved team.

Big Dawg went to Washington, and broke down crying in front of a congressional committee as he tried to explain the injustice of it all.

Save Our Browns became Cleveland's campaign and war cry.

The sense of loss hit home with NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who remembered the heartbreak he felt when his Dodgers moved from Brooklyn.

Tagliabue wanted to put football back in one of the league's signature cities quickly, and less than two months after the Browns played their final game in Cleveland Stadium, NFL owners approved a deal that allowed Modell to leave.

Cleveland, in turn, got to keep its nickname, colors and history.

"It couldn't be any other way," said billionaire banker Al Lerner, who bought the team for $530 million last September. "This town wouldn't stand for anything else."

The NFL has been trumpeting the Browns' return and scheduled their home opener for Sunday night of opening weekend on ESPN against the Steelers.

From the time the league awarded Lerner ownership, the Browns had only 11 months to put the team in place before their first exhibition game.

By contrast, Carolina and Jacksonville had two years to get ready.

"When I took the job in January," Browns coach Chris Palmer said, "I walked into my office and I didn't have a secretary, there were boxes all over the place. I thought, 'Hey, what did I get myself into?' "

Lerner put the team's future in the hands of Policy, who in turn put the Browns' football operations in the hands of Dwight Clark, famous for making "The Catch" in San Francisco.

In January, the Browns' coaching search seemed to be going nowhere when Mike Holmgren, then Steve Mariucci and finally Brian Billick all slipped away.

But the Browns found their man in Palmer, Jacksonville's offensive coordinator who now seems as if he were destined to lead the Browns into a new football era.

Friendly with boundless energy, Palmer comes across as an English teacher in looks and daily preparation. Everything the Browns have done during the preseason has been planned out to the second by Palmer, much the way Cleveland coach Paul Brown worked during his days as an NFL coach.

Palmer spent any free time this summer -- there wasn't much -- rereading Brown's biography.

And before they took the field on the first day of training camp, the new Browns got a history lesson as Palmer showed them a highlight film on the old Browns.

"I wanted them to understand what it means to put that helmet on every day," Palmer said. "To know what it means to play for the Cleveland Browns."