CLEVELAND — It all started with a “woof.”

In 1985, Hanford Dixon and Frank Minnifield, cornerbacks for the Cleveland Browns, began barking at their defensive linemen — an unconventional rallying cry. Nearby fans overheard the antics and returned their own barks .

By the end of the season — after spending months popularizing the phenomenon in practices, games and during interviews — Dixon and Minnifield had established a new identity for the Browns’ defense: the Dawgs.

It wasn’t long before a large section of the Browns’ home field, Municipal Stadium, in the cheap bleacher seats beyond the stadium’s eastern end zone, was named the “Dawg Pound.” There, among a clientele that consisted largely of blue-collar Clevelanders, in a city characterized by its resilience and still gripped by the demise of its once-booming steel industry, grew something strange and wonderful .