During the summer before the 1953 season, McBride sold the Browns for $600,000 ($ in today's dollars), more than twice the largest sum ever paid for a professional football team. The old stockholders were McBride and his son Edward, along with minority owners including taxi business associate Dan Sherby, Brown and four others. The buyers were a group of prominent Cleveland men: Dave R. Jones, a businessman and former Cleveland Indians director, Ellis Ryan, a former Cleveland Indians president, Homer Marshman, an attorney who had founded the Cleveland Rams, Saul Silberman, owner of the horse race track later known as Thistledown Racecourse, and Ralph DeChairo, an associate of Silberman. While McBride never said so, the Kefauver hearings and the growing public association between him and the mafia may have played a role in his decision to get out of football. McBride said he had simply "had his fling" with football and wanted to concentrate on other business activities. "Well, I came out clean after all," he said. "Considering what happened to some of the other fellows who started the old All-America Conference with me, this isn't so bad. I never made anything, but I didn't lose anything either, except maybe a few thousand dollars."