Speaking Friday at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Paul DePodesta said he overheard NFL team officials ripping him and the Browns at the airport after last month's Scouting Combine.

DePodesta was hired by the Cleveland Browns this offseason, coming to the NFL from Major League Baseball.

"I was standing right in front of them in line and I could hear them in back of me and they were talking trash about me and the Cleveland Browns," DePodesta said Friday at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, per Baseball America. "I said, 'All right, this is like 17 years ago in Oakland all over again.' That's part of the fun."

DePodesta expected his move to football to be met by skepticism.

"When I was going to the Browns," DePodesta said, "I had met with the ownership, Jimmy and Dee Haslam, and they asked me, 'What do you want out of an owner?' And I said, 'Well, I'll tell you what I don't want.' I said, 'If you ever take your kids to an amusement park at Disneyland or whatever, they beg you to go on the big daddy roller coaster. They beg you. You say, 'Are you sure?' They say, 'Absolutely, I want to go on this thing.' So you wait in line for 45 minutes, it takes up a good chunk of your day, you finally get to the front of the line, they eyeball it, and they say, 'Uh, I'm not getting on that thing. Not at all.'