Which is more important for the Browns, the right coach or quarterback?
January 15, 2014Mike Zimmer joins Minnesota; Browns left as only opening
January 15, 2014
The latest round of dysfunction in Berea has taken a serious toll on me as a football fan and it might have permanently changed my perspective of the game. A week or so ago, I got into a conversation with a Twitter follower who has been reading WFNY for some time, and he noted how much I’ve changed in terms of how I look at the Cleveland Browns. Where I once looked for ways they could be getting things right and improving, I now look with a skeptical eye. I acknowledge this change and I think it’s interesting to look at how it all came about. I don’t think it necessarily started in the past year, but I believe the tipping point was the raid on Pilot Flying J.
I couldn’t have been happier about the ownership change for the Cleveland Browns. As time moved along and as Randy Lerner failed to build a stable, competitive football organization in any manner or style,1 it seemed like a dream come true that the team would be in the hands of someone who aggressively wanted to own a pro football team. Yes, it was a man from Tennessee who had previously owned a minority stake in the Steelers. No matter though, because he wanted to own an NFL team. He was approved by his peers with a round of roaring applause. He toured the league to see how organizations like the Patriots and Cowboys run their operations. He went and hired executives with legitimate NFL expertise in Joe Banner and Alec Scheiner. He was building an actual organization, it seemed.
And then his company got raided in April on tax day.
Over night, the NFL owner who sat in the Dawg Pound, never feared interviews, and seemed solely focused on his expensive hobby of a football team was distracted. The news about the Browns changed on a dime as well. Were there contingency plans in place for team ownership should criminal fallout occur to Jimmy Haslam? What (if anything) would the NFL do with this guy who had just recently been granted kingship of his new fiefdom in Cleveland? Would they consider forcing him to sell the team again? As if Cleveland didn’t have enough negativity to overcome in terms of football track record, here was a specially imported level of potential dysfunction that no football fan should ever have to consider.
As I said in the open, it has really thrown me for a loop. It feels like an epiphany, but one that has come to ruin some blissfully ignorant notion of sports. I usually consider the word “epiphany” with a positive connotation, but what if the enlightenment that follows serves to ruin something you’ve loved and wanted to love your whole life?
IÂ sit here today and tell you that I’m unsure what “Cleveland Browns” means anymore. The Browns are a legal entity owned by Jimmy Haslam, but the Browns are also a living history –Â written and oral –Â that pre-dates Haslam. The Browns are a tradition that lives within the fan base, passed from generation to generation. They are all these things and you’d think they should all be inter-connected about as tightly as anything ever.
Right now, given all the events of the past year on top of the decade plus that preceded it, I feel like I have nearly no connection to the thing that is legally allowed to call itself the Cleveland Browns. It feels as if the operating concern that is the Cleveland Browns has never been less connected to my working definition of what the Cleveland Browns truly are and were. I know that’s a little bit wonky and philosophical, but I’m still trying to wrap my arms around it as well.
Granted, it might just be the (constant) losing talking, but there seems to be an extra layer of disconnect today that didn’t exist even when Randy Lerner owned the team. Where we thought the Browns were getting a stability upgrade, only potential disruptions exist. Jimmy Haslam’s legal troubles hang in the balance. The team fired an entire coaching staff after their first season. By virtue of doing that, I feel like it put the front office’s future at risk2. As fans and commentators of a football team, we have an owner with a hazy future, lording over a now-questionable front office that fell on its face with its first coaching hire, and an obvious vacancy in the head coaching realm.
After spending plenty of time worrying about Browns situations over the past decade and a half, it seems impossible to fathom that I still need to worry about it. This era was supposed to be the one that those problems were alleviated by new, credible ownership. I hate to keep harping on it, but it’s this ownership that was specifically exported to Cleveland by the NFL. Nobody in this town knew Jimmy Haslam III existed before he bought the team. We didn’t vote for him. The thing that we’re supposed to take ownership of as fans hasn’t materialized as a worthy option and yet there’s nothing3 we can do about it.
I think I’ve lost my way. Maybe it’s just about winning and I’m wasting words, but more and more, as I develop opinions and philosophies about my place in this world, it feels like the toothpaste is out of the tube and there’s no way to get it back in.
Trust me when I say that I take no glee in my negative outlook. I don’t think it’s my natural place in the world. I just can’t deny the way this team makes me feel. That’s the state of things for me right now.
138 Comments
Abandoning the Browns to root for Buffalo? Glutton for punishment.
Really appreciate your positive perspective, TDP. It has kept me grounded, and this is where I will continue to camp out.
For me, it’s simple. I would rather be the guy that has a positive outlook, for when/if I’m ever proven right, it will truly be enjoyable. Conversely, having a negative outlook means that being proven right is just, what, more negativity? I mean, there’s not even a modicum of joy in being proven right.
see DeePagel’s comment above where he told someone they seem like a fantastic Browns fan.
The again I don’t really know why I care.
Heard that…it’s like when you realize that carrying a grudge around about someone or something only hurts you. Then you let it go, and it’s so liberating.
Add me to the list of people who have been at least somewhat “broken” by the events of the past 12 months. Not “broken” to the point of apathy or quitting on the Browns…but certainly “broken” of the habit of having any kind of positive expectations for the future.
I think we have absolutely reached a tipping point with the fan base. This incredible fan base has been the constant for this franchise though it’s entire history. If there is not marked improvement in 2014 win the win/loss column, things are really going to get ugly. If Jimmy Haslam didn’t understand that before he bought the team, he does now.
Football is in our blood. This is where the game was created, and we take great pride in that. The fact that the Cleveland Browns are dangerously close to making NE Ohio apathetic about professional football is something that I never could have envisioned in my life.
Can’t speak for him, but it sounded sincere to me. Most folks here are fantastic Browns fans, and it is sad to see them quit.
Fair enough. perhaps i was wrong. It has happened before (many,many,MANY times)
Also, it’s not quitting. I like to think of it as “re-prioritizing”
Haslam won’t go to jail. He has to much money to go to jail, at worst he’ll get hefty fines that he can spring for.
This is exactly where I was after the JAX game this year. I was emotionally done with the Browns – really, truly done. Then I remembered my Steinbeck (East of Eden). “Timshel.” Thou mayest be a Browns fan. Wow. It’s a choice; and I choose to be one. That has allowed me to retain a positive outlook since then.
Craig instead of looking at yourself as being changed look at it as being awoken:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4
I think we need to hire Urban because I’m a Michigan fan and I want John Cooper back on the sidelines in Columbus
is this some kind of twisted experiment to see how far you can push a group of people before they crack?
Never thought about it in that light….very funny, and true.
It’s football, I’m a Browns fan, I want to see them win….it’s kind of that simple.
I get excited over the anticipation of the games. The winning is great, the losing stings, but I don’t think I know how to turn off that excitement and “butterfly” feeling when they take the field.
I’m married, have two kids, teach high school, and coach – sports is not the end all be all of my life, but it’s a very key part of my entertainment and what I like to do with my money and free time.
Loving Cleveland sports is just too much of a part of my life to change. And frankly, I’m glad I can’t change it.
I thought they mentioned his father, who is in his 80s. Very little about this situation comforts me
http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/smokey.jpg
Father, brother what’s the difference at this point. It’s like DeBartolo with the 49ers.
I’d also add… for me (and I assume others) a lot of non-Browns issues have made me less of a fan.
The more we know about concussions, the harder it becomes to watch games. And the inconsistent and (sometimes) hypocritical way the NFL handles head hunting.
There’s a lot more to dislike about the NFL as a whole, imo. They’ve gone from business giving me the sport I love to for-profit organization out to make as much money as they possibly can.
Like being a Michigan fan, for one . . .
(I kid!)
Urban already coaches a professional team! đ
See I let you all test the mushrooms first that’s why I’m a Patriots fan!
I must break you!
I’m just saying if he’s going to burn this mutha to the ground take it all the way. A logo on the helmet is akin to the banner of a conquered kingdom being burnt.
My comment was meant in true honesty. No sarcasm intended at all. Reading it the way you took it was 110% not how I meant it.
I sincerely meant that he sounded like a great and long time Browns fan, and it’s sad to me that after all that time he is leaving.
I apologize for the confusion.
sad but true. Where money is involvedâŠ..
Actually it’s interesting to consider that football may be a very minor sport in 50-75 years, given increasing knowledge about the long term health effects of football. Around 1900, the biggest sport in America was boxing, today that’s maybe around the 10th-15th biggest sport? My bold prediction is that ultimate frisbee will be a strong up and coming sport in the next 50 years. More specific prediction: it will be an olympic sport in our lifetime. Exciting, fast paced, and relatively low bodily impact.
It’s all because of that damn ring Gandalf!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3mX7ApbPlto/UD6jka7OfjI/AAAAAAAAGPQ/g4THd1J277Y/s1600/lord-of-the-rings-450x303frotoring.jpg
Dogs can play it too!
Yet it always can be worse. They can put a logo on only one side of the helmetâŠ..
Yea with three diamond shaped elements.
âŠand really bad @$$ uniforms
Well said, and I agree that we are looming near a “tipping point”. Our fan base will never stop supporting the team, but I think many are already seriously reconsidering the discretionary spending around the franchise (ie. season tickets, NFL ticket, NFL Rewind, etc) which used to be no-brainer purchases. This is more symbolic than anything, but still a significant indicator of how far things have fallen.
Sorry you took this wrong…..not my intention. This guy has been a fan since I was born, and it’s sad he is leaving after all of that. I hope the Browns do enough to bring him back….
100% Sincerity.
I understand words on the internet can be taken in different ways, but this was definitely sincere.
well, we often do have dogs running on the field =P
^5! Dachshunds playing frisbee: phase 2 for 2014!!!
Or maybe we can recruit a regular dog to play football, train it to run fast and catch passes and run straight to the end zone. this dog will be the perfect compliment to Josh Gordon, be able to run down whatever errant pass is thrown his way, and save our 2014 season. And in the end we’ll all learn a valuable lesson about friendship and teamwork.
You are forgetting the most important thing, a bonus, the hot crazy chicks from PETA protesting!
Btw wasn’t this a Disney movie?
I support both hot chicks and pissing off PETA. And the Browns. And ultimate frisbee and dogs. I bring my wife along, and we support 9/10 of those.
Oh trust me, Buffalo wouldn’t be my alternate choice (I’d go Saints, because Nola is a slice of heaven in my book). But a former member of the Browns front office recommends the Bills.
Dude, Boxing has been replaced by a more exciting much more dangerous sport of Ultimate Fighting. I think the logisitcs of Boxing makes it easier to do it anywhere as opposed to football where you have teams linked to cities where you have a set schedule etc.
ah good, so you are admitting that the wolverines cannot beat the Buckeyes with Urban in charge. we’re good đ
i disagree where you say boxing was ‘replaced’ by UFC, boxing i felt was pretty small long before UFC became popular. although there was the WWF but still, ufc came long after boxing’s popularity waned.
Well . . . a poor man has never given me a job. Only rich men (and Uncle Sam – through the taxes of rich men) have.
Sad thing is, I think they are turning the die hard fans into more of a casual fan. I didn’t buy the ticket last year because we got week 1 for free, second week was local, had family plans 3rd weekend, 4th was nationally televised, 5th week was Thursday game, and I went to 6th game. Was tempted to buy the package at that point, but didn’t. Something was telling me not to. I did follow them, and listen to them on the radio for free, but didn’t get the package. Once people go from die hard to casual, it will probably take some time if ever to get back to the die hard intensity.
My sons are soon to be 3 and 5…we still have some time.
TRUE fans :p
Nice to read a comment from another “veteran”. I go back to the 58 season, and saw all of Jim Brown’s career. When I was a kid and then a young adult, the outcome of the games had a greater influence on my moods. As I got married, and raised 4 sons, my perspective began to change. I still follow the team very closely, but don’t live and die with the results. In the end, it is only entertainment. If they win the Super Bowl next year, I will be happy for them and mostly for the fans, but my life won’t change much. I will still work, love my family and friends, and remember what a gift each day of life is. I enjoy the game of pro football, just like I enjoy baseball and basketball. When the Tribe was one pitch away from winning the WS in 97, I was sthinking about my Dad, and how great it would be to share the moment. When they lost, I was despondent, but soon regained perespective. It ultimately is the journey andnot the destination that matters. Enjoy the game and the competition. I enjoyed watching my 4 sons participate in their youth and high school sports much more than any pro team. When your child succeeds, their is so much more joy because it is personal. All pro teams are actually mercenaries. They are also often millionaires. Why get upset over their job?
As long as the money is still there, I don’t think there’s a problem…right?
Like most who commented, I feel as Craig does. People tell me, “You’ll be back next season,” but I’m not sure.
– I refused to watch multiple games this year. It’s the first time I can ever remember missing games by choice (as opposed to missing games because something came up).
– I’m actually not upset at all about how pathetic this coaching search is. I enjoy it the same way I enjoy passing a car accident on the highway: with morbid curiosity.
– I’m not sure when the last time I wore a piece of Browns apparel was.
– A few years ago, I tried to buy season tickets. This year, I turned down free tickets twice.
I know I’ll still pay attention. And if winning happens, of course I’ll be back. But right now, I feel like I did when I lived in Buffalo. I paid attention to the Bills and watched their games. But I wasn’t a fan and they weren’t my team. They were my neighbors.
Air Bud
Jobs are not given, they are taken. Uncle Sam is you and me.
Ultimate Frisbee might be the only sport that classifies Weed as a PED. Well that and Curling. You have to be higher than Johnny Cash sitting in a bush eating Strawberry cake to enjoy Curling.