Cavaliers West Coast Wrap-Up
January 26, 2009Coast To Coast
January 26, 2009Well, we had the live blog here. It didn’t go as well as planned due to some firewall-based technical issues. Then we put up a quick poll here to get a gauge for what your off-the-cuff feelings were following the conference. And now, I take it upon myself to grade the approximately 40 minutes of questions and answers that we saw come from today’s introduction of our new general manager.
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The Introduction:
First, the press conference was moved back to 11:15AM. Not a great start. Then, we were greated once again by team president Mike Keenan. Fans were blown away by the fact that he also introduced Eric Mangini a few weeks back, but seem to be increasingly less surprised by the move this time around. Randy Lerner was reportedly located in the very back of the room, where cameras could not even view the back of his head. Instead of rushing to the podium, introducing and heading into his office, Keenan provided a story about Kokinis that was likely aimed to show that “he’s one of us.” Very touching, to say the least. Right.
Keenan did his best. But it should have been Lerner. No excuses.
Grade: D
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Questions:
A lot of the questions were very poignant and on task, relating to the macro picture. The first question fired in the direction of Kokinis was regarding the “task at hand.” A lot of talk was going on in the background prior to the official announcement regarding the disarray that would be the Cleveland locker room and even salary situation.
Personally, I’m not a fan of all of this turn back the clock talk that went on about when Kokinis was with the Browns. I think we are all on the same page when we say that things are different today than they were with the team we had prior to 1995. However, after this talk was ended, we had the question I was waiting for: “Appraise this team.”
Other points that we wanted to know were about Kokinis’ “say” in things. The draft. The 53-man roster. The quarterback situation. All were touched. I would have liked to have heard a question regarding communication between the team and the media, but perhaps it was a bit on the “too soon?” side following all of the stuff that went down over the last 72 hours.
Grade: B+
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The Answers:
Would I have preferred more clear-cut answers? Sure. But those of you that expected Kokinis to roll in to his introductory press conference and start clearing house set the bar a bit too high. Would I have liked to have him at least give some sort of appraisal aside from “one day at a time?” Definitely.
“I don’t really want to go into the evaluation of the football team right now. It’s important for them [the coaching staff] to evaluate the team first. I’m going to be grinding up my end in terms of looking at every phase. To go player by player, it’s not the time.”
A bit of a cop out, but I do understand that he has been on the clock for only a few hours. This is something I think we can all let slide, as long as it is addressed at some point prior to training camp.
The talk about Benedictine and St. Ed’s was completely unnecessary. We get it, you know this is a football town. How about focusing on the one at which we shell out an extraordinary amount of time and emotion?
Kokinis was quick to point out all of his experience at the college level as well as through the NFL free agency. When given the gauntlet about only having four draft selections this year, Kokinis did not back down.
“Free agency, … it’s important I get with our staff here to get their feelings on this team. We’re going to build this team in the draft, there’s no doubt about it.”
The one answer that may stick out to a few fans was the way that Kokinis downplayed the Pittsburgh Steelers. While fans long for a victory over the black and gold, GK thinks that they are just another team.
“The Steelers are a great football team. They’ve had a process that’s worked for them. I don’t think the Steelers are any more of a task than any other team. They’re in our division. Sure we want to beat division opponents. I think we attack each team as we go along.”
But while he did have a few moments of speaking faster than he was thinking, all in all, I think Kokinis answered what he could given the amount of time he’s had on the job. The guy simply isn’t going to go out there and lay out what his plan of attack is over the next three months. There is bound to be a lot of moving and shaking between now and the draft, but aside from tip-toeing around a few questions with the greatest of ease, even waxing political at times, I think Kokinis did relatively well.
Grade: B
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All in all, we have no choice but to grade this new regime in the future. We can only judge so much by what any of these men did in their prior lives, or by what they say when behind a microphone. I’ve heard some fairly startling things about the behind the scenes work of the prior “team” that was making the decisions, and I do think it is pretty safe to say that this won’t be the case this time around.
Now, we just have to hope that it leads to wins…
34 Comments
Randy Lerner not introducing this completed tandem is INEXCUSEABLE and UNACCEPTABLE. After all, it was HE who made such a rush play on his own.
You all are his customers. You can fall into place, whereby you’ll get the same treatment; or you can expect and demand more. Your choice.
I guess I understand him downplaying the Steelers. As a fan, would you be happy winning 14 games but not beating the Steelers? I wouldnt be completely happy but I will take it.
The next couple months are going to be very interesting.
Tressel’s first words at his hiring announcement: “I can assure you that you will be proud of your young people in the classroom, in the community, and most especially in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the football field.”
Kokinis had the chance to have a similar moment today, to have Cleveland fans eating out of the palm of his hand, and buying his new regime an extended honeymoon period.
He missed a very obvious opportunity.
Today’s presser provided no reason to feel any more confident today than we did yesterday, and I continue to be amazed that there is nobody in this organization with even a rudimentary understanding of public relations.
MJ, the difference being that the team Tressell inherited was having issue beating Michigan. Right now the Browns have issue beating, well, anyone.
Missing the point, Jack, which was how Tressel endeared himself to Buckeyes fans at his first opportunity, in spite of being a questionable hire, and bought himself the benefit of the doubt. The Browns could have used this event today to get everyone on board, and Kokinis could have had the red carpet rolled out for him. They failed to take advantage.
Randy’s got luxury suites and season tickets to sell before they take the field again.
The Browns’ relationship with their fans is damaged.
They missed a critical opportunity to patch that up today.
Who cares about public relations? If these guys win, no one will care what they have to say to the media. They could send an f-you e-mail to every fan and no one would care. As much as I think Romeo was an awful coach, he was right on when he said, “When we win, everybody’s happy. When we lose, everybody’s sad.” That’s why this team is bordering on losing its fan base, and why there’s as much steeler gear as Browns gear on cars and people in this town. They have to start winning or else me and a bunch of other people will say to hell with ’em. I’ve already vowed that I will not spend one dime at that stadium until this terrible product improves. If enough other people did the same thing, they would have no choice but to improve it.
Heck, they could go across the street to BW and offer an unpaid internship… any average communications major could probably craft a better message than what this supposed professional organization is putting out there.
“I’ve already vowed that I will not spend one dime at that stadium until this terrible product improves.”
Kokinis and Mangini could be the second coming of Jesus Christ and they couldn’t win any games between now and September. In the meantime, it is not a wise choice to continue alienating fans when they have to renew luxury suite leases and sell season tickets. That’s why they need to be concerned with their public image and relationship with the fans.
Guys.. Calm Down. What about all of those other NFL franchises like Detroit and KC and Oakland that were looking to talk to Kokinis.. and… oh yeah.. NONE OF THEM WERE TRYING TO TALK TO HIM. George.. welcome to the big top in Berea. Bring your glow sticks and popcorn.
mj,
Any fan that buys season tickets based on these guys “talking” a good game given this team’s recent history is a moron.
Those that think this “Fan Angst is unimportant”, are missing what’s going on. Now I know you cannot rely solely on internet message boards to guage public sentiment, but I think it’s safe to say people by and large are royally peeved at the Browns organization (and the product).
This down-time in the economy is going to last several years. Even in good times, people stretched themselves to pay for Browns tickets, advertising and merchandise. Given the lousy product for a prolonged period, people are realizing strectching themselves for an organization that screws them over is not worth it.
Wouldn’t most will agree the overall public mood has gone from unhealthy loyal customer to ripped-off customer? “The Randolph” is probably paying Reggie Rucker a million dollars a year to sit around Berea and poke a Lebron voodoo doll with pins.
mj-you are dead on the mark. Those that don’t understand PR haven’t a clue as to what a winning organization is all about. The “as long as they win” mantra leaves little room for error, dont ya think?
Customer’s matter, perceptions matter, image matters: Lerner and Mankok will learn this one way or the other.
Viva la Viagogo!!
Once the Browns sign 2 big name free agents and draft some rookies with potential all will be forgiven.
So you would call the people that bought PSLs and season tickets in 1999 morons, then? There was no recent history to go on, other than getting screwed by the NFL. Ticket commitments were a condition of getting the team back, and they had no track record whatsoever to go by.
Season tickets aren’t sold after the team starts winning games, in week 2, or 3, or 4… they are sold long before the season starts, based on hope and expectations. And the Browns aren’t managing expectations well.
I’m with you, go cavs, in that I’m not spending a time on this team right now. But the fact remains that they’re missing opportunities here, and whether you think PR is important or not, it’s vital to a good organization and the Browns are doing it wrong.
Actually, whether they’re morons or not is irrelevant… there’s no prohibition on selling tickets or merchandise to morons that I’m aware of.
Subtle shift from “viva la mankok” to “viva la viagogo”…
I see what you did there…
Well said, BC.
I missed the press conference does anyone know anywhere online i can watch it?
Why wouldn’t any season ticket holder (customer) find it unacceptable for the owner to disdain saying nary a word to his base after such major facelifts orchestrated by himself? Oh…..right……..someone paying thousands every year to The Cleveland Browns should be content “as long as they win”. Right, gotcha. Sorry Randy………it’s really not important that you ackowledge your customer’s or care about their experience with your product.
Viva la Mankok.
Viva la Viagogo.
Viva la Ginikini
Hope is a four letter word.
That is all this journey has been since ’99 and prior.
Absolute disjunct is all this same old same old continues to be.
Cleveland needs, and warrants an OWNER.
Period.
Until then……
Golf, ice fishing, anything but this oh so slow motion death of a once extremely proud team.
Viva la FAIL.
MJ – I agree with you – but “Ticket commitments were a condition of getting the team back.” Is that accurate? I was in college and then out-of-state during the 98-99 years. Can we confirm that.
Spending $ in them isn’t moronical per se. Doing so with expectations of a well-run team and succesful product is given a decade of failure.
BC – we had conditions to meet in order to get a team back to Cleveland (which wasn’t assured to be an expansion team until spring 1998.) Obviously, building the stadium was the key part of that agreement, and if memory serves, PSLs (and thus, season tickets) had to be purchased to fund the building the stadium. If I have a chance, I’ll try to look up the details later… or perhaps somebody else will drop in that has better recall of all the terms. We can be proud that we fought to keep our colors and tradition, but in many ways the NFL took us to the cleaners, imo… we lost many of the perks that JAX and CAR got in their expansion year, and, well, I just think they took advantage of Browns’ fans loyalty. I’ll just say I’m far more cynical now than I was before that whole era transpired. 🙂
And just to clarify, my comment questioning the ticket-holders/morons thing was a direct response to ‘go cavs.’ I didn’t refresh the page before I responded, and three posts popped up before I posted my comment.
I think that calling people that enjoy Browns football despite the fact they had a terrible product last year “morons” is insane. I drove from MA to Cleveland to watch the Browns get shut out at home by the Bungals in a -5 windchill – I loved every second of it. Sure, I wanted them to win, but just being there was incredible, and it was worth every penny.
Sometimes, you love the team. To demand that people walk away from it because they don’t like the owner or the team sucks is what makes a lot of sports fans disengenuous, fair-weather fans. I’m a fan – regardless of all the other garbage. Maybe I’m drinking the kool-aid when I think that the new system should work. But who are you, any of you, to tell me that I’m wrong in doing what I’m doing? Sure, they may dissapoint me, but the lows come with the highs. I hope they do well, but if they don’t, I’ll hope they get them next year. It’s not being a “moron,” it’s being a fan.
Jason, I fly up from Tampa 2-3 times a year to see this team and take in the glory that is a Browns tailgate on a Sunday afternoon. Plus we made the 3 hour trek to Jacksonville from here to see an exciting W back in October–meeting plenty of die-hard Browns fans there as well and having a great time.
Do they frustrate me? More than anything. Do I agree with everything they do? Absolutely not. And if we were preparing for another year with Romey Smalls at the helm, I’d be looking to make other plans on Sundays in the fall. I’m not sold on what the team has done this off-season, but I’m willing to give it a chance. No kool-aid drinking going on, just taking the wait-and-see approach. It’s not about being content with anything, it’s about knowing what you can control and what you can’t. As a fan, I can control whether or not I watch or spend money. I don’t have to do either until August at least, so I’m not going to rend garments or curse the new regime until I have reason to.
So props to you and all Browns fans, and go Browns.
Chris…..great post. The issue here is the owner. How fans can accept that their owner made all of these decisions and then stands at the back of the room behind the cameras without one iota of a nod to his customers is beyond me. It’s so beyond me that I’m now a fan of Viagogo.
mj-you are correct in regards to the PSL’s, I own two of them.
Viva la Mankok.
Viva la Viagogo.
@RandyOSU–do you recall if there was a quota for the PSLs? I know that they were part of the financing package to get the stadium built, but I could have sworn we guaranteed the NFL that we’d sell a certain minimum as part of the agreement to return a team here. Unfortunately, a cursory Google search didn’t lead me to any specific details in that area.
OK, I spent about ten minutes digging around. Here is a PDF of the City Record (Cleveland City Council’s official pub.) Relevant details on p4 through p15:
http://www.dln.com/cr/index96/February%2028%2C%201996.pdf
I skimmed it briefly… page after page of mind-numbing details on sin tax extensions, the NFL line of credit, bond issues, dumping Municipal Stadium into the lake, yada yada yada… but I don’t see anything mandating PSLs.
So if they weren’t part of the NFL agreement, where did the PSLs come from?
Well, the NFL agreement that promised the NFL a new stadium and left the Browns history in Cleveland created the a shell organization called the Cleveland Browns Trust. Quoting Wikipedia:
“Cleveland NFL Football LLC (Cleveland Browns Trust) was formed by the NFL. President of the Trust was Bill Futterer, and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was the Trustee. The Trust represented the NFL in the stadium design and construction, managed the sale of suites and club seats, and sold Permanent Seat Licenses and season tickets.”
In March 1998, the NFL finally decided that the new Browns would be an expansion team (we agreed to allow the NFL to either expand or relocate to Cleveland, with any relocation having to meet agreed-on criteria.) Al Lerner was awarded the franchise in October 1998 (for an expansion fee of $530mil, more than double the previous record for the sale or expansion of any previous professional sports franchise), leaving very little time to prepare a franchise to compete in 1999.
So… although the PSLs may not have been mandated via the agreement between the city and the NFL, we put the league in charge of the idled franchise, thus the NFL would be responsible for foisting the dreaded PSLs upon Browns fans…. who were all too eager to snap them up:
“The Trust operated its campaign under a Countdown to ’99 theme, utilizing Hall of Famers such as Lou Groza and Jim Brown extensively, and sold nearly 53,000 season tickets”
Worked out well for the NFL. They got an expansion team a sweetheart deal in Baltimore, and we gave them a state-of-the-art stadium and $530mil to split among 30 NFL owners (Art Modell was precluded from sharing the bounty.) And the NFL was able to milk Browns fans and get their PSLs, something that probably never would have taken root in Cleveland had Modell not screwed us. Ten years later, Baltimore won a Super Bowl and has a model franchise run by an exemplary owner in Steve Bisciotti, and we have The Randolph and Mankok. How’s that for justice…
@ Jason 24
I think some are saying putting hard earned money into the franchise as a consumer is crazy.
But you can do that, and still be a crazy die hard fan. I just won’t give The Randolph a nickel. I think we’d all agree that duality can exist.
She wore an itsy-bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka-dot ginikini…
FWIW, I buy season tickets. I don’t measure my decision to do it every year based on my overall enthusiasm for the team. Yes, I go to more games some years than I do in others, but I think you guys are boiling the argument down to simply.
I buy tickets not only for the team, the sport, and the atmosphere, but for the tradition. I buy them because my best friend from HS and I have been doing it together for years and years, and it’s one of the few chances he and I get to hang out and talk (and watch) football together now that we live in different cities and he has a child. It’s a chance for me to spend time with friends I wouldn’t otherwise get to spend time with.
In a word, it’s an experience.
That may sound corny, but it’s not so simple to say, “if you’re unhappy, you’re a moron if you buy tickets.” If you think I’m a moron because of all of the reasons I buy my tickets, well then you can form a line and eat my rear end.
I agree to DP, Jason, and B-bo. I am a browns fan and love the experience, whether it end in misery or joy at the end of every sunday. I only make it to about 2 games a year, but i wouldnt want to do anything else then sit in that stadium and watch the browns.
mj-it’s too far back for me to really remember the details. I do know (obviously) that building the stadium in an immediate timeframe was the key, and the PSL’s were part of that financing package put together before the first brick was every laid.
this has nothing do with this topic, but i was reading the AFC north blog on espn and they had a piece about terrelle smith, who is now with arizona. I really liked him here, and during the interview i took that he really blamed savage more then anything else. Players had (have) poor attitudes, and ultimately the team wasnt built right. Sure there’s talent, but football is more then just talent. I hope Kokinis can bring guys in to make this a good team, I dont care about talent.