WFNY Roundtable: The unofficial rules of athletes talking or not
February 4, 2014Talking Mike Pettine, Browns ticket prices and Davone Bess with Tom Reed – WFNY Podcast – 2014-02-04
February 4, 2014Will Leitch from Sports On Earth gave the NBA title to the Cleveland Cavaliers, but unfortunately (or fortunately?) the Cleveland Browns weren’t able to carry the belt in the NFL. That honor belongs to the Buffalo Bills. In June, Leitch promises to do the same thing in baseball, where I truly expect the Indians to be somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Anyway, what was the reasoning for the two at the top?
Obviously Browns fans are a group that team ownership “does not deserve,” which I assume we all agree with no matter who owns the team. The Browns have never made the Super Bowl just like the Lions who finished third. Ultimately though, the answer is succinct. Leitch simply says, “The Browns are cruel and wrong.”
So congratulations to the Bills!
They earned the top spot for their well-known history as well as the fact that they play one “home” game in Toronto every season. With that in mind, and knowing how much Browns fans adore going down to that stadium (or the parking lots at least,) and even considering how bad the team is, it’s hard to argue that Browns fans could have it worse.
I’d never really thought about it, but it’s true. The Browns have all their home games in Cleveland still. The fact that they moved once was about as cruel and brutal a thing to ever experience as a sports fan, but we survived it. The Browns moving feels less likely as a possibility because it’s already happened once. They couldn’t possibly do it again, right? Right? Well, imagine if you were a fan of a team that hasn’t been moved out of your city before, but also has lost one of its home games already. That’s pretty tortured to go along with bad football.
Plus, the Browns took their defensive coordinator, Mike Pettine, to be head coach and Bills fans were legitimately upset about it coming off of a six win season. Just when they felt like they might be gaining some momentum, a first-year coordinator from a first-year coaching staff got poached.
So the Bills take home the #1 slot this year, but there’s no telling if they can hold onto it. The Browns are another one-year-wonder coach or maybe even a federal indictment away from stealing the trophy.
[Related:Â Hopes for the Cleveland Browns as the off-season begins for real]
37 Comments
Go root for Buffalo
f#@* you
You know things are bad when you can’t even be the best of the worst!
everyones got this all wrong…if you “win” then you cant be the biggest loser. So really, second place is the real “winner” here, because they cant even win something so tricial
#FactoryOfSadnessRemainsUndefeated
The Bills? Gimme a break. How many Cleveland moments have they had? Three?
1. They’ve got Norwood’s missed kick in the Superb Owl. Okay, but that wasn’t a chip shot. And their other three losses weren’t tortuous, they were blowouts.
2. They’ve got the Music City Miracle, which I’ll grant you was spectacularly awful.
3. Then there was Clay Matthews’ interception of Jim Kelly at the goal line near the end of that ’89 divisional playoff game at the old Stadium. (Do you think they call that “The Interception”? Probably not.)
Anything else?
So they lost one home game a year. Big deal, we lost eight home games for three years, and then we got saddled with the Replacements.
Buffalo also had the greatest comeback in NFL playoff history, and they didn’t even sell out that game. It was blacked out up there. Pathetic.
So don’t tell us about tortured.
/Hit it, Elton: “Levon (Clevelond?) wears his war wound like a crown.”
Love it.
The Bills are so bad that they have to play the Cleveland Browns every year.
WHO
I wonder if a coin was flipped to decide the winner
His eyes are brown and orange? Harbinger?
Indeed.
Let’s name him “Herald.”
If so, Joe Namath flipped it. And it landed – and balanced – on its edge.
It’s funny when people make lists on snapshots in time rather than trying to digest the history.
The Bills never had their team taken over by a scheister who fired the greatest coach of all time, drove off the greatest runningback into an early retirement, and put the team in such dire financial straits that moving it to another city and being gifted millions upon millions of dollars from the new city wasn’t enough to stop him from going bankrupt and losing the team (among other things).
The Bills never so wrong-fully over-reacted to a few bad breaks that they fired the coach (Marty) and shipped off a great RB (Byner).
The Bills never had a 1st round draft pick die before playing a down.
The Bills never had the NFL force 3 ownership groups on them that all seem to be different types of bad (Modell, Lerner, Haslam).
But hey, they were the best of the AFC when it was the far inferior conference and got beat a few times in a row. And, I’m not mad, it’s the conversation that guys like Leitch are trying to start. But, I’m also not giving him my click.
but, he flipped it prematurely
The Bills’ appearances in the Super Bowl also disqualifies them.
“‘Tis better to have [played] and lost than to never have [played] at all.”
He looks more like a Spergon to me, but ok
You rang?
as an aside, I got the Browns history DVD for Christmas. Watched it with my family. My wife was in-and-out, but was there for “The Drive.” She actually said out-loud (as close to word-for-word as I can remember):
Wait, I thought they lost this game? They are winning, the other team fumbles the kickoff, ends up on the 1yd line, and the Browns STILL lose?
WYNN
no way, Spergon Wynns.
lol. I yield
LTMT.
On a related note, I was watching a documentary of some sort (don’t remember which one) about the Browns and The Drive last year with my wife. She lived in the Denver area at the time, and her family was “sort of” Broncos fans (her brother, anyway – she didn’t start liking sports until she agreed to “for better or worse – mostly worse”). Her response was very similar to Mrs. Bode’s.
“I can’t believe the Broncos win this game.”
“I don’t remember anything about it.”
“Wow. I think I understand you better now than ever before.”
“Why did you drag me into this?”
Volume I of the Browns History series is good, but I believe volume II belongs in the clearance bin…next to Jingle All the Way and Porkys 3.
Yeah, it’s always quaint to see the non-Clevelanders start to see what we have been through 🙂
The main difference for me is that Mrs. Bode isn’t drug into anything. She is a USC fan, so her allegiance followed Pete Carroll to the NFL. Even when that guy goes 7-9 he makes the playoffs!
I’ve said this before, but my wife’s first “A-ha!” moment was when the Indians were experimenting with Fausto as closer.
“What’s your problem? He can still win this for the…”
Crack! David Ortiz with a long drive… gone!
Tribe loses 9-8
No, I think he said “sturgeon”
Not so fast, my friend.
Someone needs to start a support group for our poor loved ones. Wives and Family members of Native Clevelanders desperately Yearning (WFNY). Eh sorry, it’s a working title.
lol. Of course, on a Browns thread I see this and think: “Cleveland Clinic, staph infection”
Hey, do the Browns have to play in Canada this upcoming season as well? We are at “Buffalo” on the schedule (they actually play in Orchard Park).
I really, really like where this thread went.
Always drafting 3rd or 4th, so we are always looking up at the number 1 pick… and now we are 2nd worst franchise, we are bad, but not bad enough for that kind of recognition…
Your working title needs to be laid off with no severance package and no unemployment compensation.
Yeah, I’ve heard the docs from UH are a bunch of MRSA-naries
Come on, Gar, it deserves at least a $10.5 million buyout.
You lose. You get nothing. I said good day sir!
Ummm…..we pay to watch this mess. Usually more when they lose.
Canada doesn’t even want to watch us.