The last time the Cleveland Browns were legitimate contenders for the Super Bowl, UJ and I had season tickets.
We sat in the upper deck of old Cleveland Municipal Stadium during the late ’80s and early ’90s. We watched as the Denver Broncos and John Elway — may he rot forever in hell — broke our hearts with The Drive, and the next year we watched the great team that eventually fell, again, to Denver thanks to The Fumble. (It’s all part of the immense burden of failure lugged around by Cleveland sports fans, most recently recounted by this piece in the New York Times.) It was fun going to the games and great to watch good football, but eventually we gave up our tickets as the Browns jacked up prices and other obligations intervened.
But now Russell will be returning to the Midwest. He loves the Browns, and from the Cranbrook campus in the suburban Detroit area he’ll be within a reasonable drive from Cleveland. So, we talked about it during Russell’s Mother’s Day visit, and we decided to pull the trigger. Once again, I’ll be a season ticket holder, taking in the NFL in all its spectacle and wretched excess with Russell as we watch from our seats in Section 536 of Cleveland Browns Stadium.
I don’t think the Browns will be very good this year, but you never know . . . and sometimes you just have to put your money where your mouth is. This season, we’re betting on the Browns.
Akron, Ohio, the place of my birth, falls squarely within the Cleveland sports orbit. Parentage and pedigree played a role, too, as my parents and grandparents were all Cleveland sports fans. Rabid support for the Browns and the Tribe was a kind of birthright for the boys in our family. I gladly participated, going to Indians games with my grandparents and watching the Browns with UJ on autumn Sundays. Little did I know that, during those hopeful days of the late ’60s, I was signing on to a lifelong commitment that, for more than four decades, would not be rewarded with a championship.
This year, the choice of which team to root against is easy. I’m hoping that San Francisco beats the whey out of the Ravens. I root against the Ravens because, on a grim, star-crossed day years ago, greed-addled Art Modell decided to follow the dollar signs and move the Browns franchise to Baltimore, thereby carving the beating hearts out of hundreds of thousands of loyal Browns fans. With that fateful decision, the now-deceased Modell earned the opprobrium of all Browns fans for the rest of eternity. I hope children born into the families of Browns fans for generations to come are taught to despise the sight and memory of Art Modell.
I don’t care about the 49ers, or the match-up of the Harbaugh brothers, or any of the other story lines leading to today’s games. Although 
Will Chud be a stud? Who knows? Most recently, he’s been the offensive coordinator for the Carolina Panthers. They didn’t make the playoffs this year, but their offense was better than the Browns. Chudzinski’s supposed to be great at developing young quarterbacks — but then, so was Pat Shurmur, and we all saw how that Browns hire turned out. So, we’ve got a young guy who’s never been a head coach in the NFL before, trying to turn around a franchise that has given its fans awful teams over the past few years. It will be a big challenge for him, just as it was a big challenge for Shurmur, whose resume was just like Chudzinski’s. I hope the Browns hired Chudzinski because they thought he would be a good head coach, and not for other reasons, like his being willing to agree to restrictions on his authority that other coaches wouldn’t accept.
I’m not defending Shurmur. His record stank — 9-23 is putrid even by the awful standards the Browns have achieved since they returned to the league in 1999 — and I thought he was overmatched by head coaching duties. Shurmur’s bad game management decisions, weird use of personnel, and other failings showed he just does not have the unique skill set that successful NFL head coaches possess. This season’s end-of-the-year collapse sealed his fate.
But the last three weeks have produced three wins, including last weekend’s trouncing of the hapless Chiefs. Now the Browns stand at 5-8, and actually have a very, very small chance of making the playoffs. Of course, the Browns would have to win out against three good teams, and a lot of dominoes would need to fall their way — but still! A chance to make the playoffs! It’s almost like there’s a professional football team on the shores of Lake Erie.
It’s entirely natural that people would be paying attention to the end of a calendar created by a long-dead ancient civilization that engaged in ritual human sacrifice. The “
It’s not the Bengals. Sure, the upstart Cincinnati team shares the same state and stole the Browns’ colors when the Bengals franchise starts more than 40 years ago, but to be honest the Bengals really aren’t worthy of being despised. For much of their history, the Bengals have been even more inept than the Browns, and that’s saying something. Sure, the Bengals have been to two Super Bowls and the Browns have never been to even one (sob!), but the Bengals always come across as pass-happy, gimmicky glory boys rather than tough guys willing to slug it out in the AFC’s most rugged division. The fact that the Bengals fans consist largely of front-runners who don’t bother with going to games when the team stinks makes the Bengals more worthy of contempt than hatred.
The Ravens have beaten the Browns like a drum for years. In fact, the Browns haven’t beaten Baltimore during the entirety of the Obama presidency — and I’m not making a subtle pitch for Mitt Romney in mentioning that embarrassing statistic. It’s just a sign of how one-sided this series has been. And, true to form, the Ravens beat the Browns earlier this year, 23-16.
Next Sunday I won’t be able to watch the Browns. Thank God! I can’t bear the agony of watching the Browns fumble and stumble and bumble their way to another disaster. In fact, here is a partial list of things I would rather do than watch the Browns right now:
The sad sack Browns can never quite make the big play. They don’t know how to win. Today’s game is a good example. The Browns look like crap to begin the game as the Bills roll to a 14-0 lead. The Browns fight back and get the ball in the second half with a chance to take the lead, and they produce . . . nothing. Buffalo gets the ball and takes it in for a score, and the Browns’ rookie quarterback throws two picks to end the game on an even more sour note.
Consider yesterday’s Browns game, for example. My conscious, rational brain knew, to a point of metaphysical certainty, that the Browns were going to lose that game in heart-breaking, last-minute fashion — because that’s just what the Browns do. I thought I had prepared myself for the inevitable failure . . . but when Michael Vick threw a touchdown pass to put the Eagles ahead with about a minute to go, and the Browns responded by throwing a horrible, game-ending interception on the very next play from scrimmage, I felt the red rage boiling up inside, uncontrollable and undeniable. I let loose with an embarrassing series of awful epithets that shook the rafters, caused the frightened dogs to flee the family room, and left Kish shaking her head in dismay.
We don’t know precisely how loins were girded, of course. Some people think the long skirts men wore in those days were rolled up and tucked in somewhere, so that you didn’t trip on them. I suspect, however, that there was a bit more emphasis on . . . protection than that. In the old days of single combat, where a kid with a sling might be hurling stones at your most tender areas, you obviously wanted to make sure that your loins were well girded, indeed. Nothing like a flying chunk of rock in the groin (or the forehead) to take the wind out of your sails and lead to your prompt beheading.
