CLEVELAND — The Browns officially begin training camp Wednesday, and even though they don’t play a game that matters until September, between then and now many of us will pay attention to every highlight, every player signing, every player release, every press conference, and every preseason game, and we will watch it all, listen for updates on the radio, and go to the practices, because try though we might, much as we may want to, we just can’t quit the Cleveland Browns.
This, of course, is not the Browns’ fault. They do nothing to force our attention. In fact, a case can be made that the franchise spent the better part of two decades giving us every excuse to walk away. Year after year of lackluster play, with no hope on the horizon, a long and boring playoff drought, a decade where our best player was a tackle, a bunch of bad coaches being paid to not even coach here anymore, a winless season, owner under investigation, a slew of No. 1 draft picks who couldn’t stay in the league as backups, few prime-time games, one or two big wins, not much fun.
Yet we stuck with them.
As a fan base, we get a lot of credit for this. There is a consensus among sports pundits and fans that Clevelanders are real football fans, among the best in the country, and as proof, they often say, “Look how they stayed by the team’s side when it was terrible.” This is viewed as a positive, an indication that we are tried-and-true football fans – evidence that we love the Browns.
But is that what this really is? Is our undying devotion to a team that spent many years looking like your dog playing Madden proof that we are good fans who love football and the Browns? Or is it something else?
I think maybe it’s another thing — that being a Browns fan goes beyond football and says something about us collectively. You already kind of know this, right? It’s on the tip of your tongue, but it’s not something we ever talk about, especially when we’re beating the Steelers in the playoffs.
We’re all Browns fans, no matter what, because deep down we get that it’s one of the last vestiges of a collective Cleveland identity we have left. Cleveland, as many in the 20th century knew it, has been scattered to adjoining counties, flung out into the suburbs and the exurbs – the people, the businesses, the events, the jobs, the food, the neighborhoods, the experiences – all of the things that bind the lives of folks who share space in a city and form a culture with commonalities that give them a shorthand that lets them feel like part of a community. Some of that remains in Cleveland, sure, but it’s also in Solon, and it’s in Avon Lake, and Mentor, and Garfield Heights, and Kirtland, and Brunswick and everywhere in-between. We all call ourselves Clevelanders, but most of us don’t have very much Cleveland in common.
We have a few things, as a region. We have nostalgia for the Mr. Jingeling Cleveland of my parents and grandparents, we have the weather, and we have our pro sports teams, the most popular of which is the Browns. After that? There’s not a whole lot tying us all together. I guess we all hate RITA, but 70,000 people aren’t showing up to cheer for a smarter regional tax solution, although that would be awesome.
It is not just loyalty, or the love of that game, that drives most of us to continue being Browns fans. It’s that feeling of wanting to stay connected to something that the people around us are also connected to – both the people we know, and the people we meet. You get in line at Hopkins, and what do you really have in common with everyone? You all know if the Browns are good or bad and who the quarterback is. It’s enough to start a conversation. We get to feel a little connected. It’s why the most well-known reporters in Cleveland cover the Browns, and it’s why the city water cooler is the morning show on 92.3 The Fan.
Dumb, meaningless pursuits are important pursuits. Obsessing over something trivial is a blessing. There’s still plenty of time to stress about your stress. It is a luxury and a joy to have a long talk in a bar or at the dinner table about why the Browns don’t run the ball when they should run the ball. These conversations – and the games – mark the time with our siblings, parents, grandparents, friends and bartenders. They’re the easy glue that binds us playfully. I don’t live in the same neighborhood you do. We don’t watch the same shows. We don’t read the same books. Didn’t go to the same schools. But we’ve both got the Browns, you and I.
That’s why when a quarterback blows into town who’s been accused of being a giant creep, it’s not automatic that we should all just quit being fans. If this was purely about sports, I think it would be a lot easier to let go. Sports are entertainment, and we turn our backs on celebrities after we learn unsavory things about them all the time. I’ve wondered – a lot – why we all didn’t just walk away after the painfully awkward March press conference, then the HBO show, then the New York Times investigation, and I can only think that for some not insignificant portion of the fan base, turning away from the team because it signed this guy means cutting the bonds they feel with loved ones and with strangers. We’re all divided in so many ways already by our geography, and our financial status, and our politics – now this, too? Because of this guy?!?
Making the choice to not be a fan anymore brings stress of its own. It disconnects you. It fills you with some amount of regret. It’s an implicit judgment on others. When you take the high road, and others don’t join you, what road are they on? They know it, and you know it. How often do you want to have that conversation?
Or maybe it’s that a lot of us who are older remember what it was like when we didn’t have a team from 1996-98. Those were three long years. No football, no reason to enjoy the most popular sport in America. Was life better in 1998 when we had no team or 1999 when we did and the team was terrible? You know the answer. Do we really want to live through 1998 again?
Those who have not given up being fans over this – and there were some – now we’re making deals with ourselves. Well, I won’t go to the games at the stadium. I won’t cheer for him when he’s on the field. I won’t buy his jersey. I won’t watch the games with my kids. I’ll cheer for Chubb and Garrett and Ward and Bitonio. Just can’t quit. Because at the end of the day being a Browns fan really means being part of a community, and the opportunity to feel like you belong to a community gets rarer the older we get and the more our geography and interests are stretched apart. Fandom is a lifelong relationship with people who’ve suffered and celebrated the same failures and triumphs as you. It speaks to our identity, and identity is powerful, and it’s difficult to change, particularly when the reason it’s in question is some outside factor beyond your control.
There is, of course, a dark side to this. Fandom allows for a lack of accountability to the thing to which you’ve pledged your fandom. Sports teams know this. They can do what they want and give any reason to do it because they know you are loyal, and you can either ignore the unpleasantness, swallow and regurgitate the official PR, or struggle with it all. We ripped Steelers fans for sticking with the team after their QB faced allegations of his own, but now we’re finding out those Steelers fans were all of us – conflicted but bound together, for better or for worse, by something that was bigger than the team, unable to let go. The pundits have it wrong. Browns fans are not special. Our love of the game and loyalty to the team are not pure and deep and true. We’re just like the rest of the NFL, only more so.
Joe Donatelli publishes the “What Happened Now?” newsletter, a daily roundup of the Cleveland area’s biggest and most interesting stories. Subscribe here.
