1. Bernie Kosar and the Broncos rivalry (1985-90)
The year I was born, Cleveland played against Denver in the 1987 AFC Championship game. My father and his childhood best friends, boys who had grown up slinking down to the banks of Lake Erie with their jacket pockets full of clinking Little Kings, congregated to watch The Game. One of their party was living abroad in China at the time, so they set up a video camera to record themselves watching with the thought that they would later mail it to him and he could watch it too and it would be like they had all been there together the year the Browns won the 1987 AFC Championship.
With less than a minute and thirty seconds on the clock, Bernie Kosar led the team down the field to the 8-yard line and handed the ball to Earnest Byner. Celebratory shots of Crown Royal were poured and laid out in a row to be taken as Byner barreled into the end zone. Except Byner was stripped of the ball, the Browns lost, and my father’s best friend slammed down all seven shots and stormed out of his own home to drive to a bar and drink more. Twenty-five years later, my father and I watch an NFL Network special on the Cleveland Browns and as Earnest Byner tears up on camera, talking about how he so desperately wanted to do something for Cleveland fans, but just could not seem to deliver, my father tears up too.
2. Bill Belichick and Modell’s move (1991-95)
I was only seven years old when Art Modell announced that he was moving the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, but seven years old is old enough to remember effigies of Art Modell and Bill Belichick being burned downtown. Seven years old is old enough to remember people storming Muni Stadium with hacksaws to cut out the seats that they have sat in faithfully season after season. Seven years old is old enough to remember the cherry bombs thrown onto the field, the angry callers on local radio, and legions of dads glued to their bar stools, Rolling Rocks in hand, suddenly unsure of how they are supposed to interface with the world.
The city becomes a unified front. “Fuck Art Modell” becomes the new “Fuck the Steelers.” When Art passes away in September of 2012, there is a moment where the team considers finding a polite and respectful way to honor him. The motion is tabled when they realize that no matter how kind the organization wants to be, Cleveland is not there yet, and the publicity nightmare of a stadium full of Clevelanders chanting “Fuck Art Modell” in the wake of the man’s death is too much to risk.
3. Inactivity (1996-99)
While the Cleveland Browns are inactive, a digital clock in Tower City counts the days, hours, and minutes that Cleveland has gone without a football game. Every year in December local DJs air a special called “How Art Modell Stole Christmas.” My dad and his friends take up an increased interest in Ohio State – they win a lot more than the Browns ever did and I love to watch the marching band play “Hang on Sloopy” and spell “Ohio” out on the field in beautiful script.
I get old enough to retire the plush Bernie Kosar I have had since early childhood. The Indians take several consecutive AL Central titles, but it doesn’t seem to matter in the same way that football does.
4. Lerner family ownership (1999-2012)
I am in middle school when football returns to Cleveland. I don’t pay attention to the game for a long, long time. It is easy to ignore a team who loses their first game 43-0. High school happens and then college and then life after college and the Browns keep losing. 43-0 eventually becomes the second worst loss on their record. For a period of time, I don’t live in Cleveland and I think it is leaving the city that brings me back to the Browns. I find myself checking the score on Sunday nights, then throughout the day on Sundays, then going to bars to watch games (alone, because I am always the only Clevelander where I am and because I don’t want to talk to anyone – I just want to sit and watch and think about home.)
Following the Browns becomes shorthand for all of the important parts of my identity: for family history, for class, for hometown pride, for the giant chip I seem to carry on my shoulder. When I finally move back to Cleveland, there is so much to be thankful for: the Lithuanian Social Club, Marta’s on E. 222nd, the statuesque figures on the Hope Memorial Bridge, but mostly I am thankful for football and how when I leave Sunday brunch to watch the game with my boyfriend, my father always says, “She’s going to church.”
5. Haslam ownership (2012-present)
There is a moment when Jimmy Haslam first buys the Browns that it seems like things might be turning around. Then we begin our first season under Haslam’s leadership by losing our first five games. I am at Cleveland Browns Stadium when we play game six. It’s an unseasonably warm fall day. There is a breeze coming off the lake and I’m sitting next to a teenage boy cheering enthusiastically for Josh Cribbs. I tailgated before the game and a creepy old guy kept pushing his bottle of Crown Royal on me – “No,” I told him. “No thanks.” “Thanks, but no.” I politely decline him for what feels like hours and he finally says, “You don’t look pregnant. Take a goddamn drink.” I walk away.
At the stadium, fans in the dawg pound have a giant sign that reads “11-5 STARTS TODAY!” And we do win. We beat the Cincinnati Bengals and tens of thousands of us pour out of Cleveland Browns Stadium across the grassy lakefront lawn, basking in the sunshine.
Our record for the season ends up being 5-11 and, adding insult to injury, the Baltimore Ravens win (another) Superbowl, but in that moment victory feels real and present and meaningful. I follow the team throughout the summer – the draft (my boyfriend throws his beer at the TV when our pick is announced), free agency (almost none of our free agents are retained), minicamp (Trent Richardson doesn’t participate). My boyfriend and I have a party for the first preseason game – I make 75 pigs in a blanket and there is a football shaped piñata filled with tiny bottles of Black Velvet and Crown Royal. Travis Benjamin scores a touchdown on an amazing 91-yard punt return and we are all caught up in the moment, screaming with our drinks held in the air.
We won that first preseason game and the second is tonight. This morning, my boyfriend and I were woken up by a text from a friend that read simply, “Browns!” and as I dragged myself out of bed and into the office I thought, “Yes! Browns!!”
[Image via Wikimedia Commons]
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Tags: 75 PIGS IN A BLANKET, cleveland, crown royal, football, legions of dads, sports day
This is so great, K!
I am not even on the fringe of the football life, but I do find it very interesting to hear about, especially in places where it’s very trenchant and tied into the larger culture. Where I grew up it was mostly optional (despite the Gators).
You need to come watch at least one football game with me! I feel like the experience would be of anthropological interest to you in your new Cleveland life.
Thank you for this! So many childhood memories. My mom and little Italian grandma are/were, respectively, die-hard Browns fans. The name Art Modell was tantamount to a swear word in my house. My sisters and I used to draw pictures of Bill Belichick with his head, literally, up his ass, inspired by comments overheard while Browns games were on. Then I grew up and married a Bengals fan. But the Browns are still number one in my heart.
My sisters and I used to draw pictures of Bill Belichick with his head, literally, up his ass
Oh my god, this is perfect!
Marrying into/dating a different football family can be hard. I’m always impressed when people can make it work (I don’t even mean that in a snide way – it’s like you don’t realize how important a supposedly “little” thing like having “your” team can be.) My boyfriend still talks about breaking up with a girl because she used to wear a Hines Ward jersey to bed (“It was the last straw,” he muttered into an actual bucket of Coors Light.) I lived in the Cincinnati area for awhile and still get this Simon and Garfunkel parody called “The Sounds of Who Dey” stuck in my head a lot. I used to hear it on the radio every morning during football season.
Things that rhyme, kind of: My father grew up in Baltimore and followed the Colts faithfully, religiously, until Robert Irsay made his move in the middle of the night and took the team to Indianapolis. He still gets sad and quiet when he talks about seeing those Mayflower moving trucks on the TV, snow falling all around. Which is a long way to say that I’m glad we have a team in Baltimore again, but I’m sorry that it got taken from you folks.
That said, I think we can all agree on “Fuck The Steelers”.
Oh my god, have you seen the 30 for 30 documentary about the Colts marching band? I think it’s called “The Band That Wouldn’t Die” and it might be up on Netflix… I just watched it a few weeks ago and had such conflicting feelings because the fans interviewed for that documentary obviously experienced pain so similar to what Browns fans were going through in the 90s, but there was also that tiny kernel of bitterness inside of me like, “Yeah, but then you got our team and won a bunch of Superbowls!”
Ahhh noo, but I will look it up! I know the Colts Marching Band became (or always was?) an autonomous unit that kept going for years and years after the team left, and they were eventually renamed the Ravens Marching Band and brought into the new team. And I totally feel you on the conflict. Teams moving is just awful all around.
(seriously though fuck the Steelers)
Another guilty Baltimore Ravens fan here.. there’s been a lot of discussions on the Toast and elsewhere about the fickle and finicky nature of who is a “true fan” and who isn’t, but I don’t think anyone would ever say that a Browns fan, male or female, is not a true fan. This is a fantastic piece, and as sednarea51 says, fuck the Steelers.
p.s. A friend of mine is a Browns fan in Baltimore, and she’s married to a Steelers fan. They are delightful, and things can get a little hilariously heated between them during football season. Sometimes. And then both remember that they agree on “Fuck the Ravens.”
I live in an area with a lot of transplants (including myself) rooting for out of market football teams. The bar where I go to watch the Jets on Sundays has a crowd of about 35 Cleveland Browns fans who take over the entire patio area, order breakfast pastries for all, and get really, really excited about the Browns every week. It’s kind of awesome.
I live in Pittsburgh and I accept all your hate, yinz buncha jagoffs. Now let’s talk about the awesome gallery exhibition of Steelers fan art.
I love our division…except I want everyone else to lose. Seriously though, I like our general rustbelt-y scrapiness.
That gallery is amazing! Even I can’t begrudge the glory of those Steelers Room photos.
I was always kind of secretly baffled by the intensity of the Steelers/Browns rivalry — is it just because Pittsburgh and Cleveland are both rust belt industrial cities who both have football teams? Is it a combo of the geographical proximity and class similarities? Is it because for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction?
I live in Pittsburgh and I accept all your hate, yinz buncha jagoffs. Now let's talk about the awesome gallery exhibition of Steelers fan art.
Aaahhhh I delurked and registered just to comment on this! ! I get so excited when people write about Cleveland because I’ve spent my whole life here and it’s important to me and I almost never see people write about it!
Also, “for the giant chip I seem to carry on my shoulder”–I feel this so much, especially r.e. Cleveland sports
Cleveland is a city populated entirely by shoulder chips! Have you read the Rustbelt Chic anthology? A friend recommended it to me & some of the essays are clunkers, but there is also a lot of really, really good writing about Cleveland in it.
I have not read that, but I will definitely check it out! And, I feel like my whole life’s worth of shoulder chips can be explained through Cleveland sports metaphors!
That last line, waking up to texts from family and friends about your home team… It happened to me just this morning! I live in Brooklyn now but my expat family here and my real one at home, we get down for the Green and Gold every Sunday. Screaming at the TV cements family bonds.
That last line, waking up to texts from family and friends about your home team… It happened to me just this morning! I live in Brooklyn now but my expat family here and my real one at home, we get down for the Green and Gold every Sunday. Screaming at the TV cements family bonds.
That gallery is amazing! Even I can't begrudge the glory of those Steelers Room photos.
I was always kind of secretly baffled by the intensity of the Steelers/Browns rivalry — is it just because Pittsburgh and Cleveland are both rust belt industrial cities who both have football teams? Is it a combo of the geographical proximity and class similarities? Is it because for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction?
Cleveland is a city populated entirely by shoulder chips! Have you read the Rustbelt Chic anthology? A friend recommended it to me & some of the essays are clunkers, but there is also a lot of really, really good writing about Cleveland in it.
I can always remember that I was born on a Tuesday, because my mom didn’t tell my dad she was in labor with me because she didn’t want to miss the end of the Browns game on Monday Night Football.