The day the tickets arrive
By Roger Cohen
When I saw the huge FedEx box sitting on my doorstep, I thought “what car part did my son order on Amazon this time?”
But there it was addressed to “The Cohen Family” – the junk mail addressee used by one account and one account only: the Cleveland Browns season tickets we’ve bought every year since 1946 have arrived.
We are original season ticket holders, holding them every year since my late dad returned from his Army artillery service fighting the Nazis in World War II. He never left a game early, regardless of the score, watching it all from the best seats in Cleveland Stadium: Section 35, Upper Deck, just two rows below the posts. Our family was there for the All-American Conference dominance, three NFL championships in the 1950s, and the Paul Brown era ending with Blanton Collier coaching that team to the city’s last sports title on Dec. 27, 1964.
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Through the great but not quite great enough Bill Nelsen/Leroy Kelly teams, the early 1970s drought, the Sam Rutigliano and Brian Sipe resurrection, the brief early ’80s dip to the joy of the Bernie Kosar/Martyball/Dawg Pound. The pre-genius Belichick, the Move, the Return. Non-stop losses in the new place this millennium.
A Cohen has been there for all of it.
The Day the Tickets Arrive used to be an occasion, a celebration of hope that “this will be the year.” I’d rip open the envelope, feel those glossy cardboard strips, dreaming of Browns wins and remembering those walks down West 3rd Street alongside my dad. Today, it barely nudged my emotional needle – little more than getting my weekly Sports Illustrated or a double 20 percent off Bed, Bath and Beyond coupon.
But I was still curious because, unless the 2016 season tickets have swelled up even more than their 24 percent price hike, what could be inside this supersized FedEx box? Seems the ticket packaging has grown inversely to the quality of the team. Four more hats? Mini-blankets? Team pins? Thankfully, something useful – thermal coffee mugs – similar to the ones I paid $20 apiece for in the team shop.
To avoid further angering the fan base, the exhibition tickets no longer say preseason. The front office has taken a page out of my airline marketing fine print playbook by labelling them Game 1 and Game 2 – a cruel tease as if there were someday a chance for Browns’ home playoff games.
Even worse, this year’s tickets picture the new uniforms, bonded on the perforation right below the tickets of former Browns players in the traditional, plain, unadorned seal brown, orange and white, and the contrast was startling. Kevin Mack and Earnest Byner look so sharp in those old uniforms, behind our current offensive line they look like they could duplicate the 1,000-yard seasons – even though both Mack and Byner are more than three years beyond AARP eligibility age.
So as I carefully put the sheet (two on the 40, two in the lower Dawg Pound) back in the envelope, I started to ponder how do I use them? Should I:
- Donate the worthless Game 1 and Game 2 to the foundation for Cleveland’s underprivileged kids – as if they haven’t suffered enough?
- Go home to Cleveland for the home opener against the Titans?
- Offer the games on a first-come, first -served basis at face value to my fellow Browns’ buddies around the country?
- Sell the rest on StubHub or NFL Ticket Exchange to try and recoup at least the financial investment? (The emotional cost could run into the millions over the last 50 years.)
That’s when I checked for the Steeler game – those tickets are golden and usually sell for three to four times face value to some drunken yinzer still nursing his post New Year’s Iron City hangover. Just my luck: the game is Jan. 3, 2016, the last game of the season.
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Chances are the Browns will be playing out the string for maybe win number five by then. It will be freezing rain, head coach Mike Pettine and general manager Ray Farmer may have already been canned, a relapsed Johnny Football may have been cut midyear, and Josh McCown will have gone down with a broken thumb mid-November.
Sure, Connor Shaw will have pulled off a couple of fourth-quarter miracle comebacks, but all that will have done is to raise the perennial specter of yet another off-season quarterback controversy: stick with Shaw or use our No. 6 overall first rounder on an untested college prospect? And how’s that worked out going all the way back to Mike Phipps?
But then those same hazy, crazy dreams kick in just like they do every summer on The Day the Tickets Arrive. What if McCown can be an effective game manager, the takeaway defense dominates, the Browns have worked the ground and pound for nine wins heading into that Steeler game, and it is a winner-take-all for the AFC North title? Those tickets could sell for $500 each, easy, or more.
But that would represent what economists term a lost opportunity cost, because regardless of weather, if that Jan. 3 game against the Steelers means something for the Browns, I’ll be sitting in them.