No hanging chads – Title in a landslide
By Roger Cohen
Feb 1, 2015; Glendale, AZ, USA; A member of the New England Patriots hoists the Vince Lombardi Trophy after defeating the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX at University of Phoenix Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports
Just like when I served as the late Arnold Pinkney’s press secretary during his unsuccessful Cleveland mayoral run in 1975, maybe I’m still waiting for the votes from late reporting East Side precincts – because there’s no other plausible explanation for the early returns from Dawg Pound Daily’s latest poll.
As of this writing, 58 percent of the respondents would prefer “sustained success” over a single Super Bowl title for the Browns. Granted, 97 total voters hardly constitutes a scientifically valid sample, and chances are there’s only about 97 remaining Browns fans who even remember the last title.
Knowing that, it is possible that older fans like me might make a Faustian Joe Hardy deal for just a Super Bowl appearance before we pass on to that big Dawg Pound in the sky.
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Dawg Pound Daily co-editor Vince Rapisardi posed a provocative, but not entirely debatable, question in his post. Maybe he was stirring the “pre-pre-season” pot, or maybe it is just a generational thing, as by looking at Vince’s publicity photo he was certainly born after the Browns then-NFL title game losses to Minnesota and Baltimore that kept the team out of Super Bowls III and IV. Nor was he around for Red Right 88, The Drive, The Fumble or The Move.
The last Cleveland championship – in any sport – was on Dec. 27, 1964, the day after my Bar Mitzvah – and I’m almost Medicare eligible. My memories of that title are watching a short highlight VCR tape of the 27-0 win over Baltimore in black and white.
This isn’t just my opinion that Browns fans have suffered for a title for far too long – it’s an official NFL website fact.
Given that the Browns have made just one playoff appearance and just one other season with more wins than losses since returning to the NFL in 1999, “sustained success” means consecutive seasons when we don’t draft in the top five. Just as a generation of Clevelanders never experienced an Indians game that meant anything after June, my sons’ generation have never seen a meaningful Browns game past Halloween.
Consider the market value of a Super Bowl appearance by the Browns. Even though there was no “first time” novelty in the most recent Super Bowl, given that the reigning champion Seahawks were taking on another ho-hum Bill Belichick/Tom Brady Super Bowl team, tickets to the game still averaged more than $10,000.
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With millions of displaced souls lost in the Cleveland diaspora, I’m betting that bidding for a ticket to a Browns’ Super Bowl starts at $20,000. More likely, they would go for $50,000 – roughly the MSRP of a Ram 3500 super truck – and Dodge sold 250,000 of them last year, more than double the number of available Super Bowl tickets, which would be very much more in demand.
A more representative sample of longtime Browns fans might come from polling any of those 370 Browns Backers chapters across 12 countries whether they’d prefer “sustained success” over an NFL title. Or better yet, solicit “man on West 3rd Street” responses from longtime fans as they trudge down the ramp in mid-December to watch the 4-10 Browns in a freezing rain.
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Hope for an NFL title is the only reason that fans continue that self-inflicted Bataan-like trek season after season. (Muni Lot tailgaters are not eligible to vote in the poll since few can recall if they actually watched a game.)
Once all the precincts report, there’ll be no need for Nate Silver to perform an analytic breakdown, or for Wolf Blitzer to swipe those electoral college map boards. It will be the first thing MSNBC and Fox News agree on, with no margin of error: a Browns title would carry the election by at least 80 percent.
In fact, for one Browns’ title most of us wouldn’t just settle for “sustained success” – we’d gladly suffer through 50 more years of losing seasons.
It’s not like we haven’t already been there, done that.
What do you say Browns fans? How badly do you want a Super Bowl title for the Browns?