I like sports talk radio. I like it a lot, in fact.
And I always have, ever since the days when, as a high school student in a suburb of Akron in the early 1970s, I got to listen to one of the earliest – one still one of the best, if not THE best, ever – sports talkers in Pete Franklin, a guy just up the road in Cleveland on 50,000-watt powerhouse WWWE.
There’s a saying, “Like a kid in a candy store,” but for a sports-minded teen like me who loved listening to the radio, it was changed to, “Like a kid in his room with a radio.”
There are a lot of opinions spewed on sports talk radio. In fact, opinions are, of course, the focus of that form of entertainment/media, or whatever you want to call it.
All these opinions are thought-provoking in one way, shape or form. They really are. And while I agree with some of these opinions, I find that others make my head hurt.
The latter reaction was the case one day recently when, not surprisingly because it always draws listeners for long periods of time in this region, the topic was the Browns. More specifically, it was about the future of the current Browns regime, and what might happen to the members of it – Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown and his people, and head coach Hue Jackson and his people – if the club followed up its NFL- and franchise-worst 1-15 record of this past season with a 3-13 mark this fall.
The consensus was that they would all get the Donald Trump treatment and be fired.
I don’t think that the talkers – there were three of them – were kidding, or using it merely as a prop to stir discussion. They seemed sincere.
And anyway, that’s the way those guys operate on a general basis. They’re more responsible than that.
Whatever the impetus for what they said, I couldn’t disagree with them more.
I don’t think that the members of the current Browns regime should, or would, get fired if it happened. And it may well happen, or something close to 3-13. Don’t get sick to your stomach when you read that. Please.
Like it or not – and most likely not – this was always going to be a three-year fix just to make the Browns presentable. That’s not to make them contenders or anything like that, but just to improve them to the point where they have a shot to win on most Sundays.
That fact became crystal clear when the regime gutted the team in 2016 and filled it with young talent, making it a total rebuild the likes of which the Browns have never undertaken.
But make no mistake about it in that this rebuilding effort isn’t a forever process. It can’t be. Those situations don’t exist anymore in pro sports, and especially in the mega-money NFL.
The key will be 2018, when, after struggling in 2016 and ’17, the Browns must – and we emphasize MUST – make a huge jump and start to really lay the groundwork for becoming a playoff contender, not just for one or two seasons, but for a lot of seasons to come.
In the meantime, buckle your seatbelt and hold on tightly.
And, oh, yes, be patient! Still. Again.
Sorry, that’s just the reality of it.
Then in 2018, be very demanding, for if it goes badly, then that will be the time when the members of the current Browns regime should, and will, start worrying seriously about their job security.
