When the Browns mercifully fired CEO Joe Banner and General Manager Mike Lombardi following the 2013 season, thus ending what became known as “The Reign of Terror,” President Alec Scheiner might have been the only person in the organization who was upset.
He was devastated actually, left standing in a hallway at Browns Headquarters with his mouth gaped open in complete disbelief. Banner was the guy who had brought Scheiner in, so he began to questions his own job stability.
Scheiner was in charge of the massive renovation of FirstEnergy Stadium the last two offseasons, and when that was completed, a person who has team owner Jimmy Haslam’s ear said, “There’s nothing left here for Scheiner to do. He’ll be gone.”
That process started about a month ago when the Browns once again were making all kinds of top-level changes in the organization, and yet Scheiner’s name was never mentioned by Haslam or anyone else.
That was the final nail in the coffin for Scheiner. His departure from the organization that was announced Friday – officially a resignation that was obviously forced – was a freight train that could be heard coming on down the tracks for a long time, and it finally arrived to the surprise of absolutely no one..
As Haslam looked to clean out the people who didn’t fit, Scheiner was the last one who needed to go. He was part of the former regime – really, two former regimes ago – and thus also former thinking that no longer fit, or was wanted.
Scheiner won’t be missed. With the way he came across as being so smug, with his easy-to-read attitude that he always thought he was the smartest guy in the room, and with the fact former head coach Mike Pettine had to let Scheiner watch game tape with him at 6 a.m. every day, he was a public relations disaster and, like Banner, wasn’t very popular. What Scheiner knows about the X’s and O’s on a football field, could be placed onto the head of a pin.
Whether or not this move opens the way for someone like Peyton Manning, Haslam’s good friend, to take over as president, as has been rumored for a long time, remains to be seen. But in the meantime, the Browns will soon be rid of Scheiner, and if that’s not a good thing, then in the very least it’s certainly not a bad thing.
