BROWNS’ 75TH ANNIVERSARY LOGO A FLOP

By STEVE KING

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When I saw the Browns’ newly-unveiled 75th anniversary logo, I tried to like it.

I really, truly did.

I am still trying, in fact, but don’t hold your breath – for I’m certainly not holding mine – that I’ll find a way to like it. It isn’t happening – not now, not tomorrow, next week, next month or ever.

I won’t use the word “hate” because that has such negative connotations and I don’t want to go there.

Let’s just say that I dislike it immensely – as much, in fact, as you can dislike something immensely without venturing into the territory of the “h” word.

Bland.

Boring.

Unimaginative.

And that’s being kind. That’s as positive as I can be.

I’d say it looks like it was done as part of some third-grade art class contest (and this was perhaps the next-to-last finisher), but that would be insulting to third-graders everywhere.

Having worked for the Browns for 10 years, I know how things work out in Berea. Before anything – anything at all, even the most mundane of things — is released to the public, it is viewed, reviewed and reviewed again, to point of being too picky and precise, in fact. And then, before its release, it is looked at one last time.

After all that scrutiny, I just can’t believe that this is what they came up with.

Really?

Really?!

Really?!!

What are the Browns trying to say with this logo?

That they don’t care about the team’s heritage?

Whoops.

That’s the 800-pound elephant in the room that everybody chooses to ignore.

I’m not everybody, so I’ll look it right in the eye and tell you that there are some people – only some, but not all of them – in that building who pay any respect to the Browns’ first 50 years – prior to the expansion era – only when they absolutely have to do so, and begrudgingly even then. To them, the Browns were born not in 1946, but in 1999, when the re-born franchise took the field for the first time.

And what happened with this logo reveal doesn’t help dispel that notion one bit.

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