My gal pal, Val, is furious that Hue Jackson is still the head coach of the Browns.

You might say that she is also disappointed, dismayed, flabbergasted and sickened.

“How is he still here? How does that happen?” she has told me – in a loud voice – any number of times in the last 2½ months since Browns owner Jimmy Haslam announced that Jackson would return for 2018.

“You can’t retain a guy who wins one stinking game – out of 32 – in two seasons. And when you do, you run the risk of losing your fan base.”

Val, now 60, has been a big Browns fan herself since she was old enough to know what a football was. As you fans know, it hasn’t been easy to watch the Browns in recent seasons, but she nonetheless does so, even though she is sometimes – well, perhaps many times – forced to look away, walk away or simply turn of the TV for a while.

Val isn’t just a fan. She knows football – the NFL and college – and in fact knows all the major sports. She’s smart and well-spoken.

So what she says, whether I, you and Haslam agree with it or not, carries a lot of weight. It’s not just talk.

What Val also points out is that the Detroit Lions fired Jim Caldwell two months ago despite the fact that he was 36-30 in four seasons, had three winning regular-season records and made the playoffs twice. In comparison to Hue Jackson’s 1-31 mark in two seasons, Caldwell looks like Bill Belichick.

Actually, most Lions fans wanted Caldwell out after the 2016 season even though the club went 9-7 and made the playoffs as a wild card before losing its postseason opener. In their minds, the Lions, who have one of the better quarterbacks in the game in Matthew Stafford, were underachieving under Caldwell.

So, Val reasons, how can Hue keep his job when someone like Caldwell loses his?

It’s a great question, one for which the Browns have no logical answer other than Haslam saying, in essence, that he thinks Jackson can do better with a more competent person running the NFL Draft, in a reference to John Dorsey taking over as general manager in place of Executive Director of Football Operations Sashi Brown.

We’ll see.

I know Val will be watching – closely.