CLE sports guy, Jim Rome? Did you hear what he said?

By STEVE KING

National sports talk icon Jim Rome has always been a CLE sports guy.

And that was never more the case than on Monday afternoon during his two-minute daily segmenton CBS radio stations. When I heard it as I was driving home, I nearly went off the road.

Rome, in away only he can do with his special passion and voice inflection, went on and on and on – and then some – about the Browns and their upward mobility. He excitedly talked about the Browns legitimately being in the AFC playoff hunt this late in the season.

Then he said something I’ve always thought. Actually, it’s something I know because I’ve heard other people – people I really, truly trust; people who know a whole heckuva lot more about this stuff than I do – say it.

“The NFL is much better when the Cleveland Browns are relevant, and they are definitely relevant again,” he said.

If I was in danger of going up over the curb and hitting a fire hydrant before, I was much more so when he uttered that.

The NFL is indeed better when the Browns are good.

This is going to surprise the heck out of my younger readers, but here I go anyway: if the truth be told, the league hasn’t been happy with the way the Browns have struggled in this nightmarish expansion era, including the 2016 and ’17 season when they went a combined 1-31. The Browns, as former head coach Sam Rutigliano always likes to say, are “one of the flagships of the fleet.” They are one of the foundational franchises of pro football. The modern game can, in many ways, be traced back to Paul Brown and the early Browns teams. They were so extraordinarily innovative – and so doggone good — that they put the All-America Football Conference out of business, and when they went to the NFL, they also cut through that league like a hot knife through butter.

For goodness sake, they played in 10 league championship games in their first 10 years of existence, winning seven titles. Nobody – but nobody – in the history of not just football, but pro sports overall, has had a start like that – or anything even close to it.

So, then,when one of the foundations is breaking apart and having graffiti sprayed on to it, it’s not good – for anybody involved.

That perhaps – perhaps – it is ending, is good — really, really good.

And Jim Rome, who sees things – sees the world, sports and otherwise – for what they are, sees that. To hear his reaction to it was cooler than I ever could tell you, inwords and otherwise.