NFL HECKUVA LOT DIFFERENT

By STEVE KING

Some final thoughts on Browns owner Jimmy Haslam discontinuing Pilot Flying J’s advertising relationship with ESPN for the story it did about the dysfunctional nature of the team’s hierarchy.

What Haslam didn’t realize when he bought the Browns in 2012, and, for some inexplicable reason, what he still doesn’t totally understand is that the team, and the NFL, are totally different than Pilot Flying J and other entities in private industry.

Everything in the sports world, and in particular the biggest sports entity, the NFL, is not just magnified to the nth degree – that’s obvious – but it – all of it, every last bit of it, with no exceptions — is covered by the media as if it were the goings-on at the White House.

Really.

So, then, when Joe Schmoe, the general manager of a Pilot Flying J gas station/convenience store, breaks his finger and has to miss a few days of work, there is no press conference to announce, and discuss in detail, what happened and how it will affect that location going forward. The people at that location won’t even know Schmoe is out unless somebody tells them. And that won’t happen because it means nothing. The operation will keep humming right along.

But if – God forbid – the quarterback of the Browns, that Baker guy, is sidelined by a broken finger, the entire Northeast Ohio region will come to a grinding halt and grownups will get sick to their stomachs – that is, after first going to the nearest church and lighting candles for his speedy recovery.

As such, what Haslam does when it involves the Browns means something. It reflects directly on the club. When he does something positive, it’s all good. When he does something negative, it’s all bad.

And when he does something really negative – and unbelievably stupid – it is an unmitigated public relations disaster.

Will somebody in Berea put on their big-boy/big-girl pants and explain all this to Jimmy Haslam?

Please, pretty please?