There’s a great – and, for the purpose of this piece, a poignant one as well – story about Paul Brown from his days as the iconic head coach of the Browns.
One day, Brown became incensed about the team bus driver’s inability to get to the place where the Browns needed to be in a timely fashion.
“I don’t want to fire you,” Brown said to him sternly. “I want to fire the guy who hired you.”
In this nightmarish expansion era for the Browns, with just two winning seasons and but a lone playoff appearance in the first 16 years, there have been any number of bad players. For gracious sakes, there have been so many that you have to bundle them in groups of ten so as to be able to count them more accurately.
But we can’t blame them. While they messed up – a lot – it’s not their fault that the Browns have struggled so much, and are still struggling to this day.
No, the fault lies in the head coaches, the general managers, the team presidents and the owners who have, either directly or indirectly, “hired,” or acquired those players.
And every single one of these decision-makers – these movers and shakers – ought to be ashamed of themselves for the reprehensible manner in which they have taken what was once a great, proud franchise and run it right into the ground.
Whereas the Browns used to be “the flagship of the fleet,” as called, and rightfully so, by former head coach Sam Rutigliano, they have now become the butt of cruel jokes. These knuckleheads – and I am trying to be as nice, as professional and as above aboard as I can here when I use that term – were given a bright, shiny and spotless classic car in 1999 and, with their stupid, ignorant, selfish and misguided decisions, have put so many dents and dings into it that it is almost unrecognizable.
And, worse yet, they were paid millions upon millions of dollars to do it.
The fans should be more than outraged. They should be rebellious, for this is not at all what they had in mind when they fought so darn hard to get their team back two decades ago.
They did their work – and then some.
But the people in charge did not do theirs in the least bit.
So as the Browns get ready to travel to San Diego to face the Chargers on Sunday, with their pompous, self-centered general manager still suspended, thankfully so, their head coach starting the wrong quarterback to spite the GM, even at the sacrifice of the team’s well-being, the team president thinking he is entitled to watch game tape with the head coach, even though he wouldn’t know a football if it hit him squarely in the nose, and the run defense getting run off the field week after week, club officials still have the gall to bristle when the organization is labeled as being dysfunctional.
Really?! Really?!
Actually, in a way, they are right to be incensed. The organization is more than dysfunctional, if there is such a term.
Get mad – very mad, if you have to – to affect the change that is needed to get the Browns back on track. But don’t stop being a fan. Don’t let these lunkheads take your team away from you. Please. They don’t have that right unless you give it to them.
That – your memories of the good times and of perhaps watching the games on TV or at Cleveland Stadium with a father, grandfather, uncle, mom, grandmother or aunt who is long gone – are way too precious for that. They will be with you long after these no-nothing nincompoops are out of here – and believe me, they will be out of here, they will themselves get fired — sooner rather than later.
And what a glorious day that will be.
By Steve King
