LeBron James surprised about 20 Goodyear employees in Akron the other day.
Boy, did he ever surprise them.
They were stunned – they all became wide-eyed, idolizing and impressionable little kids again – when the Cavaliers superstar and proud Akron native walked into the room where the employees, who were chosen to meet him based on their performance, length of service, dedication to team and commitment to Goodyear and Akron, were sitting, waiting for a meeting with senior management to begin.
With their mouths hanging wide open and their hearts beating a mile a minute, James thanked the employees for their work in the Akron community and talked about his foundation, with which Goodyear has partnered to benefit Akron students.
When those people left the room, they told everyone they knew they had just had a chance meeting with James and got to shake his hand. They probably screamed – perhaps even shrieked — and laughed as they talked.
To say they will remember the experience for the rest of their lives – “I once got to meet LeBron James,” they will proudly say to their grandchildren – is like saying James has some basketball ability. It’s obvious. It’s a given.
For goodness sake, who wouldn’t do exactly the same?
The Browns don’t have anyone like James. That’s obvious, too. That’s also a given.
To be sure, perhaps only the New England Patriots have someone who can wow a room to that level. His name is Tom Brady.
The Browns used to have players – and one head coach – who had that kind of star power in Jim Brown, Otto Graham and Paul Brown.
Graham and Brown are no longer with us, but Brown still causes knees to get wobbly with his presence. I hsve witnessed it any number of times.
The Browns have had a number of other players through the years who, while not as iconic as Brown and Graham, nonetheless immediately got people’s attention. Bernie Kosar, Brian Sipe, Ozzie Newsome, Hanford Dixon, Frank Minnifield, Webster Slaughter, Reggie Langhorne, Brian Brennan, Kevin Mack, Earnest Byner, Greg Pruitt, Mike Pruitt and Dave Logan come to mind, just to name a few.
Notice that there are no names from the expansion-era Browns. The teams have been bad and thus the star players have been few.
The best players since the re-birth of the team in 1999? They are Joe Thomas, who is headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame someday as the Browns’ 17th inductee, and Phil Dawson, who is the greatest kicker in team history, even better than Hall of Famer Lou Groza.
But kickers and left tackles are, by virtue of the low-profile positions they play, almost obscure to the fans. No one knows who they are.
The quarterbacks and the other skill-position players, the most high-profile and marketable on any team, have been pretty much awful on these new Browns.
So the club has been losing and the players are average Joes.
That’s a lethal combination – a death knell, really – which has caused the Browns to struggle mightily both on the field and off.
In that regard, then, they are as far away from Lebron James as you can be.
So what are the Browns to do? What can they do?
More in my next post.
