Football is supposed to be fun.
After all, for while at least at the pro level, it’s a business, it’s also still just a game. It’s not life, but rather a diversion from life.
At those stadiums all across the country on Thursday nights, Sunday afternoons, Sunday nights, Monday nights and Thanksgiving Day, nobody is splitting the atom, solving world peace, finding a cure for cancer or figuring out why, exactly, women have to have so many pairs of shoes and men will never ask for directions, even when they’re lost and in the middle of nowhere.
It’s just football. One team trying to get the ball into the end zone, and another team trying to stop it.
And it’s really fun to see all that play out.
But what the Browns and their fans are experiencing this season, and what they have experienced for almost all of the previous 16 seasons, is not fun. It’s not fun at all. It’s pure misery. It’s painful. It makes getting a root canal seem like a trip to Cedar Point.
On this site since the season started has been a series of stories recalling the games in the Browns’ 1980 Kardiac Kids season. The series, which will continue throughout the rest of the season, focuses on the most wildly exciting year in Browns history. It was so much fun that you can’t even describe it. As soon as one week’s game was over, fans started eagerly anticipating the next week’s game.
Indeed, it was a party every weekend, and everyone was invited. But you had better strap yourself into your seat because the ride could be bumpy at times. It was well worth getting tossed around a little bit, though. You just needed to hang on a little tighter.
As the 1-2 Browns get ready to play the Chargers this afternoon in San Diego, here’s hoping the experience is nothing like last Sunday’s miserable 27-20 loss to the Oakland Raiders. Let’s hope it is fun. Browns football, when it is at its best, is a heckuva lot of fun.
Winning, of course, helps these games to be fun. So does playing well. So does scoring points. And so does having a quarterback who can dissect a defense and make big plays, especially at the end of games, when they need to be made in a league where the question of who wins and loses isn’t usually decided until the final minutes.
The Browns have had virtually none of that in this expansion era. That’s why it hasn’t been fun.
Perhaps those qualities will present themselves today.
If that happened, wouldn’t that be fun?
That would put smiles onto the faces of everybody in Browns Nation while also putting a bounce in their step as they head off to work tomorrow morning, ready to take on the real important stuff in life.
