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Photo By Christopher Witflee
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Entirely staged for television, lacking any semblance to athletic competition, it had the earmarks of a great sporting event in contemporary America. The Cleveland Browns are back, a proclamation made truly believable by last week's lackluster expansion draft.
The fans turned out to Canton's Civic Center so they could watch Carmen Policy, Dwight Clark and Chris Palmer resuscitate a team that should never have died. In the room were busts of Cleveland Browns' Hall of Famers, but the real essence of the Browns' yesterdays, todays and tomorrows was preserved by the likes of John Thompson, the 400-poundish "Big Dawg" of Dawg Pound fame.
What matters about the Browns today isn't that they have players, but that they have a team. Tomorrow, championships will matter, as they mattered yesterday. But not today.
Today, it's about fans, the city of Cleveland and, if we're feeling generous, the Cleveland civic leaders who knew a win-win situation when they saw one and seized upon pervasive public sentiment to goad the NFL into restoring the city to its ranks. So full was the outrage when Art Modell took the money and moved his franchise to Baltimore that Modell escaped only with the franchise. The name, the colors, the records -- those all stayed in Cleveland, where the people never let the Browns die.
One of the most hoaky and self-serving slogans in any business development that throws sports out of its ordinary kilter has it that the people who are hurt the most are the fans. But fans don't really get hurt when teams leave cities or entire leagues are shut down over labor disputes. Fans just get mad. The kinds of fans who really do get hurt are in a world of trouble beforehand.
Of course, it's good business for teams and players to say they're all about the fans. But they're really about showing off and making money, and everyone understands that. If it were possible for them to show off and make money without having fans buy tickets and patronize advertisers, they'd do it. The fans are the means to the ends but aren't the ends themselves.
Something about the scene in the Cleveland area last week at once celebrated the fan's loyalty while illustrating his futility. If you ever walked through downtown Cleveland to the old stadium an hour before kickoff, you found yourself among Browns fans marching with grim resolve. They knew they were in for a cold afternoon. They knew the air wafting in off Lake Erie would stink. They were dressed for it.
The Browns were their great love and effort, no less so during these recent dark years when their favorite team wasn't a team so much as a memory and a dream. Only now can those dedicated fans begin to speak in particulars: The Browns need a quarterback. Finally, today, the fans can worry about matters like that. It must feel pretty good.
One can knock Policy and Clark for the salary cap crisis they have left behind in San Francisco, even while admitting a certain filthy praise for their aptitude at capitalizing on the situation as they build a new franchise in Cleveland. The Browns now have three good players because of it.
Last year, the 49ers signed cornerback Antonio Langham, formerly a first-round pick of the old Browns, to a contract worth $3 million per season. But Langham turned out to be a bust in San Francisco, which left him unprotected in the expansion draft. The new Browns took Langham with their last pick of the expansion draft, which delighted the fans with a familiar face.
It soon came to light, though, that much more was at work than public relations in the selection of Langham, who pledged to rework his deal in the Browns' favor. Three days later, the 49ers sent defensive end Roy Barker and tight end Irv Smith to the Browns for the unprecedented sum of "past considerations." It turned out the 49ers were so grateful to have Langham off their hands that they were willing to turn over two more players, thus freeing themselves of $5.62 million in salary cap space.
In the early rounds of the expansion draft, the Browns acknowledged that few teams would leave good skill players exposed, so they committed very little salary and concentrated on the line of scrimmage. Five of their first seven picks were linemen. Their first pick, Jim Pyne, played guard for four years in Tampa Bay before signing with Detroit last year for $1.9 million per season. The Lions promptly moved him to center, then expressed disappointment in his production. The Browns probably will solve that problem by moving him back to guard.
It would figure that the first and best play maker the Browns would choose came from the Bengals. In the fourth round, Cleveland selected wide receiver Damon Gibson, who made 19 catches for 238 yards and three touchdowns last year as a rookie. But only now, with free agency and the college draft, do the Browns turn seriously toward skill players.
The Browns are at once the cause and potential victim of peculiarities involved in this year's free agent market. The free agent crop isn't very good, meaning the Browns won't be able to do a great deal of good for themselves. Furthermore, many of this year's mediocre free agents are using the Browns as their bargaining leverage, for the Browns have about $40 million to spend on free agents.
The draft is another interesting matter. Who do you take with the first overall pick -- Kentucky quarterback Tim Couch or Texas running back Ricky Williams? Couch is the likely selection, simply because top-flight quarterbacks are harder to find than top-flight running backs. But if the Browns put together a good offensive line, Williams would give them a forceful running attack immediately.
Often, top college running backs from big-time programs fail in the NFL because they can't run in tight spaces. Case in point: Ki-Jana Carter. But that's not a problem for Williams, who has rushed for more than 1,000 yards after contact in each of the last two seasons. His statistics aren't an illusion created by offensive lines blowing open 6-foot-wide holes.
However the Browns go about building, it's essentially a foregone conclusion they will be competitive before the Bengals. The Browns are starting from nothing, while the Bengals are starting from worse than nothing. But even if those roles were reversed, one would expect the same results.
We're in for interesting times next fall, when the Bengals and Browns renew their rivalry. It won't be the same, because the ownerships from the teams won't be continuing the same history.
But it will be the Browns and the Bengals. It will restore a bit of electricity to Clifton, where the rivalry runs hottest because so many kids come to the University of Cincinnati from northern Ohio. It will be the Battle of Ohio.
Pro football is back in Ohio. It's a good feeling.
