Two Minutes Of Hate: Cleveland Browns

Everyone seems to feel sorry for Cleveland sports fans, but not me. After all, the Browns did win that Super Bowl in 2000^[1].

Hating the Browns would be so much easier if they were even moderately decent. They hail from Cleveland, they have a stupid team name, orange uniforms look like crap, and then there's the whole Cleveland thing. Unfortunately, though, the Browns aren't just bad. They're bad in a way that makes you feel bad for pointing it out. I mean, they drafted a 30^[2]-year old quarterback in the 1st round of the draft this year.

Really think about that one. Take a moment to picture it. Your franchise is awful. You have very little on the roster to build around, but have decided you want to draft a quarterback in the 1st round. That's reasonable. A great quarterback is a fine place to start building, and this way he'll go through his growing pains while the team is bad and not waste the window provided by an otherwise talented roster. But then you zig when you should have zagged and take a guy that's already on the wrong side of his athletic prime that played in a gimmicky spread offense in college against opposition that was nearly a decade his junior.

That's not even funny. It's just sad. Basically the strongest argument for hating the Browns is that they're depressing and who needs more of that in their life? Not me.

The other argument is that Cleveland sports fans are just intolerable whiners. Honestly, as much as I want to feel badly for them because of the way Art Modell screwed them over and how they're forced to live in Ohio^[3], I just can't. They were given a replacement team within a couple years and some of them still refuse to watch football because they're so upset over the original team leaving^[4].

As a Chargers fan, that's just offensive. If the NFL allows the Spanos family to uproot the Chargers and move them away there won't be a new franchise here three years later. Suck it up, Browns fans. Your city sucks and the owner of your team rightly attempted to escape, but then the NFL saw fit to give you a new team anyway even though you were so terrible that you couldn't keep your old one. You should be happy.

And how are we over 400 words into this mess and I haven't even mentioned those guys that dress up like dogs? I don't know either. I'll never understand the people that dress up in costumes to attend sporting events. There's just something wrong with them. And when these defective people are the best tradition your entire state has going for it (as these folks are in Ohio), it says a lot about the overall quality of said state.

End of the day, here's to hoping that the Browns find a way to lose a home game to the mediocre 2012 San Diego Chargers and that Ohio residents do something funny like all vote for Gary Johnson next month.

1. See, the joke here is that their beloved team moved to Baltimore and I'm acting like I didn't realize that. No, you're an idiot.
2. I know how old Brandon Weeden is, so just shut up.
3. I'm assuming they're not free to leave because if they are, screw them for making terrible decisions.
4. They're probably just jealous because they're still stuck in Ohio. It makes sense the more I think about it.