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| Just say no! |
Today's game against that bullying
big brother known as the Steelers may be the one that makes Browns' Sundays
just another day of the week for many people. Instead of watching the un-killable
Brandon Weeden start against the Jaguars next weekend, folks may take the
time to winterize the car, paint the den, or visit the new atrium at the
art museum; it's supposed to be very nice.
Breaking up with the 2013 Browns
doesn't make you disloyal, it makes you smart. Reports from FirstEnergy Stadium
had perhaps 60,000 people at today's
game. Next week's meaningless contest against Jacksonville may have 30,000 empty seats, and
if that transpires I would say, "Huzzah."
As much as Cleveland is touted as a football town, maybe
we're no longer just a gaggle of gormless Gomer Pyles grinning moronically at
whatever turdburger this sorry franchise can dish out. Rows of ass-less seats
would at least send ownership a message that we fans aren't complete schmucks.
Even better, a nice TV blackout would
save us from three wasted hours watching a sad-making war of attrition between
two putrid clubs.
It's difficult to even expend the
energy to be mad at the Browns. There have been times when such losses as
today's would have a cast a pall over my entire Monday. Now it's all boredom
and weary disgust. While last week's pasting at Cincinnati was somewhat flukish
-even if it was a typically Brownsian effort in finding a new way to lose - today
was a good ol' fashioned grind-it-out defeat, the kind of dominating
inter-division failure we have become accustomed to.
Truthfully, I bailed on the game
after two quarters and change. My breaking point was 20-3, an insurmountable
mountain of a point differential that these Browns had no chance of scaling.
Shutting off the game wasn't exactly a freeing experience, but my icy apathy
may have cracked if I'd stuck around to watch the nauseous spin of Terrible
Towels, a site seen on the lakefront a dozen times too often since '99.
Now as the schedule enters that
well-known final stretch where draft discussion supersedes playoff hopes, there
are not many reasons to actively watch this team outside of misplaced devotion.
I'd suggest fans to do the blasphemous and skip next week's game entirely. Call
it a test run. See how it feels to be free of the Browns' clutches for one
week, then evaluate whether or not you miss the mental equivalent of having
your intestines pulled through your nostrils.
Fans should not have to put up with
such pointless pain every year. Freedom from agony can be had at the simple push of a TV remote's
"off" button. It's all up to us.