Sorry, Taylor, but the NFL is over
A former Browns fan explains
The worst thing my father did to me was raise me as a Cleveland Browns fan. In addition to his love of the team (they were the NFL champions in 1964, after all), we had a family friend who played for the Browns for several years, and the father of a high-school classmate was involved in the purchase of the expansion team after the Browns were stolen in 1995.
1995 was also the year that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened. That year for Christmas, my parents bought tickets for my siblings, spouses and I to visit the day after Christmas. We have since learned that the attendance record at the Rock Hall was set on December 26, 1995; the managers found that people spent more time looking at exhibits than they had estimated, so they adjusted the maximum number of tickets sold on any given day. Because of the sellout crowd, there was a long line of cars waiting to get into a nearby snow-covered lakefront parking lot. The lot had only one person taking the parking fee. Someone behind us tried to be cute and cut in front of everyone. As soon as they rolled down their window to pay, someone else jumped out of their car, grabbed a handful of snow, and threw it at the transgressor. Everyone else rolled down their windows and cheered.
Northeast Ohio is a rough place. Art Modell, the team owner who moved the Browns to Baltimore, never returned to Cleveland. When he died, the Browns were the only team that didn’t hold a pre-game moment of silence—at the request of the Modell family. If cutting in line for parking gets you a face-full of snow, imagine what stealing a beloved football team gets you.
Although the new Browns haven’t exactly set the world on fire, Browns fans always consoled ourselves with the knowledge that our players had fewer issues with gender violence, unlike either archrival, the Steelers or the Ravens. And there were cool things, too, like those funny Baker Mayfield commercials for Progressive Insurance and Callie Brownson, the first woman to coach in an NFL playoff game. (The Browns won, by the way.)
Last year, the Browns leadership decided to cut Mayfield and bring in DeShaun Watson, who sat out part of last season as punishment for a long string of sexual assault claims and is now out this year with a shoulder injury.
Fandom is a strange thing. It is a gift from your family, a tie to where you live, a reason to check the news in the morning. Browns fans have long wrestled with what it means. Is there a point where you become a fair-weather fan, cheering only when they win? Is there a point where you give up?
For me, it was the hiring of Watson.
It’s funny, Taylor Swift is taking up football fandom as I give it up. A cynic might say that Taylor’s relationship with Travis Kelce is primarily a PR move by the NFL to get women more interested in football. (The Kelce brothers grew up in Northeast Ohio and were Browns fans as kids, and that’s why Bernie Kosar was invited to the pre-game party that Taylor Swift attended; see photo above.)
Between the head injuries and other physical damage to the players, the naked cash grabs by both NFL team owners and NCAA university presidents, and the ongoing gender violence committed by too many players, there’s not a lot to cheer for.
But we’ll always have Baker Mayfield commercials on YouTube.