Sports Juggling

We live in a great time for sports.   I can watch every single Indians, Cavs, and Browns game. I even have the ability to stream my alma mater Kent State getting their clocks cleaned if I so choose.  It's great.  I pay a large bill to the good people at DirecTV each month for the privilege.  There is only one problem with this.  Where do I find the time to follow all of my teams as much as I would like?

 I work as a teacher for students with multiple disabilities, I have four kids, two of which are teenagers with full calendars filled with their own sporting events and no drivers licenses, the other two are twin hyperactive babies under two years  old, who don't want to spend their Sunday afternoons watching the Browns fail to convert on another third and long, and a wife who on occasion has been known to want to spend time with me.

Browns have lost #1 spot in fans hearts.

The Browns have long been the center of Northeast Ohio's hearts and minds.  The area has flowed the Browns with a die-hard passion since the 50s when Jim Brown and Otto Graham ruled the gridiron on the coast of Lake Erie.  The Browns have kept the attention focused on them ever since.  They have ruled above and beyond the Cavaliers and the Indians despite those two franchises having more success at various points over the past fifty years. 

This town is a Browns town but that has begun to change.  After years of the Browns being terrible on the field and mismanaged in the office, the fans have stopped giving the Browns their love and more importantly their eyeballs and money.  In years past, all the Browns had to do to draw a crowd at Cleveland Browns stadium was play a football game and show up dressed in orange helmets.  The fans were just glad to have football being played by their team.  Then something happened...

The Cavaliers and the Indians started having success.  They started making smart decisions that improved the team and the experience of the fans.  Cleveland fans spent their money on teams that break 52 year curses and teams that lead their division despite having a middling payroll.  

The fans have decided that a revolving door of general managers, coaches, and quarterbacks were not worth their time and money. The Browns are now dealing with lack of interest.  As the 2016 season begins, the Browns have a new general manager...again, a new coach....again...., a new quarterback...again.  This season however, I don't see or hear fans talking themselves into a season with false hope.  The season seems to be met with apathy.  Fans are still riding high on the Cavaliers championship, still enjoying the day to day fun of pennant raise with the #Windians.  The Cavs and Indians have usually been quickly dropped from a Cleveland fan's mind once the sounds of pads cracking hits the air. 

This season attendance at training camp is down. People aren't going to go spend their time watching an inferior product.  Attendance for the Indians has in fact risen since the beginning of the Browns training camp.  Fans in Northeast Ohio have now tasted a winner and they will not accept ineptitude and continue to fork over increasingly hard to come by dollars to support a team that brings them no joy.  Cleveland isn't the sports punching bag lining up for its next body blow.  Cleveland is the reigning and defending king of the sports world and doesn't want to spend it's time watching a team going through another awful season as the new regime brings in "their guys" to play "Cleveland Browns Football".  Whatever the hell that actually means.

Cleveland used to be a Browns town.  Cleveland is now a city of champions.  The Cavaliers have won a World Championship and the Indians are the betting favorite to make it to the World Series.  It's your move Browns.  It's time to produce an enjoyable experience.  An enjoyable experience in this town has changed from the last time you embarrassingly left the field.  This town demands winning.  This town demands progress.  In 2016 in Northeast Ohio, you have to win or the FANS go home.




Follow me on Twitter @FerrellComedy

   
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The Tale of Two Browns Games

This season I attended two Browns’ games in Cleveland, one with my 10-year-old stepson and one with three friends in their early thirties.  I went to each game with different expectations for what was going to constitute a good time.  I realized that based on my mindset and my chosen companions from the game, that different aspects of the NFL Sunday experience came to my attention. 

The first game, a manhandling loss by the Houston Texans with the temperature in the low twenties, was with my stepson Max.  The second game was a heart-breaking and likely season breaking loss to the Indianapolis Colts with the temperature in the low forties and included a three-hour tailgate session with my buddies. 

The Texans game was the first NFL, game that I had attended with Max, although I had taken him to see multiple Cleveland Indians games and even professional wrestling events.  The one thing that stood out to me at the Browns game compared to the other sporting events, that Max and I had attended was the language.  When I am in the proper situation around friends in a relaxed atmosphere, I will swear almost every other words and curse words have never made me cringe before, however for these three hours, I flinched with every f-bomb.  It was constant.  There were loud chants including the word, guys selling bootleg shirts with swear words on them and all of this was just in the line to get through security.  While standing in line to enter the stadium on this snowy day, literally hundreds of snowballs were chucked from the end of the line to the front of the line.  There were elderly and young children getting pelted in the back of their heads.  I was appalled by the display. 

During the game the JJ Watt and the Houston Texans defense dismantled the Browns offense and made Brian Hoyer look awful.  The catcalls came hot and heavy from the stands telling Hoyer and the rest of the offense what they should do to themselves, their mothers, and a few choice sex acts with the same sex.  Our seats were in the upper deck, or the cheap seats as they are so known, but this was hardly the DAWG Pound, the section of bleachers in the South end zone that is notorious for the rowdy costumed fans that inhabit it. 

Max and I stayed to the bitter end of an embarrassing loss.  We walked back to our car sad and with no feeling in our toes from the freezing temperatures.  We parked very far away as a group of kids in their twenties lobbed snow balls at us from across the street.  I looked around to see if there was a Texans fan or even worse a Steelers fan that had escaped from the mental institution, but no only dejected Browns fans trudging along the slush to their cars.  I couldn’t figure out why these kids, kids because anyone younger that me is a kid, had just decided to be awful to strangers.  I got in the car with Max and had lost a lot of faith in the Browns, Brian Hoyer, Browns fans, and the city of Cleveland. 

Despite my above stated disappointments, I returned two weeks later with my friends to watch the Browns and the Colts play a pivotal game.  This game day started hours earlier as we arrived hours before kickoff to enjoy beers in the cold to prepare for the game.  We parked in the same lot as I had with Max and proceeded to commence to the drinking and playing of cornhole.  We kept to ourselves but 4 different gentlemen came up to us to ask for money.  We chatted about life and the Browns, but mainly about life.  The Browns game was something we were going to attend but during the tailgating it didn’t seem to be the reason we were there.  We were just hanging out and having a good time. 

We headed off to the game but first had to stop in the restroom with all of the other tailgaters who were full of their choice beverages.  The bathroom was full of constant “Here we go Brownies, here we go!” chants.  A few guys repeatedly tried to get a “F*** the Colts” chant going, but no one obliged considering the non-existent rivalry between the two teams. 

We headed to our seats that were basically the same as where I sat the previous game.  We were on the lakeside of the stadium and the wind was whipping through our section. This made the temperature feel much colder than it did a few weeks ago despite the temperature being twenty degrees warmer.

This week the Browns scored two defensive touchdowns, which covered for the Browns lack of an offense. The offense was so terrible that Brian Hoyer was benched after the game and so the Johnny Manziel era could start with a loud wet fart against the Bengals.  The game was interesting and the Browns were robbed on a few close calls.  Strangely the Browns kept replaying the bad calls on the large screen.  I thought they were trying to start a riot similar to the bottle-throwing incident against the Jacksonville Jaguars years ago. 

The Browns of course gave up a touchdown in the final seconds to once again lose and put a huge dent in their playoff hopes.  That will get placed in my memory banks along with all of the other disappointments in my Browns fandom. 

The most memorable moment from the game would have to be the homeless gentleman who somehow managed to get into the game.  He decided that the best place in First Energy Stadium to hang out in would be right behind us in the upper deck.  I noticed the overwhelming smell of fecal matter early in the second quarter.  After determining that it wasn’t coming from the Browns' offensive huddle, we realized that the smell was coming from the man in the row behind us.  He had soiled himself.  He walked down the stairs in front of us with his Hershey stains clearly visible though his pants. 

We thought the crisis had been averted when the guy returns after halftime with visible diarrhea on his bare hands.  He continued to sit behind us and every time he shifted his weight, the burning smell of feces would punch you in the face.  The Browns made a huge interception and returned it for a touchdown.  My friends and I jumped and exchanged high fives… It was a great moment, until the possibly infectious disease covered and definitely crap covered hands of our neighbor, gave my still extended in jubilation hand an unwanted and unwarranted high-five.  My life flashed before my eyes as I quickly ran down to the concourse to wash my hands. 

After spending two whole Sundays with different people at Cleveland Browns stadium and witnessing two losses, I have to ask myself why.  Why do I allow myself to be pestered by scammers and beggars before the game.  Why do I pay exorbitant fees just to park my car some where.  Why do I sit in the cold to watch a game from further away than I can see on my big screen TV at home?  Why do I listen to drunks swear, scream and make no sense?  It is because it feels good to be apart of the crowd, to have the energy of the crowd shake your body, the building anticipation while partying before the game.  It all feels good, win, lose, or draw and more than likely lose.  There are those moments in the game when 73,200 people jump up together and cheer.  When the Browns finally make a play and a stadium of people release all of the frustration that this team has laid upon them for years, lifts for a moment, I want to be there hands raised, high fiving 73,199 Browns fans.  There is one that I obviously don’t want to high five again…unless it is in the Super Bowl.

Follow me on Twitter @Ferrellcomedy or email me at MattFerrell75@gmail.com

What I am Thankful for in Sports

This time of year Americans sit down with family and friends and spend time to be thankful.  This is also the point in the sports calendar where there is constantly sporting events on television.  So it got me thinking what I had to be thankful for being an Ohio sports fan with a busy life and a wife and kids.

I am thankful that the 2014 NFL Draft is loaded with Quarterback prospects.  As the Browns head into the home stretch of another stink hole season ruined by bad quarterback play, Browns fans' attention turned towards the draft.  Fortunately this year is the deepest quarterback draft in a very long time.  Brandon Weeden, the Browns' first round pick in 2012, who came out of college at 28 as a project, is bar none the worst quarterback in the league.  Weeden is not just the worst starting quarterback, the worst quarterback period. He isn't the first terrible quarterback the Browns have tortured their loyal fans with.  Since the Browns returned as a cesspool in the NFL in 1999, they have trotted out the following collection of bums and mistakes at starting quarterback.


Ty Detmer, Tim Couch, Doug Pederson, Spergon Wynn, Kelly Holcomb, Jeff Garcia, Luke McCown, Trent Dilfer, Charlie Frye, Derek Anderson, Brady Quinn, Ken Dorsey, Bruce Gradkowski, Colt McCoy, Jake Delhomme, Seneca Wallace, Brandon Weeden, Brian Hoyer, Jason Campbell.

I had to take a shower after listing off that rotten collection of turds.  The Browns have the Colts first round pick after convincing them to take the corpse of Trent Richardson plus their own surely high first rounder.  I am not opposed to the Browns using both picks on quarterbacks in 2014.  I mean one of them has to not suck.  I mean right? It has to happen eventually.  If the Colts can go from Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck and the Packers can go from Bret Farve to Aaron Rodgers then the Browns can get one good quarterback every twenty years. I mean can't we catch a break?

I am thankful this is the last year of the BCS.  Ohio State seems locked into the 3rd slot and therefore outside of the championship game despite not having lost a game during the past two seasons.  I would love to see the Buckeyes get a chance to play for the national championship this year, however I am no dummy.  I have seen Alabama and Florida State and know that the Buckeyes are not in their class.  If this was next season in order to win a national title, the Buckeyes would have to beat both of them in a two week period.  Not happening.  You are just not putting together two perfect games back to back like that.  However since this is the last year of the BCS, if the Tide or Seminoles should happen to stub their toes in the last few games of the season, then Ohio State would only have to pull one upset.  They have an outside shot of doing that and I would love to watch them try.

I am thankful for the 2013 Cleveland Indians season.  It was a great season with tons of ups and downs like any good roller coaster ride season should be.  However I know this was probably as good as it is going to get for a few years.  The Cleveland Indians shot completely over their skis this season.  They hit gold with a few lottery tickets like Jason Giambi and Scott Kazmir.  However the mass exodus of players with talent that the Tribe can no longer afford has already begun.  Joe Smith a reliable middle reliever left for the Angels because a small market team just can't afford to spend 4 million a season on a setup man.  Ubaldo Jimenez who stunk most of his time in Cleveland finally turned it on the last two months.  Just in time to decline his player option and cash in big time.  Thanks for stinking for two years and then finally getting it together for a payday, Ubaldo.  This next season will be a disappointing one for the Tribe as they will take a step back in 2014.

I am thankful that at the end of this NBA season that Lebron James can opt out of his contract.  This will finally allow the closure that we Cavs fans need. There has been rumblings that Lebron may return to Cleveland after this season for a do over with the Cavs.  I know that would be great for the Cavs record and chances at a title.  But Cavs fans have been stuck in neutral ever since the Decision.  There were the two years of hate and the past year and a half as been hoping and pining for Lebron to return.  Cavs fans clapped and begged for Lebron to return when the Heat came to Cleveland to play on Wednesday and it saddened me to see what we have become.  It doesn't make me feel good to see my fellow fans turn into a jilted lover who is hoping for their ex to get divorced and come back.  It's pathetic.  I will be just be glad when the Cavs finally know that he isn't coming back and we can start actually moving on as a franchise.  That way we can build around the often injured Kyrie Irving, Tristan Thompson who after years of playing basketball realized he shoots better with his other hand, the black hole shooting guard who can't shoot Dion Waiters, Andrew Bynum who keeps talking about retirement, and Anthony Bennett who is on pace to be the worst number 1 overall draft pick since Kwame Brown in 2001.  It is only a matter of time until Bennett is a D-League all-star for the Canton Charge.  This team has some major issues and I doubt will seem all that attractive to Lebron so it seems like it will be another long, dark era for the Cavs.

What I am most thankful for this season with Cleveland sports teams is what they have done for my son.  He has learned that you love people unconditionally.  That you stick with them through the hard times even if you don't see good times on the horizon.  Being a Cleveland sports fans has taught him that you are loyal and hopeful even if you never get any sort of satisfaction in the end.  It has now been 50 years since a Cleveland team has won a title and he sees his friends, who obviously have no class or values and were raised by barbarians, pronounce their love of the Steelers, Heat, Yankees, Red Sox, and other teams just because they are winning currently.  He knows that is not how a person should be a sports fan.  People love sports for the escape that it allows from life, but I love sports for what it does for my life, how it teaches lessons, and how after every heart-breaking loss and devastating season that my son is becoming a better person through it.  I am thankful for that more than any championship my teams could bring. Although I feel that he has learned enough about perseverance and loyalty, so we could really use a Championship Parade.  I would be very thankful for that.

Follow me on Twitter @Ferrellcomedy


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I'm a Blockhead for Loving These Teams

I was raised the right way. My father instilled in me what any good father should. I'm not talking about being honest, trustworthy, and respectful. I mean he taught me that a man loves his teams, he sticks with his teams for the rest of his life, and those teams better damn well be the teams for his town. I live in Canton, Ohio, home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and sports heartache. In my 31 years of life the Cavs, Browns, and Indians have never won a championship. They have only made it to 3 championship series. Hell if the Indians don't win the World Series this year, it will be 50 years since any Cleveland sports team has won it all. No city with multiple sports teams has gone longer. Even cities with one sports team like Green Bay, Wisconsin and San Antonio, Texas have won multiple championships in that time frame.

 

I have seen a lifetime of fan pains in my short 31 years. In Cleveland we have a list of THE's. They all have names but they might as well be called THE Groin Punch. The Drive, The Fumble, The Shot, The Decision..... All have hurt me deeply. Being a Cleveland sports fan is like being Charlie Brown trying to kick a football.  We tell ourselves that the team will change. They will stop pulling the football away and stop making draft picks like Gerard Warren and Vitaly Potapenko. We assume that for once when we trade a Cy Young winner we will actually kick the ball and get one actual All-Star. Our teams always seem to be in year one of a five year plan and we patiently wait as each new coach, general manager, and player will be the one to pull us out of this fifty year great depression.

 

This season the Cavaliers blew a 26 point lead against the lowly Suns. My 8 year old step-son had to go to bed before the end of the game. I tucked him in and we discussed how the Cavs were going to get a good win. The next morning I had to tell him that our team had blown the game. He seemed devastated to hear that the Cavs somehow managed to gag up such a big lead. I was not surprised. I had seen it countless times over countless seasons. The wound was still fresh for him. He then said something that made me realize that he was doomed to continue my fate, "There is no way they will ever do that again." The Cavs would go on to lose two more games this year after blowing leads of 20 plus points and had the worst winning percentage of any team in the NBA when leading after three quarters.  My Cleveland teams, OUR Cleveland teams had already turned an 8 year old into Charlie Brown! He was already telling himself that they would change and things would get better.  He was in a relationship where he gave love and received only pain. I have done to him what my father had done to me.  I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was raising him right. I now know that one day, many years from now, he will sit and think how much he loves these teams and how much he hates me for helping him fall in love with such terrible partners. “AAUGH!!!”

 

 

 

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