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 King and I

Four years.  A man changes a lot over four years.  Lebron James said in his letter to the nation that he has grown and changed from “The Decision”, where Lebron himself has admitted that he made a poor decision to have a nationally televised special to tell me, all other Cavs fans, and for that matter the Cavalier organization itself, that he was, “Taking his talents to South Beach.”.

                I was twenty-eight years old and sitting on a futon in a basement, and watched the decision from a dark and angry place.  I had spent the entire week prior glued to Twitter looking for any information as to whether the best player that had ever played for my team was going to stay in town.  When news started to break that Lebron was leaving to join the Miami Heat, I couldn’t believe it, or more accurately didn’t want to believe it.  I was holding on to any shred of hope that the reports weren’t true.  I watched “The Decision” thinking that there was no way Lebron was going to go in front of the nation and stab us in the back.  So I was sad and angry when he left.  I did not sleep that night four years ago.  I was up all night reading anything I could. Wanting to find out why he left.  Cheering Dan Gilbert for writing the letter and telling the traitor where to stick it.  I seethed when I saw the firework show the Heat threw, where Lebron counted down the championships that he was going to win in Miami. 

                I was mad and I stayed mad for quite some time.  My stomach churned every time the Heat or Lebron were mentioned by anyone.  I did not watch a Heat game that entire first season unless they were playing the Cavs, I couldn’t bear to see it. I didn’t watch the Finals that year against the Mavericks.  Not one second.  The idea of watching Lebron win a ring somewhere else when he didn’t want to do it for my team sickened me.  I would check in on the score online and rooted for the number next to the Mavericks logo click up.  I celebrated that Mavericks title as much as the fans in Dallas.  

                I didn’t watch a single Heat game until the NBA Finals the following year.  I watched the closing moments of game 5, as the Heat closed out the Thunder.  The only reason I did so was because my girlfriend had her sisters over before we left for a Florida vacation and banished me to the basement.  So I found myself two years later with nothing to do but watch Lebron win a championship.  Two years later and life hadn’t changed that much for me.  I was still pissed off at Lebron James in a basement. Although I didn't sleep that night either it was because I drove my girlfriend and her kids to Florida through the night. I was starting to forget how I felt in July 2010.

                The next year went on and I wasn’t as mad as I used to be.  I was getting over “The Decision”.  I wasn’t rooting for Lebron to win more titles and MVP awards but I wasn’t angry with him.  I said out loud in conversations with others that I hated him but it wasn’t filled with actual hate as it had been before.

                In June 2013, I had surgery on my shoulder and was laid up during the NBA finals.  I watched ever second of every game of that 7 game epic series with the Spurs.  I loved it.  Yes, I was rooting against Lebron and the Heat, but I was also rooting for the Spurs because of their classy organization that built through the draft to create a winning team.  I was disappointed when Ray Allen hit that corner three to pull off a miracle escape in game 6.  I didn’t like watching Lebron play great in game 7 and the player that is in my opinion the definition of how the game should be played, Tim Duncan, come up short.  But I went to sleep that night easily even though the man I thought I would never stop hating was a back to back champion.   Maybe it was because I was on prescription pain medicine or maybe it was because my wife, who during the last Lebron title the previous year was my girlfriend, slept next to me and took care of me while I healed. 

                This summer, I watched Lebron lose in a rematch to the Spurs.  This time I watched the games as a basketball fan.  I loved watching the great team in the Spurs, beat the great individual in Lebron James, with my wife and stepson.  I loved explaining to my step-son the importance of help defense and the extra pass, that I had taught him as his basketball coach in the winter.  The Spurs did their part to make me look a genius.  This finals I was happy that Spurs won more than the Heat lost, because my priorities had changed.  I watched these games not in a basement but in the comfort of the new recliner that my wife got for me.  I watched with my son and used sports to teach life lessons.

I spent the past week on the South Carolina beach, checking twitter constantly, being on roller coaster of emotions with each rumor. The emotions of July 2010 started to come back. I thought Lebron James was just toying with me. As if the most identifiable athlete in America was personally messing with me just for kicks. I stressed. I ignored others. I searched for a basement to be pissed off in. 

After two days, I realized, with the help of my wife, that I was being ridiculous.  I was reliving the hate, the disbelief, the stress.  I was regressing.

  Today, I went to the beach with my wife and kids without my phone.  We played in the water and sand together for hours.  During that time I was relaxed and loved life.  I didn’t think about the “Decision 2” and enjoyed my family.  In Lebron’s letter to the fans of Cleveland, he talked about being with his family and how much he had changed over the past four years.  How his priorities have changed.  I get it Lebron.  I have changed too.  Welcome home, it is a happier place here for me than when you left and now my team might actually win.

Follow me on twitter @Ferrellcomedy

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