there still is a lot of anger out there toward the Browns, but the anger is not nearly as scary for the Browns and their fandom as another emotion: sadness. Browns fans, at least from my perspective, have just become sad. Not depressed, exactly, but sad.
That sadness is an indication of a growing trend--many Browns fans find themselves not caring anymore. I'm even talking about hardcore fans, people with season tickets and Browns gear from throughout the years. They can feel themselves letting go, not investing the energy in hoping that their team will pull it together. The Browns have lost too often and for too long. That losing has worn on dedicated fans. You can't do it. You can't let your whole life be crushed by what happens on sixteen Sundays stretched out over a large chunk of the year for seven years in a row without getting tired of putting yourself in that situation.
So you start to let go. It happens a little bit at a time. First you start to expect to lose while hoping to win. Then you just expect to lose, without any hope. You realize that you don't care about the players, how well they represent the team and the city, or how much national respect they get when they perform well. If you live outside of your team's region, you find yourself making the conscious decision not to wear your team's gear anymore, just so you don't have to have that conversation. You find yourself caring less and less that you see every play of every game live, so the recorder goes on while you take care of other things. You find that visiting teams, even your rivals, have huge numbers of boisterous fans at your home games.
And that is why Browns fans are sad. Not because the Browns are losing, but because they realize they just don't care that much anymore. To have something so passionate and so special, and then have it fade away....
It occured to me while I was talking to my best friend Ryan after the game that until yesterday, I never understood the whole lovable losers thing that the Chicago Cubs have going. How can you be a happy-go-lucky fan for a team that constantly loses? How lame and pathetic is it that your teams futility is the exact reason why they have so much support? Well, that's what happens when the choice is either enjoy losing or don't watch at all. Browns fans are rapidly approaching that choice. Sad.
Tom sums it up pretty well, I think. Boston fans have been lucky in the past few years, and especially in the past few decades. Even prior to 2004 the Red Sox were almost always good, even if they could never get over the hump. Being a Red Sox fan was always fundamentally different from being a fan of the Cubbies. The Sox always took us oh-so-close to nirvana without getting there. Obviously the Patriots have been a source of unalloyed joy for us, and even before the three championships in four years, the Pats could be relied on to be competetive with a few notable and nauseating exceptions. The Celtics are, not to put too fine a point on it, the most successful franchise in the history of the NBA. And the Bruins, well, the Bruins used to be good. But even then, I think that the failures of the Red Sox to win it all, the snakebitten history of the pre-2001 Patriots, the post-Len Bias/Reggie Lewis Celtics hangover, and the more than three decades the Bruins have spent wandering aimlessly in the desert gave Red Sox fans an insight to the array of emotions that sports fans can face, including the specific kind of sadness that Tom pinpoints.
It would, however, be a shame to see Browns fans relent to the malaise. They are, without a doubt, one of the greatest fan bases in all of sports. But they cannot be asked to be both patient and passionate forever. At some point, the team will have to carry its share of the weight. I doubt that even has to mean simply winning. But it does have to involve a certain way of playing, visible passion and commitment, a sense of a forward trajectory. Cleveland fans have not asked for much, and they have given a lot. I think the city's teams owe them something more than what they have been giving.
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