Every Browns Fan is Two Fans in One

From Studyofsports.com

The Cleveland Browns have a bipolar, schizophrenic, love-hate relationship with glamour and crud. Of the two, we like both the most. The average Browns enthusiast, grabbing a case and a bag of chips from Maggiore’s on the way home from work, will tell you, “A guy like Joe Montana or Tom Brady would never work here in Cleveland. Nah, too Hollywood, too slick. The Browns are a blue-collar team. You know, lunch bucket, hardhat, that kinda thing.”

But if either of those too-slick guys were signed on to play for the team the following day, you would hear work whistles blow and hardhats would take flight. The fans would toast the deal over a Pabst, and say “Hey, a little white on the collar never hurts, you know?”

The dichotomy occurs because the archetypal Browns supporter merely loves his team and wants it to win. Thus, he wants sophistication and a continual updating of the team’s approach to the game. Yet he is also in love with the state of being crazy about the Browns, which means he demands that the Browns respect their age-old traditions and never abandon their blue-collar, hardhat personality.

The fan derives part of his own personal identity and self-respect from this particular element of his beloved home team. This is the sort of impossible demand that keeps team management in a never-ending struggle for sanity.

Case in point: When Hanford Dixon and Frank Minnifield, Browns cornerbacks during the ‘80s, began barking like dogs and revving up their teammates, it created an explosion of fan excitement. The two men were especially intense in their pass coverage near the end zone, and those fans in the cheapest seats close to the field paid homage to newly christened “Dawg Defense” by wearing hound dog masks and throwing milk bone treats at all 22 players waiting for the snap of the ball. Thus was The Dawg Pound inaugurated.

Now there is a shiny new stadium, which the fans love and appreciate...right? Well, yeah but...the new stadium has a special section designated as "The Dog Pound." That is simply not cool, and it needs to be pointed out. The crazies in the end-zone seats created the Dawg Pound spontaneously, and it cannot be contrived any other way.

That’s like telling a child “you can use your crayons to draw on this section of this wall.” It’s like Felix greeting Oscar saying, “I cleaned your room while you were out!” It is no longer a true den of junkyard hounds but a pit of pampered poodles. No good. New stadium, luxury boxes, specially designated Pound, secure parking, actual urinals in the men’s room instead of an old trough salvaged from the Navy, nice concession areas...all of it very nice. No good. It’s not The Browns!

Oh! And the grass. The old grass was Cleveland Browns Grass, buddy! That is to say, not really grass at all. OK, there was some grass, but not much. The old Municipal Stadium was truly a duel-purpose facility, perfectly suited to serve as a venue for both the Browns and Indians to disappoint.

Instead of laying some kind of sod upon the baseball infield, the grounds crew would actually paint the dirt green in preparation for a football game. In sunny weather, the players would be covered in something that looked like grass stain, but which was in reality nothing more than green dirt.

On rainy Sundays, green mud bespattered players, coaches, referees, the ball, everything. Split Pea soup. Nasty. Beautiful. The way the game should be played. We hated it. It was great. The new grass is lovely, and it drains very well in the rain. It retains its gorgeous appearance and stands up to abuse. Science at work. Fantastic. And we hate it because it is just not the same.

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