Lorain/Elyria, OH
Dan Coughlin: Browns fans just ain’t what they used to be
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My children missed the glory of the Browns. They were born too late. They never will connect to the Browns the way I did in the 1950s and ’60s.
Their generation is deprived and ours was spoiled. Today anybody can be a Browns fan. There’s nothing special. Everybody seems to be a member. There are no standards, no discernment. They’ve bottomed out at the lowest common denominator. Get a belly full of beer and show up, swear and curse and stumble home with another loss.
Our generation demanded nothing but the best and we got it. In the Browns’ first 20 years in the NFL, from
1950-69, the Browns were in the NFL championship game 11 times and they won it four times. Since then, 34 seasons have elapsed and the Browns have reached the AFC championship game three times, losing all three to Denver.
The fans respond by building a new stadium and pouring out ungodly sums of money for personal seat licenses, tickets and official merchandise. They pound their chests and say, “Look at me.” Listen, being a sucker is nothing to brag about.
My devotion to the brown and orange — not your common brown, it was seal brown — began in 1950. The Browns had just won four straight championships from 1946-49 in the All-American Football Conference — what we called an outlaw league because the AAFC teams stole with impunity from the established NFL. Browns coach Paul Brown stole left tackle Jim Daniell from the Chicago Bears and made him his first captain.
The Browns’ little dynasty was great for the city of Cleveland but bad for the league, which went out of business after its fourth season. The Browns last regular season game in 1949 was in Chicago against the Hornets and only 5,031 spectators showed up.
The Browns’ four years in the AAFC almost shouldn’t count because Paul Brown was one of the few people in the league who knew what he was doing. He outsmarted everybody.
In 1950, the Browns were absorbed into the NFL along with the Baltimore Colts and the San Francisco 49ers, a historic event which coincided with my awakening. I was still in grade school but I was lured into a cult. A Browns fan was a member of an exclusive cult.
For a cult, the Browns had a large and loyal membership. For a major sports franchise, however, even in 1950, the Browns’ fan base was small. They topped the 40,000 mark in home attendance only once that first year. Two games drew fewer than 30,000.
To reach the championship game, the Browns had to beat the New York Giants in a rare playoff game. The Browns won 8-3 before 33,054 at the old Stadium. The next Sunday, the day before Christmas, the Browns beat the Los Angeles Rams for the championship before 29,751, also here in Cleveland.
It is a myth that the Browns always played to a packed Stadium in their glory years. Typically, the Browns would have one game in the 70,000s and most others in the 30s, 40s and 50s.
The breakthrough year was 1964 when every game packed in 70,000 to 80,000 fans. As the decade proceeded, almost every game was sold out. The sun shown almost every Sunday and people called it “Modell weather,” a reference to owner Art Modell.
The sun is no longer a season-ticket holder and most of that generation is also gone. We had our day. I’m sorry my kids won’t have theirs.
To borrow a phrase from Grantland Rice, the tumult and the shouting rings hollow down at the lakefront.
Dan Coughlin is a columnist for The Chronicle-Telegram and a sportscaster for Channerl 8. Contact him at ctsports@chroniclet.com.
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Dude,
Who are you and what’s your point? Is this just a tired old-person prattering on type story, or are you actually getting at something?
I, too, am sorry that the Browns have PSL’s, and I am sorry that I had to pay for them. But that is the way of progress, and I guess I have no choice but to be OK with that. I have only had my tickets since the return in ‘99, but does that make me somehow less entitled to cheer than you?
The Browns are showing progress, and the future is finally starting to get bright. With your attitude and bitterness, don’t ask to come to a game with me - I wouldn’t want you to drag down the best fans in football.
-mike
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I whole-heartedly agree with Mike. I sent the following message to the editor today at lunch after reading the article above….
I’m sorry, but what is the point of Mr. Coughlin’s article and how could you pass this rambling nonsense along as journalism? I’m a 37 year old Browns fan born in Columbus now living in Cincinnati. All I have is the memory of Red Right 88, Bernie and the destruction of my beloved Browns by Belichick and Modell. We won’t even discuss 1999-today. Is that pathetic? Maybe it is, however Mr. Coughlin sounds like he should be down here writing for the Enquirer because he is delusional.
Is he a better fan because he was born during a time when it was easy to be a fan? I think not. I don’t have season tickets, but I have DirecTV in order to follow my team each week. I make my way to Cleveland once or twice a year in order to see a game. I put up with crap from Bengals fans who, based upon ONE winning season, have forgotten so easily that they were too ashamed of their team when I moved here six years ago that guys wearing Browns and Steelers gear outnumbered them in their own town.
I’ve never replied to an article before, but I’ve never quite been so insulted or read such tripe. Perhaps I should show Mr. Coughlin more respect. Perhaps I should even know who he is, but I don’t. I’m too busy feeling sorry for him to care. I’m sorry because someday the sun will shine for the Cleveland Browns and he will be too arrogant to remember that he once wrote this article.
Scott Taylor
Browns Fan
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Hey , guys….lighten up!! Don’t take it so personal, unless, well……Sadly,what Mr. Coughlin wrote is right,in regards to some (I know, I know….not all) of today’s fans.
I had season tix from ‘71 thru ‘95 and had attended one or two games during the ’60’s as a teen-ager with my Dad. The change in fans and their behavior over that time frame has been dramaticly ugly , to say the least. I know, I know, not all fans, but certainly enough of them to be a determining factor in the enjoyment of attending games.
Parking lot tail-gating , in far too many cases , becomes an excuse for drunken binges which emboldens some to challenge and insult (threaten?) anyone wearing an opposing team’s colors. Obscenity-laced tirades, fights in and outside of the stadium, and oh , yes, let’s not forget those wonderful, vulgar, obscene T-shirts for sale. Where else can 8 year olds on up get such a vivid introduction into “adulthood”? How else can one learn the “in-your-face” method of team support? I guess we could chalk all of this up to “progress”, too, right?
Where is the bitterness in Mr. Coughlin’s article? Apparently, he struck a nerve with his comment about the beer guzzling, chest-pounding, merchandise buying supporters who feel compelled to show the world their un-dying loyalty in the ways mentioned above.
Also, I’d like to know how “easy-to-be-a-fan” was it with no TV?(An un-affordable luxury for most families until the late ’50’s). (Heavens!!! …No ESPN!!)
The younger guys just have to realize that us older fans, with our memories of “the-glory-years”, are saddened to have witnessed the demise of a once great franchise into just one of 32 teams in a league where mediocrity is the norm yet every game is a hyped-up “event”.
That, friends, is the gist of Mr. Coughlin’s article.
A Rochester, N.Y. Browns Fan
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I too am responding to Mr. Coughlin article. I think he is so wrong . I am a real fan and I don’t agree with any poor sport losing fan, no matter of the sport and no matter of the team..Just because we reserve the right to disagree with him should not land us in the beer guzzling chest pounding merchandising flaunting category. I am 48 and it was in the 70’s when I fell in love with The Cleveland Browns ,Bryan Sipe ….. The Cardiac Kids ! Get a clue it has never been easy to be a Browns fan his line†Today anyone could be a Browns fan†right . When I left Ohio I lived in Florida and now North Carolina. I can honestly tell you I’ve never had a person come up to me on game day and say , Yea I’m from Miami Florida and I want to be a Browns fan..Get real Mr. Coughlin a fan is a fan is a fan, if you’re a Cleveland Browns fan.
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