hawaiiansteel
01-24-2011, 05:42 PM
Not Mad at the Pittsburgh Steelers
by CLEVELAND FROWNS on JANUARY 24, 2011
http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ClevelandFrown.jpg
The tightest opening Super Bowl point spread in 27 years is an unqualified good in itself (Packers by 1.5).
And if it had to be the Steelers or the Jets playing the Packers, we’re not alone among Browns fans in being glad the team from Pittsburgh is the one that advanced. Even despite that the officials are bought and paid for by the Rooney family in every Steelers game; Despite the alarming mass-deludedness of Steelers fans, and further notwithstanding the franchise’s flagrant disregard for humanity and civil society with its continued deployment of escaped lab-experiments gone wrong like James Harrison, Hines Ward, Joey Porter, and the like, it’s one of the dumbest strains of Browns fandom that there is: The strain of Browns fandom that pretends that hating the Steelers is anything close to the same thing it was before Cleveland’s Browns became Baltimore’s Ravens.
It’s not just how dumb (and sad) it is to pretend that Browns Version 2.0 can be considered anything close to a rival to the Steelers organization, it’s also that doing so disrespects the history of Cleveland and the Browns organization, and minimizes the crime worked on Northeast Ohio, Pittsburgh, the NFL, humanity and civil society at large when Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore. The reason it could have ever been a rivalry in the first place was that the Browns and Steelers used to both represent the same good things about a region. So many Browns fans (including us) pulled for the Steelers in the three years before the Browns were replaced, simply because it was the only possible substitute for what was so good about supporting the Browns. The competition, the relationship between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, was so powerfully beneficial that even the massive collective incapacity of Steelers fans couldn’t keep them from understanding:
A protest was held in Pittsburgh during the Browns’ game there against the Pittsburgh Steelers but ABC, the network broadcasting the game, declined to cover or mention the protest. It was one of the few instances that Steelers fans and Browns fans were supporting each other, as fans in Pittsburgh felt that Modell was robbing their team of their rivalry with the Browns.
In an especially stunning display, Pittsburghers went so far as to find literate people to make signs for them, asking “How Can We Hate Cleveland Without the Browns?”
Of course, as it turned out, Pittsburgh’s remarkable efforts didn’t really help. Fast forward fifteen years and the Browns haven’t represented much of anything but the carpetbags and pocketbooks of whoever Randy Lerner’s had minding the shop; a profoundly depressing suck where leadership was supposed to be. Meanwhile, the Steelers carry on with a tradition of unparalleled excellence. It’s not just distasteful but also impossible not to admire a franchise that understands the importance of letting decent football coaches do their jobs, even when the results on the field aren’t pretty. In Pittsburgh they understand that lobotomized subprimates the clinically deranged can only be put to good use on a football field when operating within a structure of firm integrity. In Cleveland, the sociopaths are lionized and inevitably mourned before integrity even has a chance.*
And the way it’s been going in Cleveland with the Browns for the last decade-plus is about exactly how it’s gone in New York with the Jets. Feelings for the Steelers aside, if you hate the way it’s been going in Cleveland with the Browns for the last decade-plus, the last thing you wanted see yesterday was the Jets leadership vindicated by a trip to the Super Bowl. A Steelers win yesterday, if nothing else, is at least reason to celebrate the failure of a front office that so nakedly scapegoated a good young football coach for its own bad decision, and a press corps that acted on its own short self-interest to look the other way while it all went down. And if you’re a Browns fan who recognizes the tragedy of Eric Mangini’s treatment by the press and front office in Cleveland as a result of the same forces that plague the Jets, you’re especially glad to have seen New York go down, even if it does complicate your own especially sad sadness about Brownstown’s current state.
None of it means we won’t be pulling for the Packers in two weeks, or that we wouldn’t have wanted to see any other team but the Jets get in over Pittsburgh, but as to our complicated lot as Browns fans, at least there’s that Camus was probably at least on to something when he said that suicide was the only serious philosophical problem. Because at least there’s always this idea that residents of Cleveland and Pittsburgh — and those of Cleveland here, especially — really might “need to rethink their place in this world,” and maybe in previously impossibly unthinkable ways.
Whatever Camus said, nobody ever said here that all of this isn’t profoundly and seriously serious. We’re just thinking out loud here. And we’re definitely finding it hard to hate on the Pittsburgh Steelers.
http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/2011/01/ ... -steelers/ (http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/2011/01/not-mad-at-the-pittsburgh-steelers/)
by CLEVELAND FROWNS on JANUARY 24, 2011
http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ClevelandFrown.jpg
The tightest opening Super Bowl point spread in 27 years is an unqualified good in itself (Packers by 1.5).
And if it had to be the Steelers or the Jets playing the Packers, we’re not alone among Browns fans in being glad the team from Pittsburgh is the one that advanced. Even despite that the officials are bought and paid for by the Rooney family in every Steelers game; Despite the alarming mass-deludedness of Steelers fans, and further notwithstanding the franchise’s flagrant disregard for humanity and civil society with its continued deployment of escaped lab-experiments gone wrong like James Harrison, Hines Ward, Joey Porter, and the like, it’s one of the dumbest strains of Browns fandom that there is: The strain of Browns fandom that pretends that hating the Steelers is anything close to the same thing it was before Cleveland’s Browns became Baltimore’s Ravens.
It’s not just how dumb (and sad) it is to pretend that Browns Version 2.0 can be considered anything close to a rival to the Steelers organization, it’s also that doing so disrespects the history of Cleveland and the Browns organization, and minimizes the crime worked on Northeast Ohio, Pittsburgh, the NFL, humanity and civil society at large when Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore. The reason it could have ever been a rivalry in the first place was that the Browns and Steelers used to both represent the same good things about a region. So many Browns fans (including us) pulled for the Steelers in the three years before the Browns were replaced, simply because it was the only possible substitute for what was so good about supporting the Browns. The competition, the relationship between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, was so powerfully beneficial that even the massive collective incapacity of Steelers fans couldn’t keep them from understanding:
A protest was held in Pittsburgh during the Browns’ game there against the Pittsburgh Steelers but ABC, the network broadcasting the game, declined to cover or mention the protest. It was one of the few instances that Steelers fans and Browns fans were supporting each other, as fans in Pittsburgh felt that Modell was robbing their team of their rivalry with the Browns.
In an especially stunning display, Pittsburghers went so far as to find literate people to make signs for them, asking “How Can We Hate Cleveland Without the Browns?”
Of course, as it turned out, Pittsburgh’s remarkable efforts didn’t really help. Fast forward fifteen years and the Browns haven’t represented much of anything but the carpetbags and pocketbooks of whoever Randy Lerner’s had minding the shop; a profoundly depressing suck where leadership was supposed to be. Meanwhile, the Steelers carry on with a tradition of unparalleled excellence. It’s not just distasteful but also impossible not to admire a franchise that understands the importance of letting decent football coaches do their jobs, even when the results on the field aren’t pretty. In Pittsburgh they understand that lobotomized subprimates the clinically deranged can only be put to good use on a football field when operating within a structure of firm integrity. In Cleveland, the sociopaths are lionized and inevitably mourned before integrity even has a chance.*
And the way it’s been going in Cleveland with the Browns for the last decade-plus is about exactly how it’s gone in New York with the Jets. Feelings for the Steelers aside, if you hate the way it’s been going in Cleveland with the Browns for the last decade-plus, the last thing you wanted see yesterday was the Jets leadership vindicated by a trip to the Super Bowl. A Steelers win yesterday, if nothing else, is at least reason to celebrate the failure of a front office that so nakedly scapegoated a good young football coach for its own bad decision, and a press corps that acted on its own short self-interest to look the other way while it all went down. And if you’re a Browns fan who recognizes the tragedy of Eric Mangini’s treatment by the press and front office in Cleveland as a result of the same forces that plague the Jets, you’re especially glad to have seen New York go down, even if it does complicate your own especially sad sadness about Brownstown’s current state.
None of it means we won’t be pulling for the Packers in two weeks, or that we wouldn’t have wanted to see any other team but the Jets get in over Pittsburgh, but as to our complicated lot as Browns fans, at least there’s that Camus was probably at least on to something when he said that suicide was the only serious philosophical problem. Because at least there’s always this idea that residents of Cleveland and Pittsburgh — and those of Cleveland here, especially — really might “need to rethink their place in this world,” and maybe in previously impossibly unthinkable ways.
Whatever Camus said, nobody ever said here that all of this isn’t profoundly and seriously serious. We’re just thinking out loud here. And we’re definitely finding it hard to hate on the Pittsburgh Steelers.
http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/2011/01/ ... -steelers/ (http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/2011/01/not-mad-at-the-pittsburgh-steelers/)