Browns fans set a low bar

Here’s what it is to be a Cleveland Browns fan:

On a recent evening, I encounter a man wearing a Cleveland Browns cap and a Cleveland Browns T-shirt, which leads me to believe that he may be a Cleveland Browns fan. So I do what’s expected when one Browns fan meets another.

“Woof … woof,” I say.

“Woof … woof,” he replies. Browns fans are big on social graces.

“I’m really pumped about this season,” the guy declares. “I’m figuring we can go eight and eight.” By this, he means he has reason to believe that the Cleveland Browns might possibly lose only half of the games they play in the pro football season that opens for them today.

My instinctive response is to nod my head and back slowly away, so as not to startle the guy with any sudden moves, because he clearly is a lunatic.

But that’s what it’s come down to for fans of the Cleveland Browns. While fans of other teams in the National Football League can look forward to the possibility of playoff games and Super Bowl trophies, our wildest fantasy is a .500 season.

While fans of other teams can look back and savor memories of last-minute triumphs and postseason glory, the mental scrapbooks of Browns fans are filled with images of disasters.

A snapshot of a team that managed to lose its opening game one season because a Browns player took off his helmet at the wrong time.

A photo of a 360-pound offensive lineman whose career with the Browns ended when he was hit in the eyeball by a penalty flag.

When we look back, we see nothing but fiascos. Fumbles. Interceptions. Opposing teams marching to last-minute victories enroute to Super Bowls. An endless string of quarterbacks who never lived up to their hype, coaches who never seemed to have a clue and rebuilding programs that never seemed to end. If this year’s rebuilding program is as good as last year’s rebuilding program, they will have gone 50 years without a league championship.

In a league where success is measured by Super Bowl victories, the Browns have never even been good enough to lose a Super Bowl game.

Any connection between the Browns and the 47 Super Bowls that have been played is strictly secondhand. A man who used to be the head coach of the Browns has taken his current team to five Super Bowls. A team that used to be in Cleveland has won two of them.

Despite all that, when the season begins Cleveland Browns fans will go to the games or sit in front of televisions in homes and taverns.

And pray for mediocrity.

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