There’s a lot you could say about Cleveland Browns fans. But what isn’t up for dispute is that they are passionate.
So it didn’t come as a surprise that after Michelle Smallmon helped fill ESPN Radio’s Unsportsmanlike‘s July calendar with a list of her top five fanbases in the NFL, co-host Evan Cohen took issue with her excluding the Browns’ faithful.
“The Cleveland Browns fans are the single best fans in the entire league. There is no fanbase that is better than the Cleveland Browns fan,” Cohen said. “The Cleveland Browns fan had the team removed from their city and still somehow supported the team, that when they came back, they were selling out every single game.”
Full disclosure: I’m a Cleveland Browns fan, but not the crazy kind (at least not in the conventional sense). I would think any list of the top-five fanbases in the NFL should include Cleveland, but I was hardly outraged by the Browns not being on Smallmon’s list.
With few exceptions, most NFL fanbases are extremely “passionate.” Also, it’s July and I know sports radio shows (and sports media websites) are just trying to get to the start of training camp.
But while I didn’t find Smallmon’s list particularly egregious, what I did inexplicable was Chris Canty’s subsequent counter to Cohen’s comment. Noting the Browns moving from Cleveland to Baltimore following the 1995 season, the former NFL defensive lineman questioned how such a passionate fanbase could lose its team.
“But if the fans were so good, then why did the team leave Cleveland?” Canty questioned.
Smallmon — a St. Louis sports fan less than a decade removed from seeing the Rams move to Los Angeles — was quick to respond.
“Oh, no, no, no. We’re not going to do that,” Smallmon replied. “Because that doesn’t have anything to do with it a lot of the time. It’s about money, it’s about greed.”
“But that wasn’t the case the first time when the Browns left,” Canty said. “That wasn’t the case. That wasn’t the situation.”
Cohen attempted to get the segment back on track, noting the way Browns fans have stuck by the team throughout trying times, including a 1-31 stretch from 2016-2017 and owner Jimmy Haslam consulting with a homeless person on drafting Johnny Manziel. Canty, however, later doubled down, insisting that “their team was removed because of the lack of interest from the fans.”
“They couldn’t get money for a new stadium,” the former Virginia star stated. “The fans are the ones that eventually vote on the politicians that make the decisions on whether or not they’re going to build a new stadium.”
Despite Canty’s insistence otherwise, Smallmon is correct that the Browns move to Baltimore was, in fact, a matter of money and greed. While the situation was a complicated one, it ultimately came down to Art Modell attempting to leverage the city of Cleveland into building him a new stadium and opting to move the franchise to Baltimore when he was unable to do so (you can read more about it here).
The City of Cleveland and Browns fans successfully sued to keep the team’s name, colors and history in Cleveland and led a charge for the city to receive an expansion franchise in 1999 (an expedited transaction that many believed played a sizable role in the team’s troubles in its second iteration. But that’s another story). It’s also worth noting that the Browns ranked in the top five in home attendance from 1992-1994, before falling to No. 10 in 1995 amid rumblings — and the ultimate announcement — of the move.
I wasn’t old enough to fully understand the Browns moving in 1995, so I didn’t cry when it happened, but I know plenty of people who did. And in case you need some evidence that’s less anecdotal, here’s some footage from the final game:
The idea of a fanbase’s level passion is obviously subjective, but I’d say that certainly qualifies.
The thing is, I don’t expect Canty to be an expert on the Browns’ move to Baltimore nearly 30 years ago. He was 12 years old and living in New York when the franchise left Cleveland. And despite several other obvious examples of passionate fanbases losing their teams — the Sonics leaving Seattle, the Rams leaving St. Louis, the Colts leaving Baltimore, etc. — I can even understand how somebody who’s only thought about the subject for less than five seconds might make the same leap.
But Canty does seem to understand that the Browns moving from Cleveland was a matter of greed. He’s just blaming the fans for not being passionate enough to act as pawns for Modell.
If keeping the Browns in Cleveland was on the ballot, I can assure you that Ray Lewis would have spent his career playing in brown and orange, not purple and black. But the situation was much more complicated than that, and blaming Browns fans for not voting to have their tax dollars spent on aiding Modell — who might have been eyeing a move anyways — is, as the kids say, a choice.
Ultimately, this is sports talk radio, which at its core is built on arguing. And like I said earlier, it’s July. But it speaks volumes that the biggest complaint from Browns fans regarding the segment wasn’t Smallmon giving Pittsburgh Steelers fans her list’s top spot.
[Unsportsmanlike]
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