Blaming "Brownie" won't fix Cleveland's fortunes
In our last episode, we examined the possibility that the Cleveland Guardians' fortunes turned when they replaced their longtime mascot, the embarrassing Chief Wahoo.
Having seen the baseball team's fortunes turn, that ominous rumbling you're hearing along Lake Erie is the rising anger of Cleveland Browns fans in response to the team's current state of disarray.
The feeling is only made worse by the Guardians' great season, and predictions that the Cavaliers will do well.
It's gotten to the point where some fans are pinning the Browns' misfortunes on a jinx caused by "Brownie," the longtime elfin mascot who was added to the 50-yard line this season by popular vote.
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While everyone knows that luck, karma and jinxes do exist, at least in sports, in Cleveland's case, an actual Keebler Elf could produce a better game plan than what's transpired over the last five weeks.
Who keeps the best running backs in the NFL on the bench, while playing defensive backs who appear to be legally blind?
Who places their hopes for winning drives on a backup quarterback who suffers from tunnel vision?
We do, that's who.
The Hobbits had a better offensive strategy.
Perhaps no other NFL team has been more of a disappointment this year. Browns fans' expectations versus the reality have been, as Mark Twain once put it, like the difference between "lightning" and "lightning bug."
There is no greater fanbase in professional sports: They're working-class people who exhibit the patience of Job, and the loyalty of a Labrador retriever. They have every right to be furious, even apoplectic when they invest themselves week after week, and all they get for their troubles is the equivalent of a lousy T-shirt.
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They were promised the playoffs, not a plague of ineptitude which is being blamed on a cartoon character.
Generation after generation, Browns fans hand down a legacy of suffering and unrequited love to their children like a threadbare blanket. They spend their hard-earned money on ever-more-expensive game tickets to support a team that finds new paths to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in ways you wouldn't believe if you didn't actually see it.
The mathematical equation for this must be astounding.
Some of the most dedicated arrive in Cleveland's Muni Lot before sunrise, burn up their entire Sundays, then are forced to trudge home exhausted from disappointment just in time for work on Monday.
Brownie's getting blamed, we must suppose, because he isn't as intimidating as say, a kraken, but just once it would be nice to see someone on the coaching staff show at least as much fire as the bouncer elf in "A Christmas Story," who yelled at kids to "Get goin'!"
The argument that Brownie is bad luck might be legitimate had he been on the field in 2017, when the team went 0-16. The only jinx back then was Hugh Jackson.
As if that wasn't curse enough, Jackson was followed by Freddie Kitchens.
You do have to wonder what Cleveland did to deserve such a one-two punch.
What's happening to the Browns right now has nothing to do with a curse, bad luck, a burial ground or bad juju.
Brownie's not the problem.
The Browns are.
Charita M. Goshay is a Canton Repository staff writer and member of the editorial board. Reach her at 330-580-8313 or charita.goshay@cantonrep.com. On Twitter: @cgoshayREP
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Charita Goshay: Blaming "Brownie" won't fix Cleveland's fortunes
