Written by Jeff Rich

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Some things just feel like common sense to me.  For instance, if you grow up in Cleveland and take any liking to football at all, you root for the Browns.  In turn, your feelings towards the Pittsburgh Steelers should be negative, even if there’s a variable level of disinterest towards that professional football team in Western Pennsylvania.  It’s probably unhealthy to reach dangerous levels of hate that make you want to vandalize cars, swear at children, or spit in the faces of anything or anyone that supports the black and yellow team.  All that I expect, out of respect for your hometown, whether you still reside there or not, is that you would stop short of wishing them well; it’s a simple matter of civic pride.

Personally, when I sit down at the keyboard to publicly share my thoughts, I have to step outside of myself a little bit, maintain a cooler head for the sake of credibility.  I honestly don’t know if it’s a matter of Superman pretending to be Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne pretending to be Batman; whatever character in me exists outside of cyberspace is the one that irrationally abhors the Pittsburgh Steelers on every level. I see every supporter of such an evil empire, some good friends among them, as the enemy.  Now, I do stop short of being criminally insane about it, limiting my disgust to a disapproving nod or roll of the eyes, and maybe a playful Facebook post that is almost always perceived by its target audience as malicious and hateful.  In reality, malice and hate don’t exist for me with something as ultimately trivial as sports; they are just the Roadrunner to my Wile E Coyote.

There comes a time to turn it off though.  In order to scribble in the environment that I do, there has to be some semblance of objectivity.  There has to be some level of understanding that a line exists, and when it’s crossed, nobody cares if there is a valid point to be found amidst your vicious propaganda.  It’s good to have an agenda, but if your agenda takes precedent over what’s truthful and what’s relevant, you come across the same way that the Left sees Fox New or the way the Right sees most of the mainstream media.  In the case of Browns v Steelers, I know they have the scoreboard, but Browns fans need to be creative in order to have a place in the conversation, to feel slightly less uncomfortable at the table.  Pittsburgh’s success is obvious to all of us, but it’s one of those things that’s better left unsaid.

On HBO’s The Sopranos, there was a moment, perhaps a moment of weakness where one-time enemies Phil and Tony decided to allow their differences to be water under the bridge, but it was only temporary.  Phil was vulnerable after having a heart attack, calling off the dogs, despite seeing his own brother killed by Tony’s cousin, but time passed and the war eventually resumed.  Time has passed since Cleveland was gracious to (Steelers owner) Dan Rooney for voting (along with Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson and no one else) against Art Modell’s plan to uproot the Browns from Cleveland in 1995.  It was a nice gesture at the time, but Cleveland was still without football for three years, despite the token votes.  Maybe the 43-0 drubbing the Browns experienced at the hand of Rooney’s Steelers was an easier pill to swallow in 1999 because he demonstrated a level of respect for us, but the “happy to be here” honeymoon phase of the Browns return to the NFL is over.

New chapters have been written in this new Browns-Steelers saga.  We will not forget Turkey Jones, The 3 Rivers Jinx, Opening Day 1989, or Eric Metcalf doing it twice, but we have new memories now.  There was the win at Three Rivers in ’99, Tim Couch on Sunday Night, Tommy Maddox, James Harrison, and (sadly) the oceans of black and yellow that have become commonplace at Cleveland Browns Stadium.  On Friday morning, we were stunned to hear about the potential of “one of them” becoming not just “one of us”, but becoming the principal owner of our beloved Browns.  Jim Haslam III does have a stake in that bunch in Western PA, but the footnote on his bio that we’re mostly hung up on is that he’s "1,000 percent Steelers fan!", and that doesn’t sit will with a lot of us.

My irrational side, my Mr. Hyde, didn’t even need that footnote.  It was FDR appointing Mussolini to his cabinet, but that was just the initial knee jerk reaction.  Cooler heads would prevail, and rational thought would come to the surface after realizing this nightmare was only based on the one piece of information I had being something for which I cared not.  Eventually, information surfaces that he was fan of the Cowboys and the Colts, and only became more than 999% interested in the Steelers when he bought into them in 2008, so the guy roots for his own bottom line. 

It takes me back to my youth, and when I started dating.  My father informed me of his approval system, which was simply to state that he played for the home team, and if I liked, than he would also like her.  However simplistic it might be, my Pops never meddled in my affairs of that ilk, and it has worked out pretty well for thus far.  I can see Haslam, potentially the new majority owner (which is speculation, but also the only thing that makes sense) of the Browns, quickly flipping his allegiances to “1,000%” support of his nine-figure investment.  If chooses not to meddle, and only to write the checks, that’s even better.  As a bonus, he claims to watch all of the games, which in the minds of many Browns fans is certainly an upgrade of the current guy with squatter’s rights to the owner’s box.

We know so little at this point, so who knows if it’s going to happen, let alone if it will actually work.  Just because the Steelers have had some amount of success that I’m reluctant to go into detail about, it doesn’t mean that this minority shareholder is bringing any of it with him into Northeast Ohio.  Carmen Policy, Dwight Clark, Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini, and Mike Holmgren all have Super Bowl rings; yet, the Browns haven’t won a playoff game in their expansion era.  Forgive me for taking a “wait and see” attitude with this guy, but I want to wait and see what happens…if this even happens.

I promise to let my cooler head be the judge, and do as much as I can to resist the urge my irrational side has to criticize a guy for buying into the Dark Side.  We have to wait and see, but I understand that when something is as bad as the Browns, we live with the presumption that different is automatically better, so we will likely welcome Mr. Jimmy Haslam III with open arms. 

He just has to leave every bit of that 1,000% Steelers fandom somewhere deep at the bottom of the Allegheny or Monongahela.