Written by Jesse Lamovsky

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The worst thing about the owner of a professional sports team from the standpoint of a fan is that, unlike everyone else involved with the team, he can’t be fired. Fortunately, the Cleveland owner most in need of firing has decided to cash out. Randy Lerner’s sale of controlling interest in the Browns to Tennessee businessman and Steelers minority owner Jimmy Haslem (when you’re a 55 year-old millionaire and you go by “Jimmy,” you’re a Southerner) ends one of the most dismal ownership reigns in this city’s pro sports history; one that, to paraphrase my dad’s description of Indianapolis, only looks good in the rearview mirror.  

 

A sizable chunk of this fan base wouldn’t agree that Friday’s news was necessarily good. The fans have gleefully ripped, torn and shredded players, coaches and general managers since the team came back in ’99, but Randy to a certain extent has gotten the kid-glove treatment. He’s seen by many as someone who cares about the success of the Browns, who has his heart in the right place but has been let down by the people he entrusted with the team.

Randy has always gotten credit for being a big spender who isn’t afraid to do whatever it takes to field a winner. And he is… at least compared to the Dolans, the usual point of comparison among Cleveland fans. But when you look at the team’s payroll rankings since 2003, it becomes obvious that Randy isn’t quite the Daddy Warbucks figure he’s often made out to be:

2003: 32^nd

2004: 11^th

2005: 27^th

2006: 27^th

2007: 14^th

2008: 4^th

2009: 27^th

2010: 27^th

2011: 27^th

As you can see, the Browns have spent the majority of Randy’s regime near the bottom of the NFL in payroll. They’ve been in the top half three times in nine years and in the top ten only one year- 2008, when they were fourth. Obviously there’s more to winning than the size of the payroll, as that ’08 team (4-12) proved. But the numbers should dispel the notion that Randy was a big spender, at least when it came to on-field talent. He was more profligate when it came to paying people not to coach or make personnel decisions.

And while the 2008 team spent big and played small, Randy’s teams have proven more than capable of losing at a bargain price. Since 2003, the first full year of his stewardship, Cleveland is fifty games under .500, at 47-97. Only the Raiders and Lions have won fewer games over that span. The Browns are 10-44 against the AFC North since 2003 and have lost double-digit games eight times in those nine seasons- one more than the total of double-digit-loss seasons compiled by the 1946-1995 teams.  

For some reason Randy frequently gets exonerated for his team’s horrific showing on the field. “All he should do is hire the right people and let them do their jobs,” it’s said. “That’s what he’s done.” The blame then devolves onto the coaches and general managers. Davis, Savage, Crennel, Mangini- they’ve come and gone, but there’s really only one common denominator and that’s Randy Lerner. Letting him off the hook is tantamount to claiming that a guy who loses big at poker every week is just unlucky. Randy isn’t just unlucky.

Frequently lauded as a “hands-off” owner, Randy has been as prone to knee-jerk decisions as any in the sport. In the last seven years, he has orchestrated three near-total organizational reboots. He has lurched from one blueprint to another, essentially handing the franchise over to each and saying, “Here, please take this off my hands.”

Randy is hands-off in that he allows the people he hired to do basically whatever they want with the team because he wants very little to do with it himself. He gives them absolute power. And you know what they say about absolute power- it corrupts absolutely. With no accountability from the top, the organization has often resembled a junior-high classroom with an absent teacher- complete chaos. The grown-ups haven’t been in the building.

It is one thing to be hands-off to the extent of not calling plays from your private box or firing your coach midway through a game (as the notorious Robert Irsay did to Howard Schnellenberger.) But there’s a difference between staying out of the affairs of coaches and general managers and being an absentee owner, and Randy was the latter. There has to be some direction from the top. But there hasn’t been with this organization.  

An owner should lead from the front. Randy Lerner didn’t lead from anywhere. He didn’t even attend owner’s meetings. It doesn’t seem as if he ever really wanted to be the owner of the Browns, a perception borne out by the fact that he’s getting out from under right when his family’s ten-year moratorium on selling the club expires. Owning this team wasn’t a calling for Randy Lerner- it was a burden, one he was disinclined to actively take on.

That seemed to be fine with a large portion of the fan base, which remembered all too well the activist regime of Art Modell. But there’s a vast, happy medium between Modell and Randy Lerner. I don’t believe the owner’s sole responsibility is simply to hand out money and keep his mouth shut. There’s more to the job than being a walking ATM. Actually, I don’t trust a man who isn’t interested in where his money goes. Owning an NFL team is an enormous investment and the man making that investment should be personally involved.

I think it’s a good thing for this franchise and this city that the Lerner family is getting uninvolved. I’m not saying anything personal against either Al, Randy or their family, but between Al assisting with the original franchise’s move to Baltimore and Al/Randy presiding over one of the most inept organizations in sports, they have not exactly been heroic figures in the local sporting sense. Outside of moving the team (not going to happen) Jimmy Haslem can’t do any worse.

And maybe, he can do a whole lot better.