It has been a great seven years at TheClevelandFan.com. We have established ourselves as one of the premier Cleveland sports websites on the internet and have put together one of the most gifted and talented groups of writers, one that we believe rivals any other site out there. By “any other site out there”, we’re not just talking about the Cleveland-centric ones.

When Rich Swerbinsky launched TheClevelandFan.com on February 1, 2006, it began, as Rich said in 2008, with a “couple hundred buddies”. Now, TCF registers page views in the hundreds of thousands every month and the writer base has grown to include over 20 of Cleveland’s finest amateur scribes.

Since TheClevelandFan launched, all of us, to some degree, have endured the pain and suffering that leads some to undying loyalty and others to their breaking point. We have laughed, cried, jumped, screamed, applauded, berated, and gotten depressed over Cleveland sports. We have endured Browns games in blizzards. We have endured heartbreak in the playoffs for the Indians and Cavs. We have seen a King grow before our eyes and then leave, taking his talents, ego, and championship potential with him. We have gone through ownership changes, the hiring and firing of coaches, ill-fated trades and let our fandom generate blind hope, optimism, and invariable disappointment.

That’s just in the span of seven years. Through all of it, the writers of TheClevelandFan.com have been there. The writers of TheClevelandFan.com are going to continue to be there.

One of the best things to happen to us at TheClevelandFan was the partnership we developed with SportsTime Ohio in March of 2007. They gave us unparalleled visibility as a website dedicated to Cleveland sports. Our content has run on SportsTimeOhio.com and STOhd.com right on the front page, directing anybody who clicked on a link back to TheClevelandFan since the partnership began.

With the sale of STO to Fox Sports, the STO brand will be fully integrated into the Fox Sports family and that includes the website. As a result, our partnership with STO will no longer exist, but that does not mean that TheClevelandFan is going anywhere. We will continue to provide the content and the opinions you have come to expect from us and we hope that you will visit us directly at www.theclevelandfan.com.

Many thanks are owed to Kelly Myers and Mike Roche. They have been an integral part of our relationship with STO and are two very fine people. On behalf of everybody at TheClevelandFan, we wish them the best in their future endeavors.

This latest chapter in the life of TheClevelandFan has been exciting and tremendously helpful in getting our name out there, but it is far from the last. We are committed to continuing to be the voice of the fans of Cleveland. We want you to agree with us. We want you to disagree with us. We want to generate discussion among friends at the bar, co-workers in the office, and on our website message boards. We want to educate and inform. We want to spark debate. Most importantly, we want to be alive long enough to write about a Cleveland championship.

In closing, speaking on behalf of the writers of TheClevelandFan, we’d like to thank every single reader out there for taking the time to read what we have to say and give our heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the people who visit TheClevelandFan on a daily basis. In today’s dot com world, there is no shortage of websites at your disposal, but to choose to read us on a daily basis means a lot to the writers who take the time to put their love of Cleveland sports into words.

Please continue to frequent TheClevelandFan and we’ll continue to provide the best Browns, Indians, Cavs, and Buckeyes coverage on the web.

In the condensed NHL schedule, every point is critical, especially considering that every game is played against a conference foe. The Columbus Blue Jackets started to get healthy last week and now have put together an eight-game point streak. The team had a shot to tie the franchise record with six straight wins on Tuesday night, but fell in a shootout to the Vancouver Canucks. After securing 12 of 14 possible points this month, the Blue Jackets are now three points out of a playoff spot.

The one thing that observers of the Blue Jackets have taken notice of, pretty much since the first week of the season, is that the Jackets work hard night in and night out. They’re finally starting to see that hard work pay off in the win column. Seven of the last eight games for the Blue Jackets have gone to overtime, so they have played a lot of hockey and have battled through a lot of adversity during this stretch.

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This is one installment in a team effort by The Cleveland Fan, highlighting the top local sports figures by jersey number. Please weigh in with your thoughts, in the Boards. As David Letterman would say, “For entertainment purposes only; please, no wagering.”

The early crowd at the stadium could only assume they didn’t get the joke. On that mid-June day in Cleveland, Indians starting pitcher Jim Grant strolled across the baseball diamond – in Minnesota Twins gear. Fans yelled at the pitcher, asking him why he was dressed in the uniform of that day’s opponent. Grant could only shrug and reply that he’d been traded.

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This is one installment in a team effort by The Cleveland Fan, highlighting the top local sports figures by jersey number. Please weigh in with your thoughts, in the Boards. As David Letterman would say, “For entertainment purposes only; please, no wagering.”

When this “By the Numbers” series for Cleveland athletes was conceived, there were several uniform numbers for which the selections were almost a foregone conclusion. There was also a handful of absolute no-brainers...and then there was Number 32.

The number worn by James Nathaniel Brown for the Cleveland Browns is as iconic in the NFL as Ruth’s #3 is in baseball. This is not a phenomenon limited to Cleveland, as evidenced by articles such as this, in which Brown’s name is preceded by the words “the immortal”, or by any number of similar rankings.

Before Dwight Howard, Cam Newton or Shaquille O’Neal were born, Jim Brown had the nickname “Superman”. When he left football, still in his prime at 29, he owned the NFL single season rushing record, and career NFL records for rushing yards, total yards, rushing touchdowns and total touchdowns, among other marks...and he did it all in nine seasons of 12 or 14 games.

To this day, no other running back in NFL history has averaged over 100 yards (104.3) per game. Of the nine players to surpass his career touchdown record of 126 since he retired, none averaged more than one touchdown per game, as Brown did. He won the NFL rushing title in eight of his nine years in the league.

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