Written by Lars Hancock

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As a long-suffering Cleveland fan, I was under the impression that our sports franchises could not shock me with any more incredulous displays of stupidity, choking, mismanagement, arrogance, and incompetence than the previous 49 years of pure unadulterated shit had demonstrated. Then, 2013 happened, and I was proven oh so wrong.

Let's be perfectly clear, 2013 wasn't all bad. The Indians gave us a magical/terrible/magical/terrible/magical/terrible/magical/terrible/magical season that won't soon be forgotten. They delighted us with unexpected flurries of pure brilliance, heartwarming victories that inspired the whole town, and followed those moments with baseball so terrible the pre-Roy Hobbs New York Knights would be ashamed of it. The Tribe was on top of the world one month, and then waiting for next year the next. We were riding high in April, shot down in May, and back on top in June (okay, more the opposite, but I'm working a metaphor here). The Indians were puppets, paupers, pirates, poets, pawns and kings. They were up and down and over and out, and I know one thing - each time I found the Tribe flat on their face, they'd pick themselves up and get back in the race.

And you know what? That was a hell of a lot of fun.

But then we had one playoff game, and the lousy version of the team showed up, and it was over, poof, gone like Keyser Sose. And then to build on the momentum of that tremendous rollercoaster ride of a season, they signed David Murphy and, well, pretty much David Fucking Murphy. The offseason has kind of been like the Crying Game reveal to us, except the Tribe needed more bats and the Crying Game had, well, an extra bat. Either way, Francona has another pile of chicken shit with which to make chicken salad. Good luck again Tito, we all trust in you.

The trust we have in Tito is very unlike the trust we lack in another of this city's coaches, Mike Brown.

Mike, let's be honest here. We're in the nest, so I'm going to be straight with you. Nobody wanted you back in town. You were a lousy coach the first time you were here, getting outcoached consistently when it counted. You were unable to harness the all-world talent that shall not be named, and you were made to look stupid in every playoff series. But Dan Gilbert, who sadly is probably the best major sports owner in town (akin to the way Hannibal Lecter is the person I'd most want to babysit my children if Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees were the other two choices), decided to hire you back, because, hell, I can't think of a good reason why he'd do that. I'd say crack, hookers, and head trauma, but Gilbert is a decent person and businessman and I wouldn't want to slander him. Maybe Chris Grant is into the hookers, crack, and took a few too many hits to the head. That would explain a lot. I'll get to that in a bit.

But back to you, Brown, you suck as an NBA head coach. Just being honest here my friend, this is for your own good. I'd sooner bet on Jessica Simpson on Jeopardy! against Ken Jennings than wager on you outcoaching any NBA coach this side of Jason Kidd. Your teams never have an offensive flow or system, your "defensive genius" is a joke, your teams collapse like the Tacoma Narrows bridge late in every game, and we need to look no further than Dion Waiters and Andrew Bynum to see you have no clue as to how to motivate nor to discipline an NBA team. In a conference where a .400 record merits you the five seed in the playoffs, you've got a team laden with top five picks looking toward yet another one. 

The only excuse Brown has is that all the top-five picks he has been blessed with are terrible. Kyrie Irving is an absolute stud, an that was a complete no-brainer of a pick that even Chris Grant didn't screw up. Grant has what I call the Myass touch, where unlike the Midas touch that turns everything to gold, everything Grant's incompetent little fingers near turns to a complete pile of shit. You can't find an NBA player in an entire fucking draft better than Anthony Bennett? You had literally every college kid from which you could make a selection, and you pick Bennett? I know, he's a rookie - give him time and he may be a servicable Tristan Thompson-type (who was another one of your stupid picks). But "servicable" is the upside - the MFing upside - of the number one pick in the draft? Holy schnikeys.

As 2013 comes to an end, the apathetic Cavs of Byron Scott have morphed into the embarrassing Cavs of Mike Brown. Mike Brown needs to be fired, and it needs to happen now. But no professional organization will fire a coach hired into a culture of losing with an inadequate team after just one season, because that would make them a complete laughing stock joke of a franchise run my indecisive nincompoops that make rash decisions, have no discipline or patience, and certainly aren't able to hold themselves accountable for their own stupidity. Yes, no franchise is managed that badly, so Brown is here for another season or two at least.

Which brings us to last, and least, the Browns. I don't even know what to say here, because the Browns did exactly what I said above tonight, and are now the joke of the league. We have an owner who is a felon, a president that sports a dead squirrel on his head (that I think is the brains of the outfit ala Master Blaster in Mad Max), and a general manager that once drafted Mike Junkin #5 overall and was rehired by the team for which he performed that moment of drafting brain surgery. Lombardi is essentially a big fat stupid pile of Soylent Green running a professional football team, and the whole league knows it. Rob Chudzinski wasn't necessarily the best coach - the Browns lost leads in the second half of almost every game this season - but the offense was led by Brandonjasonbrian Weedencampbellhoyer and featured Greg "Blot" Little and Davone "Oops" Bess, you need to temper the expectations a bit. Koko the gorilla could do sign language, and that was amazing, but you can't ask her to design a rocket to put men on the moon. Firing him was a moronic act of arrogance, panic, and incompetence by that brain-dead sack of protplasm Lombardi and his idiot stooge of a boss Banner.

Oh, yeah Beavisbardi and Buttheadbanner, competent coaches are going to be lined up around the corner to be a part of this crap show you're putting together. And every agent and top-flight player sent a letter to Santa himself begging to be a part of this show in 2014. You keep deluding yourselves into believing that. Oh, nice job spending the salary cap to field a competitive team. Shocking you couldn't win spending 20% less than the other guys on talent. Shocking.

Browns fans can only hope after another bloody abortion of a season and yet another regime change that the government comes in and takes over the team after it seizes all of Haslam's assets, because even the government is run better than this three-ring show. In the meantime, the Browns will be the joke of the league, no matter how hard the Rex Ryans, Jerry Joneses, and Greg Schianos of the world try to wrest the title from us. You'll pry that from Haslam's cold dead or incarcerated hands gentlemen.

Yesterday marked 49 years to the day that Cleveland won it's last professional sports title. Only the Indians this summer can stop 50 from happening, and that's not all that likely. The Cavs are a mess and will be until Chris Grant is turning tricks on Prospect for pocket change to support his crack habit - there is no title in store for 2014, and the 2014-2015 season is going to be another disaster with this regime in charge. And fully lock onto another top 5 pick in 2015 after another season of incompetence by the Banner Bunch. Koko the gorilla has a better shot of building that rocket as any of the current Cleveland franchises do of building a winner, and that's the cold honest truth that slaps us in the face as 2013 ends.

Happy new year everyone. I sincerely hope your 2014 wil be better than those of our favorite sports teams, which short of the Perry nuclear power plant melting down, should be assured.