Jeff Rich

Jeff Rich currently resides in Phoenix with his wife, a native Chicagoan turned Clevelander at heart.  He is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a long suffering sports fan of the Cleveland variety. It started with an NFL Playoff game on January 4, 1986 at the Orange Bowl in Miami, when Dan Marino's Dolphins made a 21-3 Browns lead in the second half vanish, never to be spoken of again.  That should have prepared Jeff for the years of agony that he refuses to embrace, but it didn't.  Nothing ever does, whether the villain is a brand name headliner like John Elway or Michael Jordan, or worse, a lesser known "undercard" like Castille or Renteria.  However, no matter how many proverbial stakes are driven through his heart, his glass always remains half-full.

For many Cleveland fans, the great memories drown in the memory banks flooded with misery and the scars never heal.  Though even the most successful chapters ended in heartbreak, Rich chooses to look back at the book's best pages rather than the many unhappy endings.  He knows it's easy for some to remember a team like the 1995 Indians as the team that had 100 wins in 144 tries, then failed to finish the job when it counted the most, but he mostly looks back at the joy of witnessing their Game 3 World Series victory at Jacobs Field.  And while nothing will ever purge the memories of heartbreak certain playoff games, he is resilient enough to keep things in an optimistic light, even if it borders on the boundaries of what society might call "delusional".

Before joining the writing staff at TheClevelandFan.com in 2012, Jeff dabbled in sports talk radio in Northeast Ohio as a high school football correspondent for WELW and most recently as the College Basketball Insider for an internet station in the Midwest.  He also scribes on various topics for his own blog, RiverBurn.com.