RAVENS 35, BROWNS 0

When I learned that CBS had decreed that its Toledo affiliate would not be showing the Browns game, I drafted in my mind the most scathing invective imaginable. How dare they pull the plug on a team they’d covered all season! How dare they trifle with fan loyalties and apparently disregard the preferences of their local affiliate!

So I tuned into the radio broadcast while watching the feds raise the terror alert level to match the color of the Browns’ helmets. I heard that Gerard Warren wouldn’t be starting, but I didn’t catch why, so I figured it was probably another injury the team failed to report. (UPDATE: It was a punishment for being late for a team meeting.) I listened as the Browns kept the game close during the first half. Missing the field goal to end the half was a downer, though.

I realized that when the Browns aren’t on TV, it’s not just the visual experience that is missing. I lost the ever-important “body english” factor. If I can’t lean one way or another to root for the Browns to hold back Jamal Lewis or drive forward on offense, I really am not doing all I can as a fan to help the team win.

Sure enough, the dam broke. Lewis broke free, and I could hear Doug Dieken groan. With the Browns now down 14 points, I closed my eyes in an all-out effort to concentrate on a comeback.

About an hour later, I woke up. Sorry, folks, I let the team down, lying unaware on the couch as the team embarrassed itself at home against its archrival with the grieving family of Otto Graham waiting in the wings.

As I awoke, somewhat disoriented, I wondered, is this real? Did the Browns really give up an even 500 rushing yards to a single man in a single season? Was this really our fate, to suffer the most lopsided of the Botch Davis era to the one team that most embodies Satan?

And has that Ravens team, itself created by the ultimate treachery of robbing Browns fans of their beloved franchise, now FULLY LAPPED THE NEW BROWNS in its development? It looks to be true. Our reborn franchise has struggled to gain traction in five years, apparently mortgaging its fiscal future for a single heartbreaking playoff game before its humiliating descent into the frightening bowels of rebuilding mode. In that same time span, the Ravens won the Super Bowl, then faced their own salary cap hell, and now have already come out the other side, probably headed back to the playoffs with a younger, hungrier cast of stars than the Browns have yet been able to assemble.

I’ll be taking the coach’s wise counsel. “Why don’t they get a life?” Davis said in response to fan criticism earlier this year. OK then, I will. I’m well rested now.