Welcome to the beginning of this expansion weblog. I’ve been keeping another blog for a few months now, and I plan to continue sharing my general thoughts and impressions there. But no specific topic is more appealing to me than the Browns, the team I’ve followed religiously since I was ten years old. My dad worked hard all week and was always on the go, even at home, with various projects, errands, and activities. (He still is a little dynamo, by the way.) But on Sunday afternoons, he’d always settle in to watch those brown-and-orange hulks from his hometown. Nothing else on TV held his attention like the Browns, and nothing drew more animated emotional reactions from him than their various missteps and successes. I soon learned that, not unlike my dad’s emotions, the Browns were something I could not control, but together we could try to understand them and hope for the best.
Twenty-four years later, I’m still following the Browns, often using rabbit ears to pull in the Toledo station, muting the tube, and listening to Doug, Jim, and Casey on the radio. Between games and seasons I read reactions, previews, and news all over the web. The quality of the writing and the sites runs the gamut — from the award-winning but hardly controversial official site, to various ad-infested commercial sites, to the comprehensive but confusing Bernie’s Insiders, to some lovingly-homemade but sorely outdated personal pages. This site is my contribution to Browns community, and I hereby baptize it with these intentions:
* Lively and literate prose, entertaining and easy on the eyes
* Honest reactions and provocative opinions, in a reasonable tone suitable for all audiences
* Updated links to Browns-related sites selected for their quality and relevance
* Frequent posts, especially during the season, whenever there is something of significance to report or reflect upon
* Focus on connecting to the community of Browns fans and to larger issues as sports intersects with society and culture
* And finally, a contemporaneous account of the first season when the Browns reach the pinnacle and win the Super Bowl.
If you share these hopes, bookmark this site and check back often. If you want to participate, start with email. Later, I may invite selected Browns fans to write their own posts. If you want to show more tangible support, go to the bottom of this page and donate toward the upkeep of this site (removing the top banner ad is the first wish list item). In any case, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in spirit on Sunday afternoons.
