The NFL season can be a rollercoaster of emotions, starting at the very highest of peaks and taking you through a variety of slopes and turns that can drop you off at the most glorious of sno-cone kiosks or knock you off into a pool of hungry sharks. 

I’ve been knocked into said pool of hungry sharks for, oh, about my entire lifetime save one or two majestic seasons.  Being a Browns fan is not easy, even aside from the whole “living in Cleveland” thing, but the one thing we do know how to do better than almost any other franchise, is work our way through a shitty season.  It’s textbook by now.

So follow along, and hopefully, you get some useful information.

1. As if I even had to mention it…medicate yourself:  Whatever method you choose, doesn’t make a difference, whatever disconnects you from the fantasy that is your sports team.  It’s kind of like turning off the xBox in real life when you can’t win a game, only with chemicals and there’s long-term consequences to both your mental and physical well-being.  This is key…you need to distract yourself by whatever means necessary and what better way than to put your head in a perpetual fog? 

My preferred method is chronic.  Everything is better on weed…music, movies, sex, more weed, the back of a $20 bill.  You name it, it’s better when you’re geeked.  And the best thing about it?  When the Browns are down by 20 going into the half, ANYTHING else seems infintely more interesting especially if it’s something on the Discovery or History Channels.  And chances are good that you’ll completely forget that there’s even a Browns game going on!  Win-win here people.

2. Follow a college team:  Ever wonder why I’m such a vociferous Buckeye fan?  Easy, because it’s fun to root for teams that have a shot at winning something, albeit a small shot based on recent events that will not be discussed anymore moving forward.  2007 was a magical year for me as a Browns fan.  If my expectations were a glass pane, then the pane of expectations were taken on a hot-air balloon ride close to a mile in the air, and then dropped and the result of the pane meeting earth was the metaphorical equivalent of my shattered expectations.  I know I just blew your mind with my wordsmithery, but try and keep up.

Anyways, 2007 rocked because years of 4-12 and 5-11 conditioned me to my reality.  When they start winning, you forget about depressing things and get lost in a euphoric maze where everything seems better vicariously.  The downside?  Much like heroin, in order to keep the high going, you need to keep, you know, WINNING.  Needless to say, this season has felt like a 4 month stint in de-tox where I’m strapped to the bed because I tried to cook up a needle full of Clorox.  ANYTHING to get that feeling back.

3. Follow a new sport:  Golf and the NBA for me, especially golf.  Maybe some of you are hockey fans, or perhaps college basketball, whatever, it makes no difference.  The common ingredient in all these, so far?  DISTRACTION.

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, so we’ll move on.

4. Start thinking DRAFT:  Fuck and yes.  I love the draft, and here’s why…more hyperbolic speculation that raises hope to an absurd level with dreams of championships and super-beastly players and all that…unless you draft a lineman, then it’s a summer of “BORING” followed by a quick realization that your team made the right choice.

Consider this…of the last decade, two of the top three best sports moments in my lifetime were the Cavs drafting LeBron and the Browns drafting Joe Thomas and Brady Quinn.  

So when you’re faced with 4-12 every year, the best part is getting a player in return for a season of misery.  Now, unlike the Bengals, Lions and Raiders, Browns fans actually look forward to their draft picks.  See, unlike those mentioned teams, the Browns get to watch a season or two of expectaion building hope only to see it get injured and leave.  Believe it or not, Tim Couch, Courtney Brown, Jeff Faine and Willie Green all were 1st rounders and all had their moments.  And yes, all got hurt and got escorted out of town on a flying carpet made of BOO’S and I’m also quite aware that Kellen Winslow and Braylon Edwards are next in line.

4a.  Become a Draft Expert:  Dig in.  Wild speculation is far more entertaining than watching 2/3 of these guys suck their way right out of the NFL.

5.  Chip?  Shit, try Canyon on my Shoulder:  Pretty much hate every other team.  It’s easy and fun, believe me.  Why do I hate the Steelers?  Not because they win, but because they simply get the breaks the Browns don’t.  It’s totally true too.  So now, since I’ve conditioned myself to view the Steelers this way, anytime I see a Steelers fan, I instinctively light them on fire.  Everytime. 

It’s not that I’m salty of their excess success, it’s that I’m salty at them for their very existence and the twist of fate that brought them to root for such a disgraceful team.  It’s that I wish they were never born, that their parents were both raped and killed in horrific fashion for spawning such Steeler-loving evil.  But then, after explaining this to them, I always qualify it with a, “it’s not you, it’s me,” because it IS me…or at least the Browns fan in me.

But you know the old saying, “don’t let hate consume you?”  Yea, well when hate consumes you, you don’t have much mental energy to expend on your shitty NFL team.  Awwwww yea.

6. Never give up, NEVER:  If there’s one phrase I’ve branded into my consciousness, it’s this…NEXT YEAR IS OUR YEAR.  Sure, it’s pathetic and sad, but hope is the only thing left. 

Personally, I don’t know how much longer I can take it.  I’m at the breaking point as it is, the day of the game itself brings me pain, like the feeling you get before going to the dentist.  When you’re saddled in a situation like Browns fans are in, and you’re all out of scapegoats after throwing the coach, both QB’s, the GM, ownership, the offensive coordinator, the defensive coordinator, the OL, the DL, the LB’s, the secondary…basically everyone other than Josh Cribbs and Phil Dawson, under the bus, there’s an empty feeling, much like Jesus felt when he defeated Kublai Khan.

But what fills that hole?  Hope.  Glorious, glorious hope.  Golden, velvet festooned, leather bootstrapped hope.  So stop being a pussy and deal with it.

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