Monday, December 8, 2008
Silverman / Sports Titans Gameday Notes: A Beleaguered Browns Fan Lashes Out
Posted by Jack Silverman on Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 6:03 AM
The beating I took in the stands was nothing next to the beating my hometown team took on the field.
Maybe it was an omen. Not more than five minutes after I headed off to LP Field for yesterday's Titans/Browns game, I was Serpas-ized coming off the Jefferson Street Bridge. Sure, 52 in a 35 is a little excessive, but I was pretty sure I was on the way to witness the biggest upset of the NFL season, and I didn't want to be late.
Cleveland fans heading to the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, circa 1978.
Meanwhile, the Titans are having a stellar season, yet there were empty seats all around us. Surely most or all of these tickets were sold, no? Yet many folks couldn't be bothered by the cold weather (or what we in Cleveland would refer to as "a nice spring day"). And as the Titans scored their first touchdown to take the lead, the fans in the concessions lines who were watching on TV monitors overhead barely emitted a peep.
This was the scene in the club-seat concourse. The only massage you might get at a Browns home game would have a lot more knuckle and would focus on the face.
Comments (13)
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So Clevelanders don't have the sense to get out of the cold, and put up with obnoxious announcers. And Titans fans are the lame ones? Riiiiiiight.
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Emmett, everything I said about the fans in Cleveland vs. Nashville I stand by. But is my post the result of being a bitterly disappointed Browns fan and a sore loser? Hell yeah!
But as far as moving back there, hell no! I can't stand those cold, dreary winters.
Also, it's more fun to gripe about how things are better in the city you're NOT in. If I moved back there, I'd have to gripe about how the weather was so much better in Nashville. And I'd rather complain about lame fans here than bad weather there.
I have to agree with Jack. I went to my first Titans game early in the season. The one thing you notice is that the fans are weirdly quiet. I've been to games in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and Milwaukee (back when the Pack used to play there), and the Titans are like attending a tennis match comparatively.
I'd chock it up to two things: The relative absence of drunks in attendance (in Cleveland, half the crowd could blow a .20), and the fact that games here don't seem like the entertainment portion of a Teamsters convention. Maybe because the team's so new, the Titans don't have the generational devotion among the less moneyed rabble, the kind of people who make a day at the stadium seem like Free Hooker Night at Turkish prison (in a good way).
I noticed the same thing at the Predators game Saturday night. It was more casual church service than 50-cent Shot Night. It does freak you out a bit.
I realize Jack is merely stirring the pot here. But the "statistical study" that showed Titans fans ranking last is obviously skewed by the fact that in 1996, the team was playing a lame-duck season in Houston and fans stayed away in droves. In 1997 they played in Memphis, where no one really wanted them. In 1998 they played at Vanderbilt. They weren't yet called the Titans in any of those seasons. The crowds became extremely strong and remained that way once they moved into the Coliseum.
Can't speak to Pete's comment about the game he attended, but had he lived here a little longer he would know that, in their inaugural year downtown, Titans crowds gained a reputation for being among the loudest in the NFL.
BBB,all fair points. And throw in the fact that yesterday the Titans were playing my hapless home team, which might have made the game's outcome a foregone conclusion, and I can understand why it may have been less than a hot ticket.
Still, as Pete can attest, and as I've experienced, there's a level of emotional involvement and intensity that is much lower here than in some other big football markets: Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philly, Green Bay, D.C., New York to name a few. The friend who went with me yesterday went to many NY Giants games, and says the crowds here don't come near matching the intensity.
Now, I'm not making any sort of moral judgment. Hey, an argument could be made that being rabidly devoted to a bunch of overpaid pituitary cases running into each other is silly and juvenile, and that the supposedly "best" fans from those other cities need to get lives. Maybe it's that Nashville sports fans aren't living vicariously through the accomplishments of their teams.
In Cleveland, that's all some folks have!
Jack and BBB are definitely on the right track but Pete hit it on the head. D.C., Philly, Chicago, Cleveland. All of these are original NFL franchises. In every case, over 70 years old.
As a D.C. native, I know that many Redskins fans can trace back their season ticket lineage three generations or more. Heck, the waiting list to buy them runs five years.
That kind of generational devotion is something that can only be built over time. Give the Titans another 60 years or so, then we'll see how they stack up.
Caleb, young whippersnapper, I'm afraid I'll be checked out in 60 years. That blog post is on you, my chronologically blessed friend.
Remember, too, that while many of these fans are are also going through a period of depression regarding the Vols. UT is the team they've been slavishly devoted to all their lives, not the Titans.
