Cleveland Is the Worst

Totally Pathetic. I mean in the nice way. The dictionary way: evoking strong pity and compassion. Pathos.

I was watching a documentary the other night about the Colts moving away from Baltimore in 1984, and naturally about how tragic that was for Baltimore.(1) It was a good documentary in that I related to the story and it caused me to think. Though the first thing I thought was: this still pales in comparison to when the Browns moved out of Cleveland. So I stewed on that for a second and the next thing I thought was: good lord, Cleveland is by far the saddest sports city there ever was, and people have never come close to appreciating the depth of that fact.

Chronicling the woe and frustration of cities and their sports teams is a favorite pastime of sportswriters. A couple generations of Boston writers made their careers off the "cursed" Red Sox, and with the recent proliferation of endless lists in various journalistic mediums, there have been plenty of efforts to capture the futility and the tragedy of certain cities (ESPN actually had one recently that ranked Cleveland #1). Still, none of these has ever given Cleveland its due, so to speak.

Let's get right to the facts, then. Cleveland has three major pro sports teams. The Browns debuted in 1946 and joined the NFL in 1950, the Cavaliers in 1970-71, and the Indians in 1901 along with the rest of the brand new American League. Through 2008, in 203 seasons,(2) these teams won six championships: the Browns in 1950, 1954, 1955, and 1964, and the Indians in 1920 and 1948. You may notice that the most recent of these occurred 45 years ago. If you (unfairly, but it helps the theme here) throw out the Browns' four titles because they came before the Super Bowl era and therefore before the modern era (really no one ever counts pre-Super Bowl titles when listing football championships), then you are left with the Indians' mere two wins in 187 team seasons. That's epic. 185 times out of 187, Cleveland fans have had their hopes crushed. That has got to wear on you.

But it gets better (worse). Since 1965, Cleveland has won zero titles in 128 seasons. They have played in exactly three championship finals, losing each of course. If you assume that the average league size in those 128 seasons is roughly 25 teams, then simple randomness would dictate five titles won and 11 top-2 finishes. For comparison, let's use Boston, another well-known (formerly) tragic city. Even if you subtract the last ten years of huge success, plus the dynasty 1960s Celtics from the equation, Boston still racked up seven titles and nine runner-ups since 1965. How about another city? Minneapolis: since 1965, two titles and seven runner-ups. Seattle: one title and three runner-ups, but in only 108 team seasons. Finally, Houston has just two titles and three runner-ups in 122 seasons, something that surprised me because you don't hear much moaning about poor Houston team performances. No one else really comes close for both longevity and futility.

So we've established that Cleveland sports teams have the worst record of success in the country, but it's not just failure to win titles that tears at the soul of the Cleveland sports fan. It's the thing which originally spurred this post: relocation.

The way Cleveland connects with its Browns may not be the strongest bond between fans and team across the four major sports, but if not, it's certainly in the discussion.(3) A real description of what I'm talking about might be difficult, but one way to look at it is to consider which teams' potential moves would be most devastating for their fans. Of all of the 15 teams I listed below in #3, as far as I know, none have ever come even remotely close to moving in the last half-century, with one exception. The Browns moved and then didn't exist for three years. After that they were replaced with an expansion team that won just 54 games in its first ten seasons, including a 3-18 record against their main rivals. In just the fifth season after the team moved, it won the Super Bowl for Baltimore. The man who moved the team, Art Modell, has almost been voted into the Hall of Fame on a couple of occasions. Any one of these facts is just impossible. The Browns are the ultimate star-crossed football franchise. And they just up and left the city. Unbelievable. Unconscionable.

And that's just the Browns. For anyone under the age of about 50, the main identifiable thing about the Indians is the movie Major League, which used the omnipresent culture of Indians losing and their general status as a joke as an essential plot detail. No one really complained about this. In fact, of the Indians fans I know, most actually took the fictional Indians' success in that movie as a point of pride. In 1997, the Indians went into the bottom on the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series with a lead. They were two outs away from winning it, and ended up losing, to a team in just its fifth year of existence. Only the 1986 Red Sox have ever come closer to winning a World Series and lost.

The Indians have the second-longest current title drought in baseball.
The Browns have the second-longest current title drought in football, and are one of only two teams (Detroit Lions are the other) to have been in existence for every Super Bowl year yet never participate in one.
The Cavaliers have the fourth-longest current title drought in basketball, and trail only the Suns by two years in terms of longevity amongst teams who have never won a title.

This is serious futility, people. I haven't even mentioned Ernest Byner, Jose Mesa, Craig Ehlo, or any of the endless string of terrible Browns first-round draft picks.(5) You add all of this to what is by far the most tragic franchise relocation ever, and no other city should even be in the discussion. Cleveland fans at this point are almost beyond reproach. They've suffered enough, so that it's just not funny anymore.

(Two caveats to this whole thing: 1) Lebron James. If he stays with the Cavs and wins about 5 titles, then that will make up for a lot of things and change the discussion completely. If they lose again this year and he leaves, then you can just chalk up another big notch in Cleveland's sorrow belt. 2) The Ohio State Buckeyes football team. They've won two titles since 1965, have been wildly successful for many years, and are currently sporting a five-game winning streak over their desperate rival. I mention this because most Cleveland fans also root for OSU. Takes a tiny bit of the edge off.)


1. The documentary about how good a business decision it was to move the team because Indianapolis gave the Colts a great stadium deal and the metro area was better positioned to financially support them would never get made, even though it's almost always true.

2. I'm not counting the Browns first four years as members of the All-America Football Conference, because it disbanded after four years and the competition was subpar (though they did win the title all four years, for what it's worth). I also didn't count the 1901, 1902, 1902, and 1994 baseball seasons, because there was no World Series played in those years.

3. Here would be the list of what I think are the top fan-team bonds, in no order: Browns, Steelers, Packers, Red Sox, Yankees, St Louis Cardinals, Canadiens, Maple Leafs, and Celtics, with the Cubs, Bears, Knicks, and maybe the Eagles and Red Wings forming a close second level.
4. I just learned via wikipedia that Dan Rooney was one of only two owners to oppose the Browns' move to Baltimore, and that, during the last Steelers home game of the Browns last original season, Pittsburgh fans wore orange armbands to a game against the Browns as a show of solidarity with their tragic brethren, and finally that during that year, protests were held in Pittsburgh by Pittsburghers against the move of the franchise. That's at least mildly impressive. No matter what kind of horrible things rival fans say to each other, when it comes down to it, they need and respect each other.
5. Let's step away from the theme of sympathy for a sec and have some fun at Cleveland's expense. Here in order are the Browns first round draft picks starting with 1999: Tim Couch, Courtney Brown, Gerard Warren, William Green, Jeff Faine, Kellen Winslow, Braylon Edwards, Kameron Wimbley, Joe Thomas, and Brady Quinn. That's ten players. To date, they've accounted for a total of four Pro Bowls, and played just 39 seasons with Cleveland. Only three are still with the Browns, and three are out of the league entirely. Basically you have one good player (Thomas), 3 or 4 servicable starters (Winslow, Wimbley, Edwards, and Faine) and crap.
Now here are the Steelers first-rounders over the same time span: Troy Edwards, Plaxico Burress, Casey Hampton, Kendall Simmons, Troy Polamalu, Ben Roethlisberger, Heath Miller, Santonio Holmes, Lawrence Timmons, and Rashard Mendenhall. Also ten players. To date, they've accounted for one Super Bowl MVP, 11 Pro Bowls* and played 51 seasons with Pittsburgh. Seven are still with the team, and just one is out of the league.* All but two are currently starters.

*Burress got his Pro Bowl with the Giants, and I'm assuming he'll come back to the NFL, post-jail.