Bradley And Gay Released

[The Gipper]

I have a bachelors in Sports and Recreation Management with a double minor in Marketing and Business Ethics and I also have an associates in Business Management.

 

I measure success by how closely you adhere to following your dreams. My childhood dream was to play professional football, I'll settle on working in the FO of a professional team.

 

I helped build and brand the area's semi-pro team, going from non-existence to winning the division in 3 years and making a deep playoff run in a league of over 200 teams that stretches all over the Eastern Seaboard. I've been a part of a Division 1 college program that has won their conference three out of the first seven years it existed.

 

I've seen firsthand what it's like to build a team to succeed immediately. Granted, the NFL is a different beast entirely but some ideas still translate, and the Browns have not been using them.

 

Whether or not you'd like to believe it, image and perception are awfully important to this generation. It's no longer just about how you play, it's now also about how you're perceived to the public. Hence the reason a majority of the players have image consultants. Tied into an athletes image is the team and city in which they play for. No athlete is going to play for a perennial loser unless that team either pays him a ridiculous amount of money or has other fringe benefits.

 

The Browns image is that of a poor team of cast-offs and underdogs that play for blue collar fans in a dead industrial town. While that was a fantastic image back in the 70s and early 80s, it doesn't translate well to today. The emphasis of your generation was hard work and family, while the core tenet of my generation is appearance

 

In order to get fans and FAs alike, change your perception. It's worked for the Seahawks. It's worked for the Lions. It's worked for the 49ers. All three teams have changed their identity, all three have experienced marked success.

 

The Steelers/Bears/Packers/and a few other teams play for blue collar fans in dead industrial towns.

But those teams have won because they have had good ownership, management coaching. Just like I said in the very first post associated with this whole argument.

 

WINNING

WINNING

WINNING

WINNING

WINNING.

 

Repeat is like a mantra. That is all that matters. Like MarkO said, the San Diego Chargers have an image problem as bad as the Browns, yet that city has the best weather in the country. (he knows, he lives there). Their image is poor because the team does not win.

 

WINNING. And proper management that leads to winning. That is ALL that matters re an NFL team.

THAT is what has been in short supply around here. Not the sun or anything else.

[The Gipper]

The Lions that made the playoffs the year before that? The Lions with enough talent to beat the Browns with their backups?

 

I never said anything about uniforms. I couldn't care less what we do with our uniforms. I said we need to change our perception.

 

We're perceived as a cupcake game; a team that either shoots themselves in the foot or forgets to show up to the game. Under Mangini, we started to change that perception. We started hitting teams in the mouth, beating top teams in the league....then we regressed.

 

Seattle went and changed their perception from a offense-first pro-style team to a hard hitting, take no bullshit defensive power. They got a coach who is great at recruiting and even better with the media.

 

The 49ers changed their perception of their WCO/efficient passing/kill them with ball control team to a hardnosed, punch-them-in-the-mouth defense. They got a coach who not only is an innovator but is very outspoken and has become the face of the team.

 

These are things we need to do. We need to find an identity.

 

The trouble with drafting is that it normally takes a couple years for your draft picks to pan out. Realistically, you're looking at two solid starters a year and maybe a third if you hit later in the draft. By the time you see what you have, your coaching staff has been fired and the whole process begins anew. We need to supplement with FA talent until the draft picks begin to pan out, but no FA's want to come to Cleveland.

 

You and Gipper say winning solves everything, but you forget to mention that in order to win we have to add FA's and in order to add FA's, we have to win. If winning were that easy, we would have been doing it by now.

 

 

Everything you say that is necessary involves on field stuff. And the cold and the river have nothing to do with on field stuff.

And I disagree completely. The BEST teams have been built through the draft...including your Seahawks and 49ers and Lions. Look at this year's two Super Bowl teams. Probably 48 out of the 50 key players on both teams were acquired through the draft. The only one I can think of was Anquan Boldin. And yea, Baltimore. Now there is a town with a stellar image.

See how absurd your argument is? An industrial town with all the urban issues that are as badly perceived as any city in the US holds the NFL Championship. How? Good ownership/management coaching. And they did it all practically through the draft except for that one guy. .

[Mark O]

 

 

These are things we need to do. We need to find an identity.

 

 

 

This is the only part of your argument that I completely agree with. I said it all last season that teams take on the personality of their coach. Look at the 49ers and Ravens as perfect examples. Seattle is another perfect example of this. It's nearly true throughout the league either in a good way or a bad way. The Browns the last 2 years being a perfect example of a team with zero identity and personality, just like the Retarded coach we had. Hopefully that changes this year and Chud brings some of the things that Mangini had going during his time. Mangini wasn't the most successful coach in history, but I think the team was on the right track.