milkdog99 wrote: I don't understand the amount of steeler fans in Ohio! Blows my mind how can you not like the browns!! No freaking loyalty!
Welcome to the age of bandwagon fans.
Now with the Internet and Direct TV, you can be a fan of any team and not miss anything about whatever team you decide is your favorite; geography doesn't have to play a role in determining that loyalty.
When people my age and a bit younger/older were growing up, you could only see your favorite college football power on TV about two times per year -- but you could see your local NFL team EVERY Sunday.
I grew up learning about football watching Browns games with my dad and grandpa. It was a family tradition to sit down as a family and watch the games, rooting on our favorite players and a team that was, at the time, the best in all the NFL with a winning percentage of well over .700.
When the Steelers began their steroid-laced run of titles in the 1970s, what had been the most pathetic NFL franchise all of a sudden became one of the best, and you saw the inevitable bandwagon fans jumping aboard.
At about the same time, fans of Paul Brown followed him to Cincinnati as he founded the Bengals after being fired by the man who would ruin the Browns in so many ways, Art Modell.
The rest is well documented: The Browns, a team that had had only ONE losing season its first 30 years under Brown and one that had regularly won NFL titles and appeared in title games, suddenly began having losing seasons -- especially after Browns players began retiring and his former assistants left.
At the same time, Modell did no marketing of his team in Ohio, outside of Cleveland. None. So the fan base that had been so strong began to recede, giving way to other teams.
Modell slowly ran the franchise into the ground and bankrupted himself until he chose to take a bribe from Maryland and move the team, rather than sell it locally and keep it in Cleveland.
So for 3 years, there was no football in Cleveland and when the franchise came back, it was not allowed (by the NFL) enough time to adequately prepare for the draft, to scout free agents, or hire a front office and coaching staff. All of which set the "new" Browns back yet another 5 years, at least.
Throw in the incompetence of Randy Lerner, who took over after his father suddenly became ill and passed away only a few years into owning the team, and you had a bad product on the field that was not attractive to fans looking for a team to root for -- in an age that gave them many choices.
Sorry for the long post...but that's how you get so many Steeler (and other) fans in Ohio, when it should be more locked down by fans of the two Ohio teams.
