Any poll conducted in Mississippi posing the question "What's your favorite NFL team?" would probably produce results something like 94.5 percent Saints, 2.5 percent Cowboys, 1 percent Colts, 1 percent Packers, and 1 percent "Other." I'm part of that "Other." So is that Buffalo Bills fan I met at Fenian's Pub a while back and that lady who passes me on Lakeland Drive every morning with her Washington Redskins bumper sticker.
Most Mississippians who grew up in the '70s, '80s and early '90s were fed a steady diet of Saints, but not all of us digested it. Some of us rebelled, often influenced by nothing more than football cards and The George Michael Sports Machine (Google it). Many of us ran to the comfort of Marcus Allen and the Raiders, others to the Montana-to-Rice-era 49ers. Regardless of how and why we landed where we did, each one of us has our story, and those stories interest me. Mine? Glad you asked.
It was Millsaps College, Jan. 11, 1987. I was a short, goofy, 11-year-old sitting in the Franklin Hall dormitory lobby, waiting for my parents to finish visiting my older sister Mary, a Millsaps freshman. She was the smart one, the pretty one, the one who listened incessantly to The Police and forced me to go watch the movie "Dune" for purely Sting-related reasons. It was at the precise time, on a tan Zenith TV in that lobby, that I witnessed "The Drive."
Of course, I didn't know it was "The Drive." At the time, it was "The 4th Quarter of the Game I Was Watching Before We Went to Burger King." What it became was the worst thing to happen to the city of Cleveland since Lake Erie caught on fire. (Sorry, LeBron. Your exodus doesn't rank third in my book.) It was 98 yards that changed my life. John Elway ripped the heart out of the Cleveland Browns, one scramble and one clutch conversion at a time.
But John Elway wasn't the one that earned my undying devotion. That day, I fell in love with the Cleveland Browns—a team with Bernie Kosar, a wily quarterback who looked more like the comedian Gallagher than a hero. A team with a battery-tossing end-zone section called the "Dawg Pound." A team with uniforms plainer than the ones I sported in the pee wee league. All those rugged football context clichés seemed to fit them: "blue collar," "hard-nosed," a defense that will "bend but not break." Their fan base mirrored the team, too—factory worker types. They were the "Rust Belt Folk." Celebrity stargazers could leave their Sharpies at home for Browns games.
On Jan. 11, 1987, the Browns became my rock. A seal-brown and burnt-orange rock with no discernible logo, but my rock, nonetheless. Unfortunately, the rest of the league would be filled with too much paper and not enough scissors.
Following "The Drive," a rare sequel that eclipses the first ensued: 1988's "The Fumble," starring Earnest Byner. The Browns mustered one last challenge in 1990, but were dealt a convincing 16-point loss to Elway and co. in the AFC Championship Game. Then, the absolute unthinkable happened: In 1996, the Cleveland Browns, eight-time league champions (the last being in 1964), moved—no, were moved—to Baltimore, a town that the Colts jilted in 1984.
A Brown became a Raven. A purple and black Raven with — gasp! — a logo on his helmet. The proud Browns fan base, myself included, retreated to our VHS memories and old Sports Illustrated articles.
In 1999, the NFL awarded the city of Cleveland with another Browns franchise. It wasn't the same. It was like humoring your parents but knowing that the goldfish in the fishbowl wasn't your old buddy, Roscoe. My Roscoe, the old Browns, had been flushed down the toilet four years ago. I was looking at a stand-in, a wannabe Browns goldfish. Although they remain one of four teams in the league to have never made a Super Bowl, the Browns are on the up-and-up. I'm part of that, and I've got a Bernie Kosar football card in my wallet to prove it.
Football does this to us. It helps define us by what we are and what we are not: Republican; Democrat; Methodist; Baptist; Bulldog; Rebel. Many of my favorite memories are from football games. It's why accomplished men and women in their 50s and 60s scour Internet message boards looking for the decision that an 18-year-old from Walnut, Miss., makes about attending college. It frequents grooms' cakes at weddings. It gives us something better to chat about in elevators other than, "It's hot" or "It's really, really hot." It's a sport for everyone, by everyone.
Former Redskins quarterback and current ESPN broadcaster Joe Theismann said: "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
Well said, Joe. I'm glad you and the rest of the gang are back.
Ben Garrott hails from Winona. When he's not working to improve children's mental-health services, he promotes hockey-free Sports Centers. Ben lives in Fondren with his beautiful wife and lovely daughter.
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