While We’re Waiting… Previewing the Browns/Steelers, More Shooting Stars, and LeBron Staying in Cleveland

While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email in the sidebar.

Not your father’s Browns: “I know they kept the records. And the team name. And the uniforms. I know the current assemblage of players known as the Cleveland Browns are supposed to be just like the real thing. But I’m sorry. They aren’t. Ever since the Browns returned to the league in ’99, I’ve always felt like I was watching the football equivalent of a new stepmother, or a turtle that was purchased to secretly replace the one accidentally killed by a parent. Everyone affiliated with the New Browns may as well have buttons sewn into their eyes. They are [explative] impostors.” [Drew Magary/Deadspin]

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It’s Right to Read Week! “Don’t look to “Shooting Stars,” a companion piece of sorts to a new documentary film about James and his teammates called “More Than a Game,” for a meticulous accounting of the ups and downs of his early career. He and Mr. Bissinger leave things out, like the fact that James considered petitioning the N.B.A. to change its rules and let him enter the draft after his junior year of high school. Or that he met his longtime girlfriend and the mother of his two children (he mentions her only in the acknowledgments) while in Akron.” [Dwight Garner/NY Times]

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Doug Lesmerises explains his rationale for putting Florida fourth in his first-week NCAA ballott [Cleveland.com]

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Two-for Tuesday, but on a Wednesday: “Worst of all is the notion that the Steelers somehow reflect the populace of their city by playing hard-nosed, blue collar football. THEY BROUGHT THEIR LUNCH PAILS TODAY, GANG! THEY’RE SO PITTSBURGHISH! This is the biggest steaming load of eviscerated [crap] I’ve ever heard. Nearly all the steel mills in that town are gone. Find me a Steelers fan who’s an actual steelworker, and I’ll put a unicorn in your driveway. That town was repurposed ages ago as a center for tech, banking, and ketchup distribution. It is not a tough town. It’s as yuppified as Portland (Oregon or Maine, take your pick), only it’s stuck in the center of Pennsyltucky and everyone there is fat and smells like sticky buns.” [Drew Magary/Deadspin]

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Say whattup to Ty-Ty, still sipping mai tai’s/Sitting courtside, Knicks & Nets give me high five: “Maybe he likes the mystique, the intrigue, or making people beg, but the whole affair just isn’t very professional, falsely raising the hopes of fans in other cities who have no real chance of getting him, and causing too much anguish for those who have shown him nothing but love.  Aside from his earlier teenage follies, and his unsportsmanlike decision not to shake hands after losing in the conference final last spring, James always has been a stand-up guy. It’s hard not to like him.

It’s just time for him to stand up and make a statement about loyalty and integrity and prove that he won’t be swayed by the bright lights and high-living that other cities will use to tempt him.  These New York/New Jersey rumors are little more than big-city snobbery, fueled by an elitist attitude that should insult him more than impress him.” [Tim Potvak/NBA FanHouse]

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(image via spongepad/Flickr)

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