Uni Talk Revisited: The Browns Logo Reaction
February 25, 2015Twitter Sabbaticals, Color Shade, Perkalytics, and a Frosh Freeze: While We’re Waiting…
February 26, 2015Did you hate the Cleveland Browns’ logo unveiling? Did you find it uninspiring? You’re certainly not alone.
Tuesday, on Facebook and Twitter and pretty much everywhere else I looked, the Cleveland Browns were the butt of jokes and memes and bits. Even Michelle Beadle got a few jabs in on ESPN’s on SportsNation. The world sat at a virtual table with a sheet of paper in front of them and wrote down a score and held it up for the world to see. The Browns logo announcement was rated on everything from — you know — the actual artwork, to their presentation, to their decision to announce that they were going to make the announcement. And more than anything else, I was left with the feeling of sympathy for Alec Scheiner and the Browns. They make their own mistakes and nobody gets a free pass anywhere in the NFL, but this is symptomatic of something else that is Cleveland-specific.
Due to the combination of passion and brutal history, Cleveland — and Browns fans in particular — are a red hot rage monster that’s incapable of not being furious and scornful about pretty much everything.
Don’t get me wrong. Alec Scheiner and the Browns’ brass don’t need my sympathy; they have some of the most desirable jobs in professional sports. It’s just that Cleveland Browns fans are so angry and so bitter that even though the team makes plenty of mistakes, I dare you to try to imagine a scenario where Browns fans would be largely satisfied with much of anything.
Are you thinking about it yet? Stumped? So am I.
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If this was a marriage, then Browns fans decided in the face of what almost certainly should have been a divorce that they’re going to stay together for the kids. And rather than doing the kids a service by keeping the nuclear family whole, the kids are subjected to constant embattlement as everything that happens is treated with a healthy dose of resentment at best, and outright hatred at worst. This isn’t to minimize broken homes and troubled marriages, but it’s kind of interesting because in marriages, divorces are something that most people do realize is on the table.
Browns fans haven’t ever considered a sports divorce from their team. While that’s seen as a sign of nobility in sports culture, with the advent of social media, it’s really opened my eyes up to the scope of the wave of negativity that has become of Cleveland Browns fans.
In the past I’ve taken a stab at re-writing Browns P.R. moves. I’ve re-written statements and told them how they could better handle their business. I haven’t really done it in this iteration of the Cleveland Browns brass, because largely I think they’ve handled P.R. pretty well. And yet, even as I sit mostly satisfied with what they’ve done from a public relations standpoint, I’m standing in a sea of bitter beer faces from my fellow Browns fans and media members alike.
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Rage is an addictive drug and there’s no sign that Browns fans are going to go to rehab anytime soon.
The off-season is so tough this time of year because there’s nothing to win. The Browns can’t win another game. They can’t even “win the draft” or free agency. Sure, the Varmah Sonie fans had reason to go wild recently, but you get my point.
The Browns have a lot of work to do and everything isn’t just perfect and fine. That’s the way the NFL is though. Even the best teams who have quarterbacks that are headed for the Hall of Fame are in search of fixes right now. Remember the playoffs where the online world was burying Peyton Manning’s career for good? They moved on from their coach too as John Fox gave way to Gary Kubiak. So to think Cleveland Browns fans would somehow be more satisfied and chill after losing five straight to end the year amidst nothing but bad news, is far-fetched as well. There’s a difference between dissatisfaction with the play on the field and being screaming mad at everything the team does thereafter.
And again I’m trying to think of what the Browns could have done differently, except maybe nothing at all. In this day and age of this NFL that’s not even an option anymore.
Much like the NFL working hard to keep their league in the news at all times, the Browns want to keep themselves in the news at all times. Separating this logo change from the jersey change is part of that. The Browns would have been happy to do without Johnny Manziel going to rehab or Josh Gordon being Josh Gordon yet again, and of course they’d love nothing more than to not be dealing with penalties for their texting issues, but don’t tell me they’re not playing out of the same playbook that has spread the NFL calendar out to maximize headline domination.
There’s no doubting that with this team and this fan base in this time period, there’s absolutely no way for the Browns to win. That’s not a defense of the Browns as an overall organization or their lack of success over the past decade-plus. It’s simply to recognize the current mental condition of Browns fans. There’s reason to be wary or concerned at all times as fans, and the calamity button seems to be in a constant state of depression ever since the motherless dogs in the NFL allowed Art Modell to move the team out of the city, but I can hear Scheiner trying to put his best face on with the latest embodiment of Cleveland Browns fans.
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Rage is an addictive drug and there’s no sign that Browns fans are going to go to rehab anytime soon. In Cleveland it’s a co-dependent crew and there’s a bar on every corner. I don’t think we as a fan base even know we have a problem most of the time. I just know it’s worn me out. I’m tired of being mad all the time. The constant lack of success isn’t acceptable, but when the Browns are coming off a seven win season and the business people decide to take painstaking care to help bring the team’s look into the new millennium only to be obliterated over the courteously careful results is exhausting. This is following a year in which they took a turd of a stadium and shined it up as best they could, with fairly remarkable results.
This is what we wanted out of a front office in many respects. Alec Scheiner and his crew paid for a study that actually had focus groups of Browns fans. They specifically engaged Browns fans as stakeholders so as not to be tone-deaf or too arrogant sitting up on high like Mike Holmgren alienating Bernie Kosar and Jim Brown. The Browns fan response to them doing what we wanted them to do is to gather under the shroud of the Internet and fire virtual missiles their way.
Yes, nothing matters but winning football, except that’s just not true. I’ve said it many times before, but the two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Alec Scheiner also spent a lot of time proclaiming that while he does watch game film, he has no designs on overstepping his business bounds.
If you scream all the time, it’s carries no weight.
What the Browns delivered on Tuesday was exactly what the majority of fans wanted: No logo on the helmet, and a healthy respect for history. Without nitpicking, please tell me how the Browns delivered anything but that? So instead of recognizing that the Browns delivered the only thing that Browns fans would have ever accepted, we smashed them for being so conservative, boring and making such a big deal out of the announcement. And now that they’ve chosen to engage fans, it’s apparently as egregious as when Mike Holmgren was completely tone-deaf to the fans with the white on white combinations that bored our eyes to death while he was here.
At some point, we as victims become the perpetrators in other crimes. We’re not responsible for how we turned out, really, but it’s our choice whether to try and break the cycle or not, at least with regard to the things that we can control. The giant unending rage monster that the Browns fan base has become is absolutely within our control.
I really wish there was a way to end it. The logos and style of the team is supposed to be the fun stuff and we’re incapable of even enjoying that. The Browns can’t win right now, but they really can’t win with stuff like this if we’ve decided ahead of time that we aren’t going to let them.
87 Comments
“…and why the “Dawg Pound” is now becoming a catchall for Browns fans everywhere…”
I think their intention is to build an identity similar to Seattle’s 12th man: “We Are Dawg Pound.”.
Enjoy your sandbox – troll out!
Judging from most headlines it appears everything has a way of bringing out the worst in everyone.
Agreed. The problem is that the 12th man is a metaphor – it can be whatever Seattle wants it to be. In contrast, the “Dawg Pound” emerged out of an actual geographic location (raucous east endzone at the old stadium) so this new wide-ranging application is sort of a clumsy misappropriation of an old concept. You can almost hear the board room jargon flying around HQ that led them to the logo/concept: “What are our strongest franchise assets? Dawg pound? How can we leverage this asset to strengthen brand recognition and create market demand?” Sigh.
As a result, the Dawg Pound, which grew organically out of a particular historical moment and was rooted in a cherished relationship between the fans in a particular section of the stadium and defensive players of the late ’80s is now a growling dog that will be plastered on innumerable mugs, seat warmers, sweatshirts, keychains, etc.
Honest question: how is apathy the opposite of love? The opposite of passion I could understand but not sure about love.
gif of the day
Yup. Clumsy misappropriation is often synonymous with board rooms and marketing.
“Sorry to be negative but it’s a puppy for kids.”
Fantastic.
Puppies for kids, helmets for adults: TRADITION!
Maximizing Leverage!
Hate shows you care.
Which would then fit the “battered Browns fan” narrative we’ve discussed before.
Dare I say, Denny nailed it?
I sincerely meant no hate.
Oh, wait, you meant caring equates to love. I think that is apples and cars.
I try to laugh at them instead of getting mad. Hey it is supposed to be entertainment right?
Hulk smash?
Can we call the color blood orange?
So I’m told anyway. But I’ve been waiting here a while…
http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Are-You-Not-Entertained-Gladiator.gif
Scheiner is the Red Hulk?
Man, you three guys nailed it. NAILED IT.
Apathy says “you don’t even exist, and you don’t matter at all,” which is the opposite of love.
Pretty sure that the “Bolder, More Aggressive Orange” Hulk to you, sir
Apathy sounds a lot like my ex
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9rn4igoCn1qeqs01.gif
and environmentally friendly. apparently, the Orange Hulk is solar powered
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelvscapcom/images/b/be/Hulk-orange.gif/revision/latest?cb=20080512010952
i really believe that a solid 30% of the commenters here are MORE qualified to run the browns than alec scheiner. believe it or not, that’s not a slam of alec scheiner. i simply find the background of choosing a scoreboard for the cowboys and being an eminent domain lawyer with an ‘eilte’ school degree to be LESS useful to running the browns versus being a knowledgable browns fan.
these nfl ‘football men’ live in their ‘nfl football men’ bubble and seem so very out of touch with real fans. they get together and talk amongst themselves, copy each others ideas (everything from leveraging franchise moves to max public funding to ‘oh look the lions changed their jerseys so we must do likewise.’), think the hoi polloi are just dumb, and -most important- if you’re not in their target demographics you are a non-entity. (i can’t remember the last time an nfl ad spoke to me, can you?)
of course they have reason to think they’re smarter than everyone else because money. but a 32 franchise business staked to $6,000,000,000/year in guaranteed revenue can hardly fail. trained monkeys could make money. and do.
I want the “insufferable because your team is winning” thing to happen for a while. That’d be nice.
Criticizing the two years spent on the redesign seems silly, especially without knowing the work that happened in that period. It’s entirely possible that they went with every design you and anyone else has proposed, but when presented to the focus groups, the new designs were flatly rejected. In which case, do you think listening to your fans a good thing or a bad thing?
I, as a grown man, don’t hate the new Dawg Pound graphic. It’s just different, and more stylized. It’s still a dog face.
I’m happy that you like the new Dawg logo. I personally like the old one better but it’s a good thing if fans do like it.
As far as the helmet, if The Browns or anybody for that matter, spent two years brainstorming ideas with the intention of creating something new there is no reason why they couldn’t come up with something that had aesthetic merit while continuing to honor our tradition.
If Nike could’t come up with anything after 2 years (which is a possibility) then The Browns should have begun to look elsewhere.
More than likely what happened, is that Scheiner was unable to make any competent decision and went with only changing the color of the face mask on our already existing logo. Which would have been perfectly fine if they had executed it without all the fanfare like The Indians just did. But they wanted the attention and dollars which only highlighted their futility and patheticness even more. Making angry Browns fans angrier!!!
So as someone who’d moved away but now moved back, I have found that the negative attitude toward the city as a whole is only manifested in “old-time” Cleveland people, whereas most people actually love it here and are incredibly positive about the direction of the city – and even the Cavs, and sometimes the Tribe.
But the Browns are the holdover – Browns’ fans always find a way to focus on the negative, and it’s really sad. I’m now known among friends as the guy who ‘spins’ positives about this regime, simply because I don’t find what they’re doing to be all that bad.
That all said – it seems silly to have hyped a logo change when the logo barely changed, even if it may make more sense in a few weeks. They could have simply released an update like the Vikings did a few years ago. Also, in the focus group I was in, people were completely fine with a new logo, especially an elf-based one, as long as it didn’t show up on the helmet. I think the Browns should have updated this logo with less fanfare and pitched it as “TRADITION” and being the only team to have a helmet. Own your difference, turn the mockery into self-praise, and if media doesn’t like it, it’s just because “they can’t understand”. I think people in this city would have loved it and most other people elsewhere would have been unable to comment other than grudging respect.
hi MIKE … nothing personal , but scheiner knows what he’s doing. most of the “knowledgeable browns fans” don’t know the business side of the browns like scheiner does … i’m not bashing any of the posters over here , i’m just guessing their knowledge is more geared toward the GM , coaches or players perspective.
and scheiner & the browns took a bashing over the FO sitting & watching film with pettine … scheiner did not make any suggestions , he simply sat there & observed. the man wants to know & learn everything … i see nothing wrong with it , especially since he’s in charge of the salary cap.
he probably has the hardest job in the entire organization … and i personally would take him over joe banner any day of the week.
we are talking about a logo … why get upset ? and as far as all the posts on browns fans being so negative , you really can’t blame them… they want to win in the worst way & are totally impatient . well guess what ?? … you have to be patient . haslam , scheiner , farmer & pettine are going to get it done & they are going to be around for a while … so get used to it. most won’t believe it until the browns are consistent winners … that’s fine.
and even with all the negativity amongst browns fans , they were ranked #5 ,in one publication , as the best fan base in the nfl. they may complain , but they still support them year after year.
This isn’t really unique to Browns fans. This is how people are. The Browns failures make them an easy target for mockery in the national media, but really there were similar cries of dismay over many of the new uniform unveilings. We just weren’t at ground zero for them.
I’d argue that the Browns set some unrealistic expectations up and that’s partially to blame. I can understand the desire to make an event out of a new logo, but if you are barely changing it (which, for the record, I think was the right call) then maybe just announce it concurrently with the new uniforms or something. At the end of the day, though, such changes are always a catch 22, and that’s the biggest reason to not make an event of it. People expect to be dazzled by some superhuman feat of photoshop, when sometimes simple and classic is the most effective path. The other half of the people just hate change and will lash out at whoever is responsible for inflicting it upon them. And of course some people just love to be outraged and unhappy.
hi TRON … i’m fairly certain the decision wasn’t all up to scheiner & scheiner only. and seriously , why get worked-up over logos ? scheiner said the logo changes would be subtle & that the uniform will be a more aggressive change , while trying to stick with a little tradition … whatever that means.
I’m not sure where you’re coming up with your scenario here – it’s all speculation on your part. While I think most people will agree that the fanfare surrounding what ended up being a small logo change was pretty absurd, it’s also pretty absurd to assume that the fact that the logo changed so little was due to Scheiner’s incompetence. Sometimes, after a ton of redesign, you go back and say “the old one was better,” and that could have very well happened here (my guess is as good as yours). Honda did it with the Civic a few years ago – their redesign flopped and they went right back to the old successful model. The Browns may have not even made it that far before they decided that orange is the new Browns.
You’re right we don’t know the details. But aren’t we fairly certain the ultimate decision was Scheiner’s? Again, I don’t have a problem sticking with what we have but if you’re going to publicly spend the time and effort (2 years!) investigating alternatives it’s very easy for creative people to come up with a new logo that is uniquely ours because, as I said earlier, the helmet logo we use is not unique to Cleveland. Every team markets a version of it with their team’s logo on the side.
The changes we did are fine without all the pomp and circumstance. With it the Browns led everybody on for the attention only to publicly look stupid again. I don’t think that is being too harsh. I think any objective observer of the whole fiasco was left scratching their head.
… let’s face it , the logos & uniforms don’t mean doodly-squat if they don’t start winning on a consistent basis … not a one-year fix , but consistently winning.