football

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Black and Brown Blues

Great post by Chuck Klosterman on my hometown team, the Cleveland Browns. My favorite excerpts:

How do you appease a fan base that is both highly critical and eternally infatuated? It’s like dating a woman who hates you so much she will never break up with you, even if you burn down the house every single autumn.

And:

This is the central dichotomy of Cleveland football: No other fan base is so deeply loyal and so self-consciously negative at the same time. Locally, there just seems to be a universal belief that — somehow, either by human error or random chance — the Browns will fail at whatever they try.

And:

I don’t think they’re building chemical weapons in Berea. But they might be. I can’t say for sure.

Captures the scene well.

“In the morning he would read the Bible with another coach. Then, in the afternoon, he would go out and cheat kids who had probably saved up money from mowing lawns to buy those raffle tickets. That’s Jim Tressel.”

A former Tressel colleague on the coach

Tressel has already resigned (which is a disgrace — he should have been fired).

Ohio State AD Gene Smith should be fired.

And star QB Terrelle Pryor, already suspended for the first five games next year, is probably done for good as well. 

What a shitshow.

“For more than a decade, Ohioans have viewed Tressel as a pillar of rectitude, and have disregarded or made excuses for the allegations and scandal that have quietly followed him throughout his career. His integrity was one of the great myths of college football. Like a disgraced politician who preaches probity but is caught in lies, the Senator was not the person he purported to be.”

George Dohrmann with David Epstein take down Ohio State coach Jim Tressel for Sports Illustrated

I’m still hearing Ohioans who are apologizing for him even today after his resignation. It’s unbelievable. Read this entire thing and it will be very clear what a total disingenuous slimeball Tressel is.

And this isn’t a one-year or one-incident thing. His jackassery spreads years (and decades if you count his nonsense at Youngstown State as well).

That Ohio State didn’t throw his ass out immediately — and that they let him resign — is a disgrace.