A Parade of Sadness: Browns Fans Celebrate Perfect Season

With the wind whipping from off Lake Erie over Burke Lakefront Airport, a man offers me a can of Budweiser. “Pour it in this cup so the cops won’t bother you,” he says. It’s a Saturday, before noon, but that’s late by the standard of Cleveland’s Municipal Lot, where the Browns faithful do their pregaming.

Four teams played on Saturday, but not the Browns, who had what fans here are jokingly calling a “perfect season.” Perfect, because they went 0-16, making them only the second NFL franchise to achieve that mark. These fans are here to throw a parade to celebrate making history.

Indeed, a handful of police watch roughly 100 other tailgaters from a safe distance in their warm, undercover squad cars. It’s very cold: 8 degrees. Which, by happy coincidence, is exactly twice as many ticks on the thermometer as the Browns have wins over the past three seasons: They’ve gone 4-44.

As my beer turns into a slushy mixture, I observe a number of fans preparing gravestones on sticks to commemorate the nearly 30 quarterbacks who have played for the Browns since 1999.

The group I’ve joined has been here a few hours and is already a bit drunk, responding to the supportive honking horns of semis flying down the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway with “F—K [head coach] Hue Jackson!” One latecomer arrived by bicycle, bringing the gift of sausages.

One parade float is losing toilet paper to the wind—because the float is a toilet in the middle of an astroturf football field bearing a sign “BROWNS ARE THE SH#T” (it comes complete with a leaf blower rigged as a toilet paper cannon). Television camera crews are on hand to document the festivities for a local populace that is divided on the parade.

Some folks are here just to tailgate, and the man on the bike tells me he’s better off watching the livestream of the parade at the local bar than staying out in the cold. The floats start heading over to Cleveland Browns Stadium to line-up, and those of us without a ride begin the long and desolate walk across a frozen parking lot that, on a normal football gameday, would be packed and full of energy.

There’s a lone vendor at the edge of the parking lot hawking t-shirts reading: “2017 CLEVELAND BRO NS: A team without a W. 0-16” Realizing he better get to the action, he packs up. A fellow fan jokes with me that 90 percent of Cleveland’s economy is based on custom t-shirts.

As the wind picks up I regret not heeding my mother’s suggestion that I put hand warmers in my boots. I find refuge in a nearby minivan and rectify my mistake—but one of the leather laces on the boot snaps from the cold.

As we approach Al Lerner Way, where the parade will form a giant zero around the stadium, I see an old woman with a walker and a Browns parka. Two little kids bundled up in a stroller are there too, parents laughing as another fan jokingly questions “Why you gotta do this to the kids, man?” It’s a new angle on misery: Cleveland Browns fandom as a form of child abuse.

Cleveland fans debated the merits of this parade in the papers, on social media, and on talk radio all last week. Not everyone thinks it’s fun to laugh about going 0-16 and the parade even inspires a protester in a Dawg Pound mask bearing a sign that says “Stupid Parade. Believeland. Go Browns.”

The parade was the brainchild of Chris McNeil, a dedicated Cleveland sports fan with a big Twitter following. As the Browns headed towards a winless season in 2016, McNeil organized a parade, raising money to pay for permits, police protection, insurance, and bathrooms. The deal was that if the Browns won (they eventually did), all of the money would be donated to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Last year McNeil’s group donated over $10,000, with the Browns organization being good sports and throwing in some cash, too.

This year, even with the parade, McNeil’s group sent $14,000 to the food bank, plus a couple van loads of food that people donated on site. (At the close of the season, the team released an apology to fans.)

Most of the players didn’t weigh in on the parade, but defensive end Emmanuel Ogbah did:

It is a bit rich for Ogbah—a guy who’s played all of 26 games in Cleveland—to suggest that the thousands of blue- and white-collar Browns faithful who showed up in the freezing morning—many wearing jackets, hats, gloves, sweatshirts, and jerseys dating back to the 1980s—aren’t “real fans.” But then, the players often see things differently than their audience does.

The parade line-up area between the stadium and the Shoreway was considerably warmer, insulated, somewhat, from the wind. The Cleveland Police Mounted Division’s horses drew the short straw and had to come supervise the revelry. Fans here mostly had hard liquor, which in addition to being much easier to conceal than suitcases of beer (which were also present), does not freeze. There were no major incidents or arrests.

Before the parade got started, fans mingled to the music of The MOD Band, playing from the back of a trailer, walking around and looking at the various floats. One was a beat up Dodge pick-up bearing a sign “Browns get beat more than this truck!” Another was an orange and brown painted tailgate bus, appropriately named “The Struggle Bus.” T-shirt vendors hawked fake jerseys bearing the number 16 on the back, player name: “Owen.”

Excedrin, which sponsored the parade along with dating website FarmersOnly.com—this is a real thing—passed out free hats. After all, they are the headache experts.

Perhaps the darkest humor on display was a coffin with a Browns flag draped over it, strapped to the back of a pick-up owned by employees of W.E. Martens & Sons funeral home on Cleveland’s west side.

As noon approached, non-parade participants lined Al Lerner Way to enjoy the brief, slow lap around the stadium.

Fans of other franchises came out to appreciate Cleveland’s rare accomplishment. Cheeseheads, empathetic Bills fans, and a few Steelers fans came to provoke their once-rivals. There were even a few fans of the Lions—the only other franchise to go 0-16—with signs welcoming Cleveland to “the club.”

As puffs of exhaled breath began to cloud up from the huddled, freezing masses, a chant emerged. One side of the street screamed “0”, but unlike the O-H-I-O cheer down in Columbus, the other side of the street answered “16!”

The parade began with an escort of Cleveland police, and as the first participants rounded the corner, a newcomer standing nearby exclaimed, to nobody in particular, “wow, this is like, a real parade.”

Indeed, the 3,000-plus who braved the cold put on a damn fine parade. And it was an organic one, too, not about celebrity―organizer Chris McNeil wasn’t to be found―but more like a Mardi Gras parade.

Except on the North Coast. At a factory of sadness. And with a wind chill of -10°.