PART TWO - Autism, Arrogance, and Allocation

On Dumb Loyalty and Other Admirable Traits

CLICK HERE for Part One.

Neurodivergent brains are fascinating. I’ve learned I can indulge in some dumb interest for months or even years, but never quite realize the extent of my obsession.

Then one day, those obsessions and quiet compulsions flicker into a lost horizon, replaced by some new distraction. Then, you hit middle age (or as I like to say, “my early late prime”) and begin to lament lost time, so you allow new, strange infatuations to take over.

But eventually, the old ones return. Just wait until I tell you about I, Claudius.

Neurodivergent obsessions naturally carry heavy swings of passionate love alternating with sheer hate.

Let me tell you about the Cleveland Browns.

I’ve spent thousands of hours following the Cleveland Browns over a 40-year fandom that peaked in the late 1980s. The last 35 years have been a steady, shit-soaked slide into football oblivion.

Of course, I didn’t sign up for any of this. I blame my Dad and regularly ask him, “why didn’t you pick a good team?”

While I cling to fading memories of the Bernie Kosar-era Browns, my Dad was raised on Jim Brown's glory days. Back then, it was still a reasonable idea to pass along Browns’ fandom to your kids.

And so it began.

I can only compare the initial love of a sports team to the first spark of addiction that occurs when a person finds their drug (most of which my neurodivergent brain was too terrified to try). That nascent exposure is a massive surge of dopamine and likely the only thing you remember as you spend a lifetime on a hopeless chase to recapture a feeling that only exists in memory.

In football terms, the initial hit is even worse when it occurs during a stretch of success.

Football is a unique institution in Northeast Ohio. It forges an ethnographic identity stemming mainly from a distinct geographical choice. Cleveland and Pittsburgh are barely two hours apart. The cities share entangled roots and rusted blue-collar DNA, now dust-choked and becoming lost to time.

Rust Belt football is an extension of a place and its people. The Steelers’ hard hats represent the thousands of fans who crippled their backs and lungs in Pittsburgh’s once-thriving steel and iron industries.

Much of the same can be said for Cleveland, some sixty miles from Youngstown, Ohio, then known as the steel capital of the world. In both places, carrying “lunch pails” is another overused identifier.

In most respects, you don’t get a choice. You don’t really get to pick. Browns or Steelers. Most have their team drilled into them, usually from birth. There’s little wiggle room in the options, and it’s easy to locate the fans of “other” teams—those lacking local roots, loyalty, and moral fiber.

We call those Dallas Cowboys fans.

Naturally, the teams navigate wildly divergent paths, with almost an unspoken arrangement that at no time can both teams simultaneously enjoy success.

The Browns dominated the league in the late 1940s and were contenders through the mid-1960s, while the Steelers were stuck in NFL purgatory as a perennial loser.

Then came the Steelers’ turn. They dominated most of the 1970s, while the Browns began their long tradition of cycling through head coaches and quarterbacks. The Browns’ peak occurred in the late 1980s, a time when the Steelers, of course, were an average bunch.

So, it was fitting that when the Browns “returned” to the league in 1999 (after their idiot owner ran out of money and moved the team to Baltimore), their first opponent was an underwhelming Steelers’ outfit, who nonetheless committed manslaughter in the form of a 43-0 blowout.

It was a sinister omen of things to come.

Since 1999, the Browns have stumbled to a 141-278-1 record, easily the league’s worst mark.

Naturally, the Steelers have achieved the opposite. 10 division titles, 16 playoff appearances, and 2 Super Bowl wins. All this while the Browns cling to 3 playoff appearances (and one lone win during the weird Covid year) and have started 40 different quarterbacks.

(For comparison, Green Bay has started 3).

The Neurodivergent community (the one where everyone hides from each other) values routine and consistency. So, if you’re a neurodivergent Packers fan, you appreciate your team’s competent lineage.

And if you’re a neurodivergent Browns fan, you expect the worst. Which is exactly what you get.

Even more depressing is the idea that I have not only followed this team but devoted hundreds of hours and thousands of words to analyzing decades of ill-fated, stupid football decisions.

But that thought always lingers. “Maybe this year will be different.” Loyalty is a uniquely dumb and arrogant practice.

Like most neurodivergents, I take my loyalty to extremes. I created a weird avant-garde Browns blog with the annoyingly clever name Cleveland Reboot, turning my hobby into a freelance sports writing pseudo-job with Fox Sports Ohio.

That way, I could get a press pass to acquire a bird’s eye view of the never-ending, raging dumpster fire that is the Cleveland Browns. Basically, you watch the game from 120 feet above, get fed cookies and stats, then everyone writes the same story.

After the game, you get to ask questions of the unfolding disaster’s participants, monosyllabic thrill-chaser 22-year-olds trained never to say anything of consequence.

Sports reporting is a profoundly useless profession and an extraordinarily vain and uninteresting way to quickly go broke. My “career” was brief, and my passion was becoming indifference. Glimpsing the inner workings of a 25-year train wreck only created a further detachment.

There are no more “ups and downs” regarding my Browns’ fandom (a direct result of Pat Shurmur and Brandon Weeden, among others). I enjoy the rare wins and never let the losses affect me. Yet, I still find myself getting sucked back in come draft time (the Browns’ Super Bowl) and the beginning of camp and delusional hope season.

Loyalty is a strange beast.

Part of me wonders if taking on an obsessive but analytical approach to fandom is just a thinly veiled attempt to revive some lost formative Rust Belt identity I barely identify with.

My life is now based in beautiful, rural Kentucky, a place where no one cares about professional sports beyond UK basketball (let’s see who gets that joke).

Otherwise, I’m a fucking idiot that has wasted thousands of hours on a thing that will ALWAYS let you down.

But at least, I’ve given up on letting the Browns ruin my Sundays (they’re not good enough to play on Mondays), meaning I am no longer emotionally invested in wins and losses. The last time I made a noise during a game was late 2018, a rare time of nascent Browns hope.

Now, I like to know early in the season if the team has a chance. Being a Browns fan in 2025 only allows flickers of hope. Lowering your expectations and enjoying occasional surprises, such as Joe Flacco’s 2023 renaissance, is a much better approach.

Otherwise, it’s just pure comedy.

Real emotions turned to ash a long time ago, extinguished by the incompetence of men like Mike Holmgren, Pat Shurmur, Joe Banner, Hue Jackson, Freddie Kitchens, a looping infinity of quarterbacks, and the Fredo and Sonny of shitty Browns’ owners, Randy Lerner and Jimmy Haslam.

Now, I view the Browns as a way of keeping in touch with friends and family. I watch the games while exercising on my Peloton and texting with my brother and a group of ex-Browns bloggers I virtually met some 15 years ago.

The power of Browns’ fandom is unique. I’ve texted with these guys every football Sunday for 15 years, any one of whom could legitimately be a serial killer or politician in real life.

As for my flesh-and-blood friends, the Browns are a great tactic to maintain a relationship. The ratio is usually 80-20 clever Browns’ observations and jokes to actual meaningful dialogue (“Hey, are your kids still alive?").

I’ve learned it’s the thought that counts.

I’ve wielded the Browns as an icebreaker for practically all my childhood, especially during interactions with my Dad. We are very different people with divergent communication styles (yelling versus sullen silence). Yet, we share similar values, and my Dad is a profoundly decent man, but we are complete opposites in just about every other social category.

The Browns have always served as the entry point to reminding each other that we are still family. Now, as a more enlightened adult, I realize I possess much of his work ethic, stubbornness, and morality—three things I’ve grown to appreciate and love about myself.

All these years later, we still start with the Browns. Now, my Dad texts (which I never thought in a million years would happen). We stick to basics. I joke about the Browns’ deviant, team-wrecking creep of a quarterback (more on him tomorrow), and he responds with beer emojis.

My daughter has little clue about any of this. She’s aware I go into our “movie lounge” (a man cave I built in the garage) on Sundays in the fall, and when she was younger, she would watch little bits of the game during Minecraft builds, hoping that backup lineman Maurice Hurst would rub his belly after a big tackle.

I decided long ago not to pass along the Browns to my daughter. She doesn’t care about sports and prefers her own weird interests. Like I’ve mentioned before, she’s way smarter than I am.

This strange obsession ends with me. If the past 40 years are any indication, I’ll still follow this stupid team into a future where AI robot players will let me down. But on my deathbed, I won’t even have the passion to laugh at a meme best reserved for the Browns.

Of course, everything comes full circle, as now my Dad trades pen pal letters with my nine-year-old daughter (something I never saw coming). Just like in his exchanges with me, he mixes in Browns’ jokes.

My daughter knows her audience, so she plays along, then dives back into Oversimplified history videos or creating lessons on Attachment Theory (the irony), which, compared to following a losing football team, seems like a much better use of someone’s time.

Because she is neurodivergent, she’ll one day forget about Oversimplified, finding her next hit of dopamine. Because I’m neurodivergent and a loyal idiot, I will continue to marvel at the Browns’ stupidity.

Because that’s what Browns fans do.

SPECTRAL VENGEANCE, a neurodivergent Western, is now FREE on Kindle.