The Cleveland Browns are back, with expectations as weighty as they’ve been since the franchise’s zombie “return” to the NFL in 1999 after Art Modell’s historic heist. Prominent talking heads have taken to calling them “America’s Team” over the last couple of seasons, which included the franchise’s first playoff win in a quarter century of unfathomable incompetence.
And why not? Mustn’t even the most propagandized fan base on the the most propagandized nation on earth be thrown a bone every few decades or so? It has surely become far too embarrassing and indeed threatening to the interests of the NFL ownership class to allow the Cleveland Browns to remain such a breathtaking spectacle—described by experts and increasingly recognized by the masses as “the most advanced challenge to professional sports and indeed capitalism on earth.”
Which of course is not to mention the masters of propaganda that comprise the NFL’s advertising base—which prominently includes big auto, big alcohol, and of course the military-industrial complex itself.
This is not a bunch that has been shy to use its unprecedented corporate control over American minds, hearts, and lives in any context; let alone, for example, in rewarding a franchise for jilting the principled folks of Saint Louis to relocate to a 5-billion dollar stadium in a city whose residents are either extremely wealthy or live in tents by handing it a Super Bowl appearance with a call so bad that the NFL got sued for it.
These are folks who, after all, know where their bread is buttered, and this is a sport where a game-altering penalty could be called on most any play. So however comforting it is for a certain favored demographic to believe, for example, that Tom Brady is the greatest athlete on earth, well, Brady can’t win all of them and Baker Mayfield (in contrast with certain other types) ought to fit the bill just fine.
With both the urge to and means snuff out any challenge to “capitalism,” let alone advanced ones, running as highly as ever here in the U.S.A., it seems as likely as ever that it could finally again be the Cleveland Browns’ year.
