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 in 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.