Cleveland Browns Should Not Lose Home Games To London

Tottenham Hotspur made international headlines on July 8 with an announcement that had been coming for roughly four years once it was learned that the London Olympic Stadium would be the future home of West Ham United and not Spurs: The north London outfit is teaming up with the National Football League for the creation of a multipurpose sporting venue that will host Tottenham home matches and also a minimum of a pair of regular season NFL games per year.

This news should not have come as much of a surprise to those who follow the Premier League side known as Spurs and who are also fans of American football. Tottenham have taken numerous steps during the current decade to expand the brand of the club in North America, including making multiple visits to the United States and Canada and also embracing relationships with Major League Soccer clubs such as LA Galaxy and Toronto FC. Spurs needed a new state-of-the-art stadium, and the NFL wanted a home in England for games other than Wembley Stadium. This marriage was written in the stars long before it went public.

Fans of the Cleveland Browns understandably do not care that Tottenham and the NFL have become business partners. Those paying customers merely want to know how all of this will affect their lives in the future. While it is early days into the Tottenham-NFL relationship, the writing is seemingly on the wall that no fewer than five regular season NFL games – three at Wembley and two at the unnamed Tottenham ground – will occur in England every year beginning around 2018-19. That means that at least ten NFL teams will have to make treks overseas to play meaningful games at some point during the fall months.

Nov 2, 2014; Cleveland, OH, USA; Cleveland Browns head coach Mike Pettine, owner Jimmy Haslam and general manager Ray Farmer before a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at FirstEnergy Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Ron Schwane-USA TODAY Sports

The Browns will be playing a regular season game in England before 2020 rolls around. It is happening, Cleveland fans, so just embrace that reality and accept it for what it is. Over half of the league’s franchises have played in London since these games became schedule mainstays in 2007. The Browns have been fortunate to avoid those match-ups, but the odds along with the math suggest that such good luck is about to run out for Cleveland.

That reality on its own is not all that worrisome for fans of the Browns. So you may have to wake up a little bit earlier on one October Sunday morning to watch the Browns on television. Big deal. Heck, a Browns game that kicks off at 9 am Cleveland time means that local viewers who cannot get enough NFL on a fall Sunday could theoretically watch live football for over 12 hours on that particular day. That’s not a nuisance. That’s called “Football Christmas.”

The concern had by some within the fan base of the Browns is that the team could lose a home game to either the Tottenham ground or to Wembley in the future. It appeared that those worries were put to bed when 92.3 The Fan Browns beat reporter Daryl Ruiter explained in a post uploaded to the radio station’s official website on Wednesday that the Browns are contractually obligated per the franchise’s lease with the city of Cleveland to play all regular season home games at the venue currently known as FirstEnergy Stadium. Done and dusted then, right?

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Not quite.

The official explanation for what could occur is somewhat complicated, but the summarized version is that the NFL front office, most notably Czar Commissioner Roger Goodell, runs the show regarding every franchise. It is not at all difficult to imagine a situation where Goodell and company create a new rule down the road as part of this Tottenham relationship that every team has to eventually host a home game at a London venue.

Don’t even think about it, NFL. Not yet, at least.

Unless you know nothing about the American football franchise and you somehow stumbled upon this piece because you were curious as to what the words “Tottenham” and “Browns” could have in common, you are probably well aware of the sad stats that have hovered over the Browns since the team returned as an active NFL franchise in 1999. The Browns have not had a winning season since 2007. Cleveland has yet to host a single playoff game since the resurrection of the franchise, and the Browns lost the team’s only postseason contest of the past 16 years; to hated rivals the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Games held in Cleveland have been downright miserable for fans of the Browns over the years; and no, not just because of results such as:

Winters have been downright brutal in Cleveland over the past several years, and those cold months feel as if they are lasting longer than ever. Any event that occurs at FirstEnergy Stadium in November and December that does not include snow and temperatures in the 20s if not colder is a gift from the football gods that did not inspire architects to put a roof on the venue all those years ago. Add in the bonus that the local economy, specifically downtown Cleveland, gets the badly-needed boost of thousands upon thousands of fans flocking to restaurants, bars and other businesses that are within walking distance of FirstEnergy whenever the Browns play there, and it really would be cruelly unnecessary to take away a home game from the team at any point in the foreseeable future.

Browns fans have had to endure a lot since the team last won a championship in 1964. There have been losing teams, losing coaching staff, numerous regime changes – oh yeah – that whole thing about the franchise being moved from Cleveland to Baltimore in the 1990s all because Art Modell was a terrible businessman. Let fans of the Browns attend as many important home regular season games per year as possible.

Each one is a gift to those loyal customers.

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