The kneejerk response to the Ohio legislature helping Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam to stop being the Cleveland part of that descriptor was a marvelous bit of cynicism-driven political powerlifting that, in its own way, is exactly what Ohio, the Browns, and particularly the Haslams deserve.
With three deft moves, the lawmakers cleared the track for Jimmy and Dee Haslam to move the team out of Cleveland to the suburb of Brook Park, in contravention of the Modell Law, named after the bankrupted cur who moved the original Browns to Baltimore, by changing the wording of the law to undermine it entirely; they also claimed to find their $600 million share of the new stadium nut by seizing some treasure trove of unclaimed money. They then allowed the Haslams to continue to collect on their share of county's taxes against beer, hard liquor and cigarettes because, well, Deshaun Watsons don't come cheap.
And all this for a soulless suburban domed stadium in the middle of Mall America that will be not only sterile and utterly derivative, but worst of all will contain the Haslams' relentlessly ineffectual football team. It is a new investment in our ongoing fear of petulant billionaires, so the Haslams win, and it will render the Browns even less relevant to the nation at large, but the Haslams still win because they can stop investing any care in the football team. They bought a real-estate grift in the guise of an NFL franchise, and it only took 13 years.
But this isn't really about the Haslams; they are who they are, and in the new era of utterly shameless wealth flexing they are no worse than any other sports owners, which is to say they are tied for last with nearly all of them. And it isn't even about the fecklessness of the modern politician, of whom Ohio's are only the latest to cave to the mesmerizing powers of the modern extortionist.
It is in fact about the art of the contortion required to make $600 million in public money appear out of nowhere and laws essentially disappeared because they are inconvenient to the grift. This is what we apparently expect of our modern legislators, and the Ohio Gang worked overtime to keep the Haslams happy based solely on their ability to guide their football team to one win out of every three games played in the last decade and a half.
And it is about the illusion that you deserve to have a romantic attachment to a team based on where it works, because where it works changes at a whim. Cleveland would lose the Browns twice, the first of which led to the Modell Law that allegedly prevented a repeat act … until it no longer did.
Heartbreak is fungible, though, and the good folks in the state house showed us that. You may vote for them, but they work for the Haslams, and the Haslams' history as Ohio sports owners are two MLS titles with the Crew, and the laugh riot that is the Browns. And the real question to be asked here is: Are two MLS Cups worth $600 million and whatever else the Haslams demand down the road? Because they already got a new stadium for the Crew in 2021, so this feels like double-dipping. Which, as we all know, is something a good state politician understands.
