Tears of a Brown in Raider Nation

Of course not. I certainly honored my father in this fashion.

When I was a kid, before I reached the age of reason, I joined my dad in wholeheartedly cheering his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers — even though we lived in Illinois — a prospect I’d now consider about as inviting as gorging on gasoline-flavored ice cream while taking bowling balls to the groin at a My Little Pony convention in the burning depths of hell, where My Little Pony conventions are known to take place.

But why was he a Steelers diehard if we weren’t from Pittsburgh, or Pennsylvania even? Here’s the deal: I grew up in the central part of Illinois, equidistant from Chicago to the north and St. Louis, Missouri, to the south, each roughly a three-hour drive away. When you’re that far removed from a city with pro teams, you’re a sports free agent of sorts, a Curt Flood of fandom. You aren’t legally required by residence to root, root, root for the home team, because there isn’t one. And so Dad embraced the Steelers against good judgment and, because I didn’t know any better at the time, I followed suit.

All this changed when I graduated from college and moved to Cleveland, Ohio. At long last, I lived in a pro sports city. I was officially off the free-agent fan market, and it was intoxicating. This was 1998: The Indians were one of the best teams in baseball. The Browns were about to return to NFL action after being cruelly Grinched away to Baltimore and turned into Ravens by the hated Art Modell. The Cavaliers were … well, watching them flounder through the NBA in those days at least made you feel better about missing all those layups in gym class. Despite the three teams’ aversion to championships, I became an obsessive fan of all of them. Especially the Browns.

When I moved halfway across the country to Las Vegas in 2006, my fandom remained undiminished, abetted by DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket and various bars around town that catered to specific teams and their transplanted fans. I was about 2,100 miles from Cleveland, but I could still surround myself with my fellow Browns fanatics for every game.

Seven years later, I became a father to twins.

On football Sundays, I dressed them head-to-toe in Browns gear. I positioned them in their little fold-up kiddie chairs in front of the TV for their weekly lesson in the old adage that winning isn’t everything. It was one of the best times with one of the worst-run franchises in pro sports. I was a proud dad.

And then Las Vegas became a pro sports city.

Suddenly, my little ones were no longer sports-fan free agents like I’d been, totally at liberty to cheer for whomever they liked (i.e., Dad’s teams). This was a problem. Don’t get me wrong: I was stoked when Las Vegas got its own NHL squad in 2017. And we all remember the palpable sense of togetherness and infectious energy the Golden Knights delivered. And when the Raiders came to town three years later, it was further validation that our city was a legitimate pro sports market. But for me, the arrival of the Silver and Black created a serious crisis of conscience. Could I, in good faith, continue to prod, cajole, demand, beg, bribe, browbeat my kids into remaining Browns fans when their hometown now had a team of its own?

Well, I tried. For starters, I attempted to interest my son in the nuances of the Browns’ excellent O-line play, but it turned out that second-graders suck at grasping the inherent beauty of a well-executed outside-zone blocking scheme. I even got my daughter her own Browns cheerleader outfit, even if the team gave her about as much to cheer for as the burial of a family pet. Before long, she outgrew the outfit, replacing her pompoms with indifference.

At the start of the 2021 NFL season, disaster struck: My son informed me that he was now a Raiders fan.

It was a bombshell, cratering my brown-and-burnt-orange field of dreams. My head filled with elaborate plans for the kid’s immediate enrollment in boarding school. To make matter’s worse, the Raiders were once again on the Browns’ schedule that season. And, once again, the Browns lost. Ever been trash-talked by an 8-year-old? Guess who’s microwaving that Hot Pocket his damn self tonight, pal?

But if being a Browns fan teaches anything, it’s the value of always trying to look on the bright side. And deep down, past a crust of betrayal and a mantle of disappointment, there was a core of new pride: I was excited that my kids would have the chance to experience the NFL on their doorstep, that they could savor a taste of the civic pride that comes with cheering for the home team along with tens of thousands of fellow fans, that they’d be among the first generation of born-and-raised Las Vegans to grow up with a major pro sports team of their own.

Sports teach you graciousness in the face of defeat. And I was grateful for plenty. And even though our rooting interests had diverged, our family still made a great team. After all, we could still all hate the Steelers. ◆