Now I understand why Art Modell won't return to Cleveland.
We shouldn't paint with a stroke so broad it colors everybody who attended Sunday's Browns-Jaguars game. But visual and anecdotal evidence suggest rather strongly that thousands inside the stadium acted like idiots and participated in some of the ugliest behavior the NFL has seen in a long time.
It was frightening to watch players, security folks and referees being pelted with plastic beer bottles, cups of soda, trash and who knows what else in the final minute of Sunday's game, all because a call didn't go Cleveland's way.
It doesn't matter that the beer bottles were plastic or that most of them were empty by the time they were tossed from the stands. Even one of the Browns' players, safety Earl Little, said, "It was crazy. Some of those bottles were loaded."
Jacksonville's Jimmy Smith said, "We were just trying to dodge as many beer bottles as we could. It felt like I was starring in 'Saving Private Ryan' or something."
Okay, so Smith got a little carried away. His overstatement, though, was nowhere near as offensive as Browns owner Al Lerner and team president Carmen Policy reacting to the mayhem as if it were a high school cafeteria food fight.
Six people were arrested. At least one person was injured seriously enough to require treatment. And far more people could have been injured by debris being thrown from a height equal to four stories.
Policy, one of the league's most respected executives for more than 20 years, seemed to have lost his perspective when he spoke at a news conference after the game. "The bottles are plastic," Policy said. "They don't carry much of a wallop."
He didn't stop there. "Cleveland is not going to take a black eye," he said. "Our fans had their hearts ripped out."
Want more? "I like the fact that our fans cared."
At least Policy did a bit of moon-walking yesterday afternoon, apologizing and saying of his Sunday comments, "I didn't set the proper tone . . . I didn't get the job done." Thankfully, he did call the participants "hooligans" and set a much more appropriate tone. Still, Policy stopped short of totally condemning the guilty parties, which you would think should be in order since the people throwing projectiles were guilty of criminal behavior. Cleveland's image should be a secondary concern to making certain this never happens again.
The problem in Cleveland starts at the top, with the owner. Lerner had the nerve to say, "Everybody controlled themselves considering that they had spent 60 minutes in cold weather," he said. It's a wonder then how anybody in Alaska walks around without wearing a helmet and flak jacket.
"It wasn't pleasant," Lerner said. "I'm not going to suggest anything like that. But it wasn't World War III."
So anything short of a riot is excused if it happens in Cleveland Browns Stadium?
When some New York Giants fans threw snowballs from the stands onto the field a few years ago, owner Wellington Mara was quick to pursue the guilty parties. Mara was one of the owners who expressed surprise yesterday at how docile Browns management was in the face of something so ugly.
I'd be remiss if I didn't assign some of the blame for this acting out to the TV networks and newspaper columnists who pay anything more than passing attention to places like "The Dawg Pound" in Cleveland and "The Black Hole" in Oakland. As often as not, these are sections of a stadium where people get painted up, dressed up, and too often lathered up. If the TV cameras show a fan often enough, he begins to think he's important, that his ability to look ridiculous somehow helps his team and distinguishes him, marks him as "caring enough" about his team.
This issue is far more important than whether players wear their socks the recommended height, though I wonder if the NFL agrees.
Luckily, this column can jump to a more upbeat note, even as it pertains to professional football. Darrell Green has officially changed his mind and will endeavor to play one more season with the Redskins, which is how it should have been in the first place. He's making open-field tackles, covering receivers and on Sunday intercepted a pass for the 19th consecutive season, a league record. Cornerbacks who can cover are like left-handed starters -- hard to find. If he can play next August like he is playing now, there ought to be a roster spot for him. And if it's easier to raise funds as Darrell Green of the Washington Redskins than it is as Darrell Green formerly of the Washington Redskins, then even more good will be served.
We presume, however, that Green won't still be playing if and when the Super Bowl comes to Washington or New York in 2007. If the tragedies and suffering of Sept. 11 are indeed the impetus for bringing the biggest event in American sports to either city, I applaud Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. But why not do both? Why not New York one year, D.C. another?
And it doesn't have to involve playing between snowflakes. By 2005, the Olympic host for the 2012 Summer Games will be named. If it's Washington, which is very much in the running, we'll almost certainly end up with a new mega-stadium on the site now occupied by RFK Stadium. Mayors Anthony A. Williams of Washington and Martin O'Malley of Baltimore have said as much, on the record, during a conversation I had with them in Sydney last October. How easy would it then be to put a Super Bowl in a shiny new domed stadium in the nation's capital?