Well, well, well...

[grampahol]

(10-24-2017, 11:23 AM)Benton Wrote: It's all on goal setting and how you define success.

To me, you play a game to win. You play a league or tournament to win it all. That, to me, is success. We've never had success. 50 years of failing. Those two seasons we made the Super Bowl were the closest thing we've had to a successful season.

I don't think the Brown's view success in the same way. It's their family business, so being successful means keeping the operation profitable, shirt sales up, beer sales up, costs low. They don't run it like a sports franchise, they operate it like a restaurant or a hardware store. Expenses too high? Lower them. Revenue too low? Raise ticket prices or expand marketing. Didn't score a touchdown... well... let's re-stripe the parking lot and maybe fans will be happy with the brighter colors.

Success in this league is about profit. It has little to nothing to do with wins and losses. It's one of the few businesses where someone can become fabulously wealthy by losing. This idea of revenue sharing is at the root of it. From a business standpoint you can't lose if by losing you're still winning. 
Think about that for a minute. The Cleveland Browns are every bit as profitable as the Squeelers with maybe the exceptions of ticket and jersey sales, but the bottom line is that the Browns and Bengals both still have the ability to pay the same amounts of money for player salaries as NE, Pitt, GB, etc.
So ask yourselves just how can anyone be so accidentally stupid as the owners of these two bottom feeders (Browns and Bengals) and still make as much money as the owners of the teams that get championships every few years? The incentive to win championships doesn't actually exist when the ownership is still raking in millions upon millions despite as in the case of the Browns having only one win last year and only 4 wins in the past 3 seasons . The last time they won in double digits was 2007, ten years ago. Out of 160 games in the past 10 seasons they've won 51 while losing 109 and STILL make billions of dollars in revenue. 
Quite simply put there is no incentive to win other than being able to say, Yey. Saying yey doesn't pay the bills.  Their stadium, Firstenergy stadium supposedly cost $283,000,000 to build so out of 272 games the Browns have played since the stadium opened in 1999 they've won a grand total of 87 games and have consistently gotten high draft picks and still can't win. 
Now, you could say that is an accident or really bad coaching or even worse ownership or a combination of those issues OR you could as I'm suggesting come to the conclusion that it's by design so the largest markets and fan bases will consistently win with a few exceptions just to toss the conspiracy theory minded among us off the path of proving that there's collusion going on to maximize league profits. 

Think about this last game. Our defense was supposed to have been one of the best in the league and 3 weeks ago by all accounts the Steelers were in complete disarray . They were absolutely blown out by Jacksonville and suddenly, without any rhyme or reason turn around and became world beaters.. hmmmmm.. Something isn't white in the rice here.
Of course someone will make the argument that Mike Tomlin SURELY must be the greatest head coach and has a magic formula for getting the most out of a team in complete disarray, but I'm simply not buying that story. He's already proven himself to be a stooge dumb enough to blatantly trip a player from the sidelines so his genius prowess doesn't really cut it.
If NE's head coach, Belichick is as great as we're lead to believe then certainly when he was with the Browns they would have won multiple super bowl championships and yet they didn't. Instead he went to NE to become the 'greatest football mind' of a generation. 
What this is all leading up to is the greatest line of BS since the formation of religions to convince people there's an invisible thing in the sky picking winners and losers and of course the winners only win because they believe enough in the invisible thing more than the losers.. Obviously the good people of Boston, Pittsburgh and Green Bay believe more than the godless people of Cleveland and Cincinnati. 
Yeah, I'm not quite buying that one either..
I might suggest that the league has effectively neutered Vontez Burfict. He seemed to have been pretty much a non-factor this past Sunday with the exception of supposedly kicking some guy.. Hey, it's football where kicking is part of the game, eh?

Yeah, no. I'm not buying the narrative of the juggernaut Squeeler miracles. Miracles are planned ahead of time in the NFL.