Mike Brown

[HarleyDog]

(10-23-2018, 10:13 PM)count35 Wrote: Google a crazy ol skinflint who owned the Toronto Maple Leafs back in the 70's and 80's by the name of Harold Ballard! His logic was the building will be sold out no matter HOW bad the team was!! It was laughable. Same crap different era!

Here’s a Cincinnati.com (The Enquirer) article written Jan, 22 this year. It’s not the whole article, just what pertains to this discussion.

Quote:OUR MAN JIM OWCZARSKI got Cincinnati’s most thankless job Friday, and did a good job with it. That would be a question-and-answer session with Mike Brown.

This is like talking to brick, the difference being brick cracks on occasion.

It’s exasperating as a writer, but at least we get paid to be exasperated. As comprehensive as Jim’s interview was, it could have been done 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 1992, and produced the same answers. Do we need to get better? Yes, we do.

After three decades, this stuff is starting to hurt my brain.

Here are some of Brown’s remarks, in bold italics, and my reactions.

While we had serious reverses and they were unsettling, to put it mildly, we bounced back at the end of the year. December is to the NFL what April and September are to MLB. More than occasionally misleading.

I don’t think we’re far off. I think we can make the changes that we need to make and quickly rebound to the level where we were a couple years ago.” The level where you were? Losing your first game in the playoffs? That level?

We have to do better in certain areas. We’re going to try to. There is no try, Yoda. There is only do.

We were not as far as off as some surmise. A break here or there, a play here or there. Every nonplayoffs team in the league not named Cleveland says that.

You’re supposed to say, it’s good form, we’re going to win the Super Bowl. Well, that’s sort of a silly statement. Everybody wants to win the Super Bowl. Wanting and needing are entirely different. I want to play golf like Jordan Spieth. Moves made and not made here for decades indicate a casual want to win.

A lot of this talk, to me, is sort of a dance. Couldn’t agree more. Thirty years of this same dance.

But it is not anything more than banter, to use some of the formulae that you hear mouthed by different people. Part of our job, I guess, is just to sit back and listen and then go about our business which is one step at a time. Oh, the arrogance.

I have to just do what I think puts our team in the best position to win. Even if it is a short-term issue with our fans. A short-term issue? A short-term issue?!!? Oh, boy.

They’re going to come when we win. No, they’re not. Unless winning somehow is redefined at PBS.

In some ways, ours is a hard market. It is the fact that our people are judgmental about us. They are often easy to condemn when it doesn’t go to their standards. Someone, please hand Mr. Brown a towel in which to weep. Have the taxpayers pay for it.

But we’re coming off a run of playoff years and they began to see that as the bare minimum. Well, maybe for them it is. For most people in this league, it’s a pretty solid achievement.

That last sentence is really all you need to hear. Solid achievement equals no playoff wins in 27 years. Fans should shut up and be happy with that. Be like “most people in the league.’’ After all, Brown kept the team here. Stop griping and start genuflecting.

Man, I need to lie down in a cool place.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/columnists/paul-daugherty/2018/01/22/what-mike-brown-doesnt-understand-and-never/1053569001/

And we wonder why Jim couldn’t get out of Cincy fast enough?

Edit: Sorry about the italics. Couldn’t get them to post like in the actual article.