Chanting through chattering teeth
Derrius Guice Youth Jersey , Browns fans finally felt victorious.
Maybe the winless season wasn’t a total loss.
Thousands of disgruntled Cleveland fans, some of them calling for owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam to sell the franchise or jump in Lake Erie, paraded once around the team’s stadium in frigid conditions Saturday following a historic 0-16 season.
It was a protest and it was a party as fans showed their outrage and creativity following a season many would gladly forget.
Despite wind chills below zero, fans lined the street around FirstEnergy Stadium, which has been dubbed the ”Factory of Sadness” in recent years, to cheer as 80 vehicles, a rock band on a flatbed truck and a group carrying 28 tombstones to represent the team’s 28 starting quarterbacks since 1999, took a ”no victory” lap.
Cleveland police conservatively estimated the crowd at 3,200, and reported no major incidents or arrests.
This was frozen fun mixed with some fury.
”I’m here to protest,” said Patty Szylakowski, who grew up in a football-loving household with five brothers. ”We don’t deserve this. We deserve better people in the front office.
”We deserve better people coaching and we deserve better players. We’re buying Browns gear every year. We support them every year no matter what. Something has to be done and this is not a black eye on Cleveland.
”Every fan in all the NFL cities should be thinking about this. If they got crap like we did, they would be doing the same thing.”
That was the overriding sentiment among the frosted faithful who gathered on the sidewalks just feet away from a statue honoring legendary Browns running back Jim Brown.
This was a day for fans to express frustration at their football team, and most of the anger was aimed at the Haslams, who bought the team in 2012 but have been unable to produce the winner they’ve promised.
One fan held a sign that read: ”Jimmy and Dee Go Jump in the Lake.” Another carried by a fan dressed as a bishop said: ”Deliver us from Jimmy and Dee.”
The biting cold may have deterred some fans from attending, but it did nothing to curb Cleveland’s creativity or sarcasm.
Prompted by a fan with a bullhorn, one group of marchers chanted, ”What do we want? Watchable football. When do we want it? Now.” There were floats, a few of them with obscene themes
Joe Thomas Browns Jersey , fans wearing paper bags on their heads, and a Big Bird wearing Johnny Manziel’s jersey. A band played John Mellencamp’s ”Hurts So Good,” a song that underscores the pain and passion Browns fans feel for a team whose glory days are long gone.
For Chris McNeil, the day was a triumph for Cleveland.
A season-ticket holder, McNeil became the event’s unintended organizer – and a pariah to some – when his sarcastic post on Twitter last season that the winless Browns ”deserve a parade” spawned a revolt by some Cleveland fans.
McNeil endured severe backlash by fans who felt he was only embarrassing a city that has taken its share of shots over the years.
”No fights, no violence,” he said as the parade unfolded. ”I didn’t have to wear a flak jacket, none of that would reflect badly upon us. I don’t think anybody’s looking at this thing and going, `look at these idiot Clevelanders who are celebrating 0-16′. I don’t think that’s the message. This is a clear message to those people (the Haslams) inside the building. That’s who we were looking for.”
For obvious reasons, none of Cleveland’s players attended the event.
However, defensive end Emmanuel Ogbah posted a message on Twitter critical of anyone who went.
”That parade is a joke,” he wrote. ”Don’t call yourself a true browns fan if you go to that thing! Going 0-16 was embarrassing enough as a player. That is like adding fuel to the fire and it is completely wrong!”
McNeil’s only goal was to give Browns fans a voice. He felt he had done just that.
”This stuff matters in this town,” said McNeil, who is donating nearly $15,000 raised for the event to the Cleveland Food Bank. ”That’s why I care about this stuff. I almost get choked up when I think about it, because people don’t realize that. You go to other markets, and people enjoy their teams and I get that. But there’s a connection here where it’s like family. And to see something like the Browns be bad, it’s easy for me to make jokes, it’s either you do that or you cry.
”But then you look at something like this and you say
Authentic J'Mon Moore Jersey , `Man, we had this. In the `80s, this is when you’d leave a ballgame. I remember that. As a kid I’d be sitting in the backseat people honking, people yelling. You’d see that all the time after wins. To get that, we have to create this parade. It just says so much about the character of this city, the character of the people here.
”This is all positive and fun.”
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The massive football stadium complex at Hollywood Park is currently a bustling construction site. The $2.6 billion project won't welcome fans through its doors for another two years.
But the Rams and the Chargers are eager to show you to your seat.
Los Angeles' two NFL teams will begin selling season ticket memberships for their new stadium for the first time next week. Both will start with only their premium seating, offering an array of privileges and amenities befitting the sizable price tags for the best 13,000-odd seats in what could be the most expensive arena in the world.
With relocation fading into memory after a pair of winning seasons in LA, both franchises are eager to move into the bright future promised by the palatial project rising in Inglewood. The 70,240-seat arena will also host the Super Bowl, the College Football Playoff title game and Olympic events in its first decade of existence after it opens in 2020.
"This has been a long time coming," said A.G. Spanos, the Chargers' president of business operations. "When I was at USC, we were talking about a new stadium in LA back then. This has been a slow pot to boil in Los Angeles, but the future is here. This venue is incredibly exciting."
In an office building in coastal Playa Vista, the teams will begin showing off the project to their fans on Tuesday, starting with visits from many current season ticket holders for both clubs. The sleek LA Stadium Premiere Center features detailed scale models, video hype reels and a staff with carefully curated sales pitches for the privately financed project spearheaded by Rams owner Stan Kroenke.
"It's exciting when you fly in and you see the steel coming out of the ground, or when you drive up and you see the stadium starting to take shape
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The Rams and Chargers have also unveiled the first prices for tickets 鈥?and the prices for the stadium seat licenses that provide the opportunity to buy tickets.
Instead of selling the now-ubiquitous personal seat licenses, with which fans pay a sometimes-hefty fee for the opportunity to buy their tickets, the Chargers and Rams are selling a similar concept with a similar name, but one big difference: For the first time in NFL stadium history, that money will be returned to the fans 鈥?albeit in 50 years.
Instead of the naked cash grab of a PSL, the SSL is essentially an interest-free loan to finance the stadium construction. The structure also allows both the teams and the fans to avoid paying taxes on the licenses.
"We really feel like they are making an investment, and they're a shareholder in the team and the stadium project," Demoff said. "For us, rather than fan money going to taxes, it can go directly to the construction of the building. It builds a better building, and it requires no taxpayer money to do so. It's a unique concept that we expect will be replicated from here on out."
The Rams' stadium seat licenses will begin at $100,000 for the stadium's 500 "all-access" seats, located in two sections on either end of the 50-yard line. The Chargers' SSLs will be $75,000 for the same seats, which include food and beverages, access to clubs, special parking and the guaranteed opportunity to buy tickets to the Super Bowl and every other event controlled by the stadium owners.
Those prices are higher than the most top PSLs for many recent NFL stadiums, but significantly lower than the reported $150,000 charged by the Dallas Cowboys for their top seats at AT&T Stadium
Authentic Customized Ravens Jerseys , which opened in 2009. The 49ers charged $80,000 for the PSLs for the top 1,000 seats at Levis Stadium, which opened in 2014.
The Rams' remaining SSLs for the premium seats range from $80,000 to $15,000, with most falling in the lower category for club seats. The Chargers' other SSLs range from $50,000 to $10,000.
The Rams and Chargers are confident the structure will help as they persuade fans to pay for the licenses while knowing they'll get all the money back in 2068 鈥?or at least their heirs will.
Once the SSL is purchased, the Rams' tickets for those premium seats are $375 per game, and the Chargers' are $350.
Both teams obviously will sell the other three-quarters of the stadium at much lower prices, and the ticket prices won't change during the stadium's first three years.
"It's very hard to compete at the highest level if you don't have a first-class facility, and that's something that our family has been working toward for a long time," said John Spanos, the Chargers' president of football operations. "We're excited that it's here soon."
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