Why the Browns, city of Cleveland should break up over new stadium | George M. Thomas

The Browns should go west … to Brook Park if that’s what makes them happy.

Like a troubled marriage that’s run its course, with both parties hanging on for the sake of hanging on, the Browns and the city of Cleveland should part company — amiably.

I come to this conclusion after careful consideration. When the prospect of Brook Park becoming home to the team came to light, I was adamantly against it.

Why? As a Cleveland native — an east side Cleveland native — the prospect offended me for reasons rooted in old, but still fresh city divisions from growing up in the 1970s and to a lesser degree the 1980s. I figured the team would end up losing a significant portion of the fanbase. The eastside-westside divide was real when I was growing up.

I know that unless I must work in the proposed palace Jimmy and Dee Haslam will apparently build, I am likely no longer the person for whom it’s intended. What a shock. I’m not a Swiftie.

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Perhaps years of spending my Sundays at Cleveland Browns Stadium has immunized me to stadium fever. Or maybe it was many nights at the then-Quicken Loans Arena or Saturdays at Ohio Stadium.

You get a prolonged look behind the curtain, and the magic is nowhere to be found. Being in the throngs of people is irritating and being crammed in a press box with food that is mostly no good for you no longer hold any allure.

I’m intelligent enough to recognize when it’s time to move on.

There is a cycle in the life of the average male from my generation, and it includes a period where you’re a stark raving sports fan. That was me 15 years ago. Browns gear. Browns flag waving on my porch. Going to hang out with my boys for Browns games, swilling beer on Sunday afternoons at my local saloon. The fever broke.

I was part of the legions who made our voices known when the Browns left downtown after the 1995 season through moral theft by Art Modell. I was also part of the legions who voted for the extended sin tax to finance a new stadium to bring them back. Fun fact: the initial sin tax, which paid for Gateway, won in the suburbs, but not in Cleveland proper. Even back then residents of a still rusting city knew what a boondoggle taxpayer money being used to pay for a billionaire’s playground was.

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They were right then. Cleveland mayor Justin Bibb appears to be right now in his blatant call out of the Haslams in releasing the city’s offer . Given that I live in Cleveland’s suburbs now, I’m not fully entrenched in the city’s politics any longer and have not been since 2000.

But Bibb and some of the more forward-thinking people in power on Lakeside Avenue seem to understand that the city’s greatest asset is that lakefront, and while I think the offer to the Browns was completely legitimate, his imposing a deadline on a response was his tell that it may be time to move on .

My generation had its version of the Browns and entertainment back when I was a much younger man and as a young father. The NFL — from my time — has evolved into the Godzilla of sports. There’s the NFL and everyone else.

This generation gets to have its version and make the Haslams pay for it. They want to reap the benefits of their football team, potential concerts and any other events they can use to fill a cavernous building. Have at it. That means when they eventually leave Cleveland Browns Stadium, the money from an extended sin tax should be off limits to them.

I understand the prestige that having an NFL team in a city is. But the truth is those teams are more of a regional asset than a municipal one nowadays. They are privately owned and, because of what the NFL has evolved into, a mere stadium is no longer enough. Look at the thinking behind what Robert Kraft built in New England and what the owner of the Los Angeles Rams constructed in Inglewood, Calif., with So-Fi Stadium , which is part of the Hollywood Park entertainment district.

Every NFL owner looks at those two developments and salivates. And that’s OK.

However, if I’m looking at whether I want to see money invested in football team or development along Cleveland’s lakefront, which is both a regional and national asset that holds endless possibilities, I’ll take the latter.

Perhaps breaking up isn’t hard to do.

George M. Thomas dabbles in sports and pop culture for the Beacon Journal.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Why the Browns, city of Cleveland should break up over new stadium | George M. Thomas