When talking about the parade he’s helped plan, lifelong Cleveland Browns fan Chris McNeil wants to make one thing perfectly clear.
“Make sure you get this right,” he said loudly. “We are not having a celebration of losing, we are having a protest of losing. We want to let the Browns ownership and front office know we are holding them accountable for having such a bad team.
“And maybe we’ll have some fun while doing that.”
The Browns’ long-suffering fans will meet at their stadium on Saturday at noon and march around it in freezing temperatures. The ovular path around the stadium is not a coincidence: it’s the shape of zero, as in the team’s win total at the end of their historically abysmal 2017 season.
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McNeil is finding the whole process of running a parade to be funny in some respects. The permit requires security officers and port-o-potty toilets – “Who is going to use the bathroom when it is 10 degrees?” he laughs – and they have no plans to go more than once around the stadium. Money from the event will be raised for a local food bank.
He is also seeing worldwide attention from other countries: “Cleveland-Browns-Fans feiern historische Saison mit Parade” says a German sports site, while the French Canadians merely say, “Une Parade de la Mediocrite”.
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Perhaps the funniest footnote: McNeill and his fellow organizers had to raise roughly $10,000 for the permit, and were coming up short. So Excedrin, the headache medicine maker, donated about $8,000 to pay for the permit.
LoserParade
More at link about Cleveland's glory days and descent. I know how the fans feel. I've been a Saints fan since they were the A'ints.
