Passion for the Browns is not limited to Ohio. From Parma to Perth, Australia, fans of Cleveland's NFL team make their presence known with Browns Backers clubs.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Boston Red Sox fans are a united New England nation. Dallas Cowboys fans claim all of America.
The Browns? Passion for football Cleveland-style stretches as an orange and brown ribbon from Parma to Perth.
Summer training camp marks the 30th year of an international network of fans called Browns Backers Clubs, (renamed Browns Backers Worldwide in the past few years), among the largest organized fan clubs in professional sports.
At last count -- it changes almost weekly -- the Browns Backers number about 300 clubs, representing nearly 80,000 members.
They have been found on seven continents -- yes, even Antarctica -- and Denver. There are even several clubs in, egad, Steelers Country.
You want loyal? They've weathered the heartbreak of psoriasis, the move to Baltimore, expansion, a 59-117 record and five head coaches over the past 11 seasons.
"It's tough, but the thing is, when you're this far away, you like to hold on to a little bit of home," said Bruce Millinger, president of the Royal Perth Browns Backers of western Australia and a longtime Euclid resident. "Winners or losers or whatever, it's still Cleveland."
Living more than 11,000 miles away, the club's 24 members rarely get to watch their team live unless the Browns play on a Monday or Thursday night (Tuesday and Friday morning for them).
View full sizeBehind Melanie Eyerman, Browns coordinator of fan avidity, is a map of the United States with pins marking the sites of the Browns Backers clubs. There are clubs on all seven continents, and Melanie recently gave a tour of the stadium to Browns Backers from Israel.They're at the mercy of ESPN, NFL schedule-makers and friends back home who record and send DVDs of the games. Then they gather at a member's house, grab some pizza and beer, and watch the games a week or two later. It doesn't seem to matter that the results are as stale as an old slice of pepperoni.
"It's about getting together," said Melanie Eyerman, the Browns coordinator of fan avidity, the team's point person for all things Browns Backers. "Win or lose, they have each other."
Compadres, almost anywhere they go. A wall map of the United States in her office at Browns Stadium is pocked with pins marking the domestic clubs. Ohio is littered with them, naturally. But Florida is right up there, and pins are stuck in almost every state, Alaska and Hawaii included.
Just how and when did this phenomenon of fandom begin? It was kind of viral -- way before the Internet. Before the NFL ever had a cable network. Before the satellite dish became ubiquitous.
It was the late 1970s. Denny Lynch, the Browns' assistant general manager at the time, noticed when the team traveled to Seattle all the signs around the stadium promoting the Seahawkers, a network of fan clubs from around the region.
Meanwhile, a handful of unaffiliated Browns fan clubs in Northeast Ohio were gathering on their own for games, raising money for charity and booking players and team executives to speak at their banquets.
In the summer of 1980, Lynch, with help from a few organizers of the Akron club, drew about 80 Browns fans to a Ramada Inn in nearby Montrose. Lynch asked the Akron Browns Booster Club to change its name to the Akron Browns Backers. That first year, the Akron Browns Backers Club had almost 400 members.
Soon after, former Browns News Illustrated publisher Ray Yannucci began to routinely print information about existing clubs and how to start one, and a movement evolved from grass roots to international army.
"It was an idea whose time had come," said Lynch, now retired from the Buffalo Bills. "They were all fans who were already there. I just had to get them organized."
The timing couldn't have been better. That season, even casual Browns fans got swept up in the Kardiac Kids of quarterback Brian Sipe and company, an unselfish, overachieving bunch that seemed to invent dramatic ways to win each Sunday.
"I call it the best unified team I have ever been on," said retired Browns fullback Mike Pruitt, referring to the Browns of '79-'81. "Everybody wanted to win and nobody cared who got the credit. I think the fans got caught up in that."
Fans like Jeff Wagner, a Los Angeles commercial banker who grew up in Parma Heights, who remembers spending Sundays as a boy sitting next to his father on the 40-yard line of old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. In 1985, he launched the Southern California Browns Backers, recruiting members from subscription lists of Browns News Illustrated and Cleveland magazine.
It was an effort born of frustration. He and a smattering of other Browns fans couldn't find a place to watch the games. One Sunday, they crammed into a small Santa Monica apartment and called a friend in Cleveland to hold the phone up to the radio so they could hear the late Nev Chandler call the Browns game, then chipped in to cover the $34 phone bill.
View full sizeA close-up look at the Browns Backers locations in Ohio.By the next Sunday, they had persuaded a local sports bar to show Browns games on satellite.
"As the season grew, 20 became 40, 40 became 80 and before you knew it, we had 120 fans crowded into the bar," Wagner said.
At its peak, the Southern California club had more than 2,500 members and 27 places to watch Browns games, from San Diego to Santa Barbara. At various times, members have included such celebrities as Tom Hanks, Fred Willard, Martin Mull, Drew Carey, Debra Winger, David Birney and his ex-wife, Meredith Baxter.
The Browns Backers have grown much more formal since. Club founders must sign a seven-page contract of rules and regulations. Clubs must be nonprofit. Officers can't be paid. The Browns Backers name can't be used as part of a commercial business or product.
Among the member benefits: newsletters and e-mail updates, a 10 percent discount at the Browns team shop and access to special events. In fact, Friday through Sunday, Aug. 8, is Browns Backers Weekend in Cleveland, including Browns Backers Day at the team's Berea training camp.
Otherwise, the vast fan network has stayed pretty much intact 30 years later, even surviving the move and some mostly miserable football lately.
"You know," said Pruitt, who has spoken at several Browns Backers events through the years, "I think it's that tradition, that history."
Especially generational. For many Browns Backers, club involvement is about keeping family memories alive.
"I think it was mother's milk," said Ruthie Lieberman, on how she was weaned on the Browns growing up in Cleveland Heights and fell for Sipe as a 14-year-old. "I grew up with everyone glued to the TV on Sunday."
So there was no way her love of the Browns would simply vanish when the political consultant moved to a town near Jerusalem. There, she is president of the Holy Devoted Biblical Browns Backers, a name that suggests its members cling to divine intervention to get them through the lean years. The club, which she founded in '91, has about 220 members, almost all ex-Clevelanders.
"It's a connection for me to Cleveland," Lieberman said during a recent tour of Browns Stadium with three of her five children and their cousin from University Heights. "It's a connection to my roots."