CLEVELAND — It’s no secret that we have Browns fans embedded all over the globe. In fact, I recently took in a game via zoom with some Australian Backers living in Perth.
Of course, the downside to being a Browns fan in another country is that you can’t watch your team play in person, thus depriving you of the total fan experience. But not for Paul Brown.
No, not the legendary Browns-founding coach from Ohio whom the team is named after — THIS Paul Brown, the legendary British Browns Backer from London who doesn’t allow the fact that he lives almost 4,000 miles away from our stadium prevent him from attending an impressive number of games each season.
In fact, he’s stateside once again. On Sunday, he endured that meaningless Browns-Bengals travesty in person. After that, he did the best thing you can do, should you find yourself in Cincinnati: He got in a car and came to Cleveland, and we met up at local landmark Slyman's for some corned beef with a side of Browns banter.
Brown says his fandom started when he started wearing Browns gear around 20 years ago.
"I didn't know what [the team] was then, if it was baseball or hockey or football or sport Browns," he explained. "And then probably about 10 years ago, I started playing fantasy, and then I started on YouTube learning about the sport."
Today, Paul Brown's Browns fandom goes far beyond simply attending games; he's a social media maven who consistently documents and shares his unique Browns fan experience, speaking the gospel of the Browns to people all over the world.
"I think the whole Browns community is great. Yesterday [I] met so many different — cool different — Browns fans [in Cincinnati]," he said. "People traveled in from Atlanta, Cleveland, everywhere, and when you go to these away games, you build, meet a real nice community."
Out of all of the things that he's learned about Browns fans, Brown says, there is one thing that seems to hold true no matter where he goes.
"Loyalty. Anywhere you go in the world, Browns fans care, and everywhere you go there's always a Clevelander somewhere," he noted. "The one thing I don't think [people in] Cleveland understand is Cleveland Brown fans are so global."
After lunch, we decided to pop down to the lake to do a little daydreaming and reflecting, because some of you might recall that, until quite recently, supporting the Cleveland Browns was a thankless task offering little by way of reward. But we kept supporting them in spite of their ineptitude for a simple reason: We live here. So, good or bad, they are our football team.
But unlike us, Paul had a choice, and yet he stuck it out right along with us, even racking up major air miles to catch catch games during the 0-16 season.
Given that, there aren’t many Browns fans more deserving of some Cleveland playoff excitement, than this guy from London, England, and no matter what country you're barking from on Saturday, Go Browns!