Believeland: The Collective City-Wide Pain of a Championship Curse

Since the mid-1950s, economic hardship and athletic heartbreak have had an eerily strong correlation in Cleveland...so much so that one may even wonder if correlation equals causation. 

The phrase "pessimistic city" was used in the 30 for 30 "Believeland" more than once to describe the mistake on the lake, bereaveland, grieveland, you name it. Believeland it or not, a moniker that could be credibly used to describe the city in 1955 was "the best location in the nation". The Browns had made 10 consecutive title games (winning 7), the then-Indians were a few years removed from baseball glory, and the city had twice as many Fortune 500 companies as San Francisco and Los Angeles...combined. The Cavs weren't around yet. We'll get to them later.

But an exodus to suburbia, loss of industrial jobs, and the rising tensions that accommodated this pain quickly began to scar the city's psyche. In 1978, Cleveland became the first major city to default on its loans. At this point, the city was 14 years removed from its last major championship. Jim Brown, not responsible for the team namesake but responsible for much of its success, had delivered Cleveland's eighth as a franchise - and fourth in the NFL - in 1964. But he was long gone, and the city's championship pedigree began to evaporate with him.

The phenomenon of the shared, collective trauma accumulated by the city over the years absolutely fascinated me as I watched this film. In my last post, I drew parallels between Al Davis and Eckhart Tolle's famous The Power of Now and New Earth. The similarities jumped out even more obviously here. Cleveland is the perfect case study of a dense pain-body - a region with so much trauma and tied so much of its identity into external entities that have suffered heartbreak time and time again.

Now, not everyone is as wired and strange in their sports fandom as I am. But I absolutely love the way this city rides for their teams - for the most part. The creative ingenuity of the Dawg Pound and the props that came with it was a stroke of genius. I don't mean to indicate that every Clevelandian's happiness is at the mercy of Joe Flacco's Browns and Donovan Mitchell's Cavs (I sure hope not). But fierce loyalty to these teams is deeply ingrained in the city's DNA. It's impossible to grow up in the region without the passion - and the pain that comes with it - becoming part of the individual psyche.

So how did things go sideways? Was it a statistically significant number of strokes of bad luck? Or was it inevitable that the city would adopt a victim mentality?

The documentary takes us quickly through the rough 60s and 70s and catches us up to 1980. At this point, it's been 16 years since one of the team's three major franchises - the Browns, Indians, and Cavs - had won a championship. 

Now, that timeframe is not insignificant. But 16 years ago, I was an antsy little kid on the precipice of uploading my first Baily Sports Report newscast to the interwebs. Not much has changed there! 

In all seriousness, there are plenty of sports towns who have endured 16-year title droughts without adopting the mantra of a city of losers. Phoenix has four teams and hasn't won a championship since 2001 - 88 championship-less seasons since. Miami has four teams and hasn't won a ring since Ray Allen's heroics in 2013 - a 42-season drought. 

Hell, none of New York City's eight franchises (including the Nets) have won a ring since Mario Manningham was toe-tapping and Victor Cruz was salsa dancing in 2011. That's 96 seasons since a Big Apple franchise has taken home the hardware! At that point, Cleveland had only suffered 41 seasons without a ring - not to mention the Cavs being a 1970 expansion franchise with zero immediate championship expectations.

Sorry for the only mildly relevant tangent (feel free to skip those in future, I haven't found a way to stop them yet), but the point is that the external results were not such for Cleveland to have a solidified losing identity.

Regardless, there was hope for it all to change in 1980. Cleveland boasted league MVP Brian Sipe (who would find himself slinging the rock for the Donald's New Jersey Generals of the USFL a few years later) and a top-tier roster primed to contend for a Super Bowl for the first time since Jim Brown. 

They hosted Al Davis' Raiders in the Divisional Round, who were on the formidable quest to become the first Wild Card team to win a Super Bowl - long before the days of elite QBs like Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, and Trent Dilfer winning a Super Bowl in the same position. They had the ball down 2 in the final minute, well within range for a game-winning kick - albeit a treacherous one in snowy Cleveland. Instead, Sipe threw a game-losing interception - one that may trigger recent trauma of unnecessarily throwing a ball up for grabs in the middle of the field among Packers fans.

It was a backbreaking loss - especially given that Cleveland had to watch Davis coast through the next two rounds en route to his second ring in five years. But I can't help but wonder whether a loss of similar tragic proportions would have left such a deep cut in another city.

The untreated wound began to suffer annual infections caused by the horse's kick of the Denver Broncos in the late 1980s. Browns fans are all too familiar with "The Drive" and "The Fumble," which actually were among the most gut-wrenching defeats in NFL history. John Elway miraculously drove the donkeys 98 yards down the field to tie the 1987 AFC Championship Game at 20, sending the game to overtime. There, the barefooted Rich Karlis - speaking of infected wounds - booted the Broncos to the Super Bowl with a game-winning field goal that debatably didn't go through the uprights.

What interested me most about the loss, however, was the way the documentary interviewees described their feelings as it was happening. Some noted that the first play of the drive, a 6-yard pass from Elway to Sammy Winder to almost certainly eliminate the possibility of a safety, instigated a gut feeling that something was wrong. Others noted it being the initial first down, or the Broncos approaching midfield. 

Regardless, the voices were that of a pessimistic city. The odds were squarely in Cleveland's favor, even when Denver actually completed that 98-yard drive. Yet it felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy - one that realized itself again the next year when Earnest Byner fumbled just short of walking into the end zone for a tying touchdown in the same game a year later.

Ten years later, the Cleveland Browns were the Baltimore Ravens (more on this), and the Cleveland Indians were the city's crown jewel. Let's set the scene - the Indians lead the upstart Florida Marlins 2-1 in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series. The game is far from over, but the World Series trophy is being wheeled into the Indians' dugout. The team owner is nervous about Jose Mesa, the team's closer, being in the game. There's a sense of impending doom among the city. 

It's impossible to say whether a different city's psyche would've held up differently in the same situation. Even the Yankees blew an identical lead in Game 7 of the World Series 4 years later. But for one reason or another, the Indians imploded, giving up a run in the ninth and another in the 11th in a 3-2 defeat. An error from normally sure-handed second baseman Tony Fernandez marked a crucial moment in the loss.

The city finally had some ties to a championship in 2000 - when the entity formerly known as the Cleveland Browns, now the Ravens, steamrolled the Giants in Super Bowl 35. And another one in 2012. Interestingly, the Ravens bounced back from an AFC Championship Game loss the year before that, externally, was just as bad as "The Drive" - dropping a game-winning touchdown and missing a short game-tying field goal in New England. They marched right back into Foxboro one year later and won convincingly, despite trailing in the second half.

The city's savior - and eventual villain, and finally savior - finally did bring home that ring that was supposed to cure all trouble. The 2016 NBA Finals may go down as the greatest of all time - the Cavs miraculously rebounding from a 3-1 deficit to beat the greatest regular-season team of all time three times in a row, two on the road. It was LeBron's magnum opus. The same can be said for Kyrie and Anderson Varejao, who was arguably an industry plant at center for the Warriors.

The sheer joy in the city when Marreese Speights (for some reason) bricked the final shot was unbelievable. The idea was that the entire curse would be cleansed by one championship. The city could identify with being a champion - the only identity that could, in the short term, take precedence over the victim one that had hardened over the last 52 years. It was glorious.

And yet, four months later, the same 3-1 curse hit Cleveland from the other side, as the Indians blew a 3-1 lead in the Fall Classic. Kevin Durant joined Golden State 2 weeks after the Cavs' ring and snatched the 2017 and 2018 championships from Cleveland's clutches. Seven years later, we don't know whether the "curse" has been broken - or what it really was.

Now, every team has difficult losses. Someone has to occupy the dreaded position at left tail of the "luck" spectrum. But I couldn't shake the feeling that Cleveland had made it their point of pride to be victims, chasing an external result so profusely to distract from a pervading aura of fear and negativity that would return at some point during every Cleveland Browns campaign. It may not be a coincidence that the Ravens have seemed to had more bounces than not go their way. The most notable of these, of course, is the Mile High Miracle / Flacco Fling / Jacoby Jones Jaunt in the 2013 Divisional Playoff - against the same Denver Broncos that still haunt the worst nightmares of the Dawg Pound. As I post this, we get ready to watch the Ravens host an AFC Championship Game I believe they will win.

If the Super Bowl color and radio announcement conspiracies hold true, this is all a cruel simulation that ruins the Browns time and time again. The city has attached so much of its collective identity to external results, and once it got the one championship it needed to make everything right, that inevitably turned out to not be enough. The ego always wants more - especially when fed by a dense pain-body accumulated over an timeline of excruciating games.

What was interesting was the frequent acknowledgement of the victim identity by Cleveland residents. That self-awareness is the first step to shedding the identity. In my mind, this can be measured better by the energy and confidence of the team rather than merely ring counting. Joe Burrow doesn't have a ring in the NFL, but he's a winner. He took a city with a 31-year playoff drought and rattled off five playoff wins in two years. Now, the Bengals suffered two of the most gut-wrenching losses in league history in 2021 and 2022. Yet the team still has victorious energy - a huge testament to Burrow's swagger and that of the entire organization. That comes from acknowledgement of the team's past - and a willingness to transcend the demons come playoff time with a new savior. 

It won't be an easy process for the Browns, Cavs, and Guardians - overcoming pain-bodies never is - but it's not a hopeless one.

I began writing this post last week and tabled it until after the Divisional Round. This weekend's games blessed me with much more fodder on this same topic - as "Wide Right" repeated itself while the Lions got the playoff monkey off their back. It also gave me the short-term glee of a Jordan Love cross-body interception diss (although all credit to him, he played well and will be a force for years to come). More to come soon - hopefully slicing the word count and the quantitative rants a bit - on the same topic.