Super Bowl no-show

Space. Alaska. Cleveland. The final frontier.
Last week, I wrote about the six teams that have yet to reach the Super Bowl. But being a part of that select group of rejects just isn't special enough for Cleveland.
Nope. We're in a class by ourselves. As if we didn't know that already.
Of the six NFL cities who have yet to see their team go to the Super Bowl, five of them -- Phoenix, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Houston and Detroit -- have hosted the big game.
That leaves Cleveland as the only NFL city to neither have hosted nor played in the Super Bowl.
Forty years, and zero direct connections to football's prized game. You think dynasties take work to build? Try remaining completely separate from the Super Bowl for four decades in a league with only 31 other competitors.
The law of averages would have to catch up to you sooner or later, right? But in Cleveland, "law of averages" is an entirely different term.
Spending four decades as a Super Bowl isolationist takes work on the part of the local football team, the city government, and a couple harsh slaps in the face from Lady Luck.

The Browns' part
Since the NFL merger in 1970, the Browns' front office has screwed up draft pick after draft pick. Sure, we've had the occassional Ozzie Newsome, but more often we've seen draft picks used on Mike Junkin, Clifford Charlton and Gerard Warren. One draft pick, Don Rogers in 1986, died of a drug overdose less than a year later, and another, Jeremiah Pharms in 2001, was thrown in the clink before he could even ink a contract.
Art Modell had a nasty habit of spending money he didn't have. His line of credit eventually gave way to stifling debt that caused him to borrow more money from minority owners Bob Gries and Al Lerner. Not wanting to leave son David with a choking debt, he sought a financial windfall that would cure all his long-term money problems.
Baltimore came calling, and the rest is history. Cleveland football has been in a state of upheaval ever since.

Cleveland's part
We could have had a domed stadium in the mid-'80s. A domed stadium would have prevented Modell's move and Cleveland would have hosted one or two Super Bowls by now.
Instead, funding couldn't be secured and the idea died on the drawing board. A new idea was concieved, but the Browns were left out.
While the Indians and Cavaliers received posh new downtown digs as part of the Gateway project, the Browns got stuck with dilapidated Cleveland Stadium. That fried Modell, since the Browns were pretty much the only game in town from the '60s through the '80s.
Modell continued to make subtle threats about pulling out of Cleveland, but the administration of former Mayor Mike White kept dragging their feet, trying to call Modell's bluff up until 1994, when it was too late.
A new stadium was hastily constructed on the site of the old stadium, eating up a choice section of lakefront real estate for another 50-to-75 years. The biting winter winds off Lake Erie and lack of even a partial roof make Cleveland Browns Stadium a no-go for hosting the Super Bowl.

Luck's part
We need no primer on this. January has not been kind to the Browns:
Red Right 88. The Drive. The Fumble. A 37-21 loss to the Broncos in the 1989 AFC title game. An 0-5 record in games that would have sent the Browns to the Super Bowl. Playoff eliminations at the hands of the Steelers after the 1994 and 2002 seasons. And a whole lot of sucking in between.