An inside job

The Browns are one of the NFL’s pillar franchises. Years of modern-era losing haven’t changed that.

Yes, the Browns entered the NFL in 1950, 30 years after its inception. Yes, the Browns played their first four seasons in another league. Yes, Cleveland had a handful of other NFL franchises prior to the Browns – most notably the Rams from 1933 to 1945.

And yes, the current Browns aren’t even the original Browns. We don’t need to pick that that scab right now.

But with four NFL titles and 11 NFL Championship Game appearances prior to the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, in addition to a clean sweep of All-America Football Conference championships in all four years the league existed, the Browns are held in the same historical esteem as franchises such as the Packers, Bears and Giants, all of whom entered the league in the 1920s and are, essentially, among the league’s founding franchises.

The idea of the Packers ever playing home games in a dome is ludicrous. The Bears may play in a renovated Soldier Field that looks something like a UFO landing on the Parthenon, but the Monsters of the Midway still play in the elements.

The Giants? Same story. New stadium, still outdoors, and will likely always be outdoors. The NFL didn’t make a dome a condition when they awarded Super Bowl XLVIII to the New York market. MetLife Stadium, the home of the Giants and Jets, will host the game on Feb. 2, 2014.

So why do the Browns need a dome?

This week, incoming Browns owner Jimmy Haslam met with Cleveland city council members to, among other things, open the door for discussion on ways to improve Cleveland Browns Stadium as a revenue-generating venue for the region. Among the topics Haslam broached was the possibility of placing a retractable roof on the stadium, allowing year-round use of the facility, and possibly making Cleveland a more attractive destination for large-scale events that need the space provided by a domed stadium.

It’s a touchy subject in Cleveland, a city that prides itself on an old-school football ethos. Tough players and tougher fans braving the late-season elements in our wind-whipped lakefront freezer box. It’s how we’ve enjoyed (and not enjoyed) football since football was first played in front of an audience in this town.

But that viewpoint is at odds with the pragmatic need to get more dollars out of a facility that sits essentially vacant for well over 300 days a year. Cleveland Browns Stadium has the potential to become a much more prolific money maker for the region, but its lakefront location and exposure to the elements severely limit the breadth of its usefulness.

As it is, Cleveland doesn’t have a lot in the way of prime exposition and event space. That outlook will certainly improve once the new convention center opens, but the city will still lack a venue to attract major spectator events that need a controlled environment and more seating capacity than the 20,562 seats that Quicken Loans Arena can offer.

That’s where a domed Cleveland Browns Stadium would fit into the picture. These are among the events a dome would allow Cleveland to pursue:

The Super Bowl. Obviously, this would be the king crab to catch. It’s the premier single-day sporting event in the world, and brings with it two weeks of related activities and events for the host city. In the event Cleveland could land a Super Bowl, it would likely be a one-off event, like it was for cities such as Detroit and Jacksonville. But for the only NFL city to neither have hosted a Super Bowl nor have had a team play in a Super Bowl, it’s time for a football town like Cleveland to take a long-overdue turn reaping some benefits from the NFL’s title game.

The Final Four. Much like the Super Bowl, it brings with it a slew of related events. In addition, Final Four cities often host a regional final bracket the year before, as a dry run for the following year. So landing a Final Four could bring two Marches’ worth of events to Cleveland.

A minor college bowl game. If Detroit can host the Little Caesars Bowl, why couldn’t Cleveland attempt to launch something similar? It wouldn’t attract marquee programs, but for a 3 p.m. time slot on ESPN2 a few days after Christmas, you could attract a six-win Big Ten or Big 12 school to face off against a school from the MAC or Conference USA. If there is one thing we’ve learned over the past decade or so, it’s that you can never have too many bowl games.

The Big Ten Championship Game. Lucas Oil Field in Indianapolis will host the game through 2015. After that, if Cleveland wanted to take a turn hosting it every few years, it would likely need a dome. Given the size of the Ohio State fan base in Northeast Ohio, and the frequency with which OSU figures to play in the Big Ten title game over the years, it would be a logical fit to have Cleveland in any rotation for the game.

The MAC Championship Game. Detroit hosts it right now because Detroit has the facility to host it. Cleveland is the home of the MAC’s headquarters and has hosted the MAC basketball tournaments since 2000. It would seem that if Cleveland had a facility capable of hosting the MAC football title game, the conference could make a fairly airtight case for moving the game here.

Cleveland State football. It’s a subject that gets bounced around in assorted forums from time to time. Could and should Cleveland State take the necessary steps to alter its charter and field a football program for the first time since the school was formed in 1964? If Cleveland had an indoor venue with an artificial surface that could stand up to the wear and tear of back-to-back Saturday-Sunday football weekends without turning into a mud pit, the city would have an ideal stage on which to launch CSU football.

Other local rivalry games. The annual John Carroll-Baldwin Wallace game? The St. Ignatius-St. Edward Holy War? Playing them under the bright, covered lights at Cleveland Browns Stadium could add some spotlight appeal to the regions other big games.

A spectrum of other events. A covered stadium could also put Cleveland in the running for political conventions in presidential election years, stadium concert tours (for the few bands that still have them), stadium rodeo tours, WrestleMania and other events.

In reality, the movement to put a dome on Cleveland Browns Stadium has very little to do with the Browns. Whether they put a good or bad product on the field, they’ll be good or bad whether they play in the open air, under a dome, on grass, on artificial turf or in a parking lot.

This has everything to do with acknowledging that while the Browns might be the primary tenant of their stadium, their games are, or should be, only one category in a catalog of events that could, take place at the stadium.

Cleveland isn’t Green Bay, or Chicago, or New York, or Philadelphia. What we need out of our stadium is different from those cities. We’re a post-industrial rust belt town with a shrinking population and negative national reputation. We’re fighting an uphill battle against more attractive destinations for revenue-generating and profile-enhancing events. Our civic leaders need to fashion better tools to make that happen. A domed stadium is one such tool.

Making it happen will certainly cost money – possibly between $100 million and $400 million. The sin tax that built the stadium and still pays for its upkeep expires in 2015, so financing the project could mean another appeal to voters. However, since Haslam is taking the lead on this, at least in the idea phase, perhaps there is a chance that he’ll front some of the cost. We can hope. We can dream.

If the dome ends up becoming a reality, we’ll all miss the snowy, windy late-season games on the lakefront. It’s part of our football heritage. But times have changed, and poetic vision of frozen turf and snowflakes dancing around the heads of 70,000 fans steaming the frigid air with their collective breath has to give way to the dollars and cents of the matter.

Cleveland needs money. A domed stadium can generate more money than a stadium without a dome. It’s more spreadsheet than Shakespeare. But that’s where we are. And that’s why we, as a region, should find it in our best interest to put down our scarves and hats, and support a move indoors.

The burden of stewardship

The legendary baseball innovator Branch Rickey once noted that a baseball team in any city is a quasi-public institution.

The quote -- included in Ken Burns' 1994 documentary series "Baseball" -- was in reference to the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn for Los Angeles in 1958. Rickey said that in Brooklyn, the Dodgers were "public" without the "quasi."

But I'm more concerned about the first part of Rickey's quote. Any sports franchise in any town is indeed quasi-public. Though Rickey was speaking about the special connection the Dodgers had with Brooklyn, the only true "public" major league sports franchise in North America is the Green Bay Packers, owned by shareholders. Every other sports franchise toes the line between private business and public entity. They are privately-owned, for-profit enterprises that are held in the same esteem -- or higher esteem, in most cities -- as publicly-funded institutions.

To boot, most teams now play in publicly-funded and owned facilities.

Pro sports teams are about as public as you can get while still having a private owner. The ownership group has to answer to no one regarding how the team is run. Yet in a very real sense, the owners are stewards of a public entity. If the team is not successful, fans don't show up at games, which hurts downtown game-night business at bars and restaurants, necessitates fewer game-day employees inside the stadium, and results in a far-smaller injection of revenue into the local economy than if the team had been contending.

Losing also takes a psychological toll. As the years of losing mount, fans become more jaded and less willing to believe that any sign of success is more than a temporary radar-blip that will be gone within a few weeks or months. Any hope of a buzz-creating pennant race is short-circuited and replaced by, at best, cautious optimism. And cautious optimism doesn't sell tickets.

Welcome to the world of the Cleveland Indians under Larry Dolan and his son Paul. They purchased the team in 2000 from Dick Jacobs for $323 million. Since 2002, when the so-called "Era of Champions" was formally imploded and the Dolan regime put their thumbprint on the franchise, the team has managed two winning seasons and one playoff appearance. That would be exactly the same number of winning seasons and playoff appearances the Lerner family managed in 13 seasons of owning the Browns.

This season doesn't look like it will reverse that trend. The 2012 Indians, supposedly the team that was going to turn the corner toward contention after showing some flashes of promise in 2011, have been all but scuttled on the rocks. An 11-game losing streak has plunged the team nine games off the pace in the AL Central as of Sunday. Unless Manny Acta's crew has a few miracles up their sleeve, the Indians are headed for their fifth straight .500-or-under season.

But the problems go much deeper than that. Years of nearly-fruitless drafting have rendered the farm system all but impotent. The system can crank out the occasional Jason Kipnis, a quality player with all-star upside, but the last true franchise-caliber position players to come through the Indians farm system were Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez 20 years ago.

The trading hasn't been much better. If you can't draft a organizational backbone, you have to trade for it. To that end, two of the most pivotal recent trades -- the 2008 trade of C.C. Sabathia to the Brewers and the 2009 trade of Cliff Lee to the Phillies -- have three and four years later yielded a grand total of Michael Brantley thus far. You can attribute some of it to bad luck, like Carlos Carrasco's Tommy John surgery and the ongoing severe arm problems of the recently-released Jason Knapp, but for the trades two Cy Young Award winners to yield an signle starting outfielder between them is a horrendous development.

The end result at the big-league level is predictable: A roster that simply lacks the firepower to keep up with the well-endowed White Sox and Tigers for 162 games. A fan base that does not believe in the product, and is voting with their wallets, planting the Indians at the bottom of baseball in attendance all season long.

Whenever Mark Shapiro or another member of the Tribe brass appears in the media, they have a list of reasons why the team is performing poorly at the gate: It’s a bad economy. Small market teams have to deal with some harsh realities. Their latest focus group says they need to offer more deals with parking and concessions. The success of the ‘90s was due to a perfect storm of circumstances that aren’t likely to be repeated.

The trouble is, the “small market blues” argument only holds so much water. When you consider the ease of getting in and out of Cleveland by car – as opposed to just about any larger city with more traffic – the Indians can draw from as far away as Canton, Sandusky and Erie, Pa. for a midweek night game during the summer. They have a pool of about 3 million people within a two-hour car ride who can realistically attend games. When you combine the Cleveland, Akron and Canton markets, it is the 18th largest metropolitan conglomeration in the country.

The “bad economy” argument is only so watertight, too. Yes, the economy is far worse than it was in the mid-‘90s. Yes, more people are financially strained and have far less in the way of disposable income. But that ignores the biggest number of all: 48.

That would be the number of years since the last Cleveland championship in any major-league sport. The fans of this region are so hungry for a ticker-tape parade, if they think one of their teams has a real shot at winning a title, the turnstiles will click. But you have to give them a reason to believe.

That brings us back to the Dolans and the question of whether they are good stewards of the Indians franchise anymore.

The fans seem to be done with the revolving-door rebuilds. If this offseason brings another purge of veterans for prospects, the fans are only going to become that much more jaded and cynical. Joe Casual Fan doesn’t want to hear about three-to-five years from now anymore. He’s been hearing about it on almost all Cleveland sports fronts for the balance of the past decade.

The only way to reverse the downward spiral is for ownership to commit tens of millions of dollars to improving the 25-man roster. An infusion of cash has to come from somewhere that will allow the Indians to invest heavily in the current product. After years of minimal results from the farm system, I really don’t see any other way for the team to lure the fans back en masse.

That has been a primary problem with how the Dolans have run things since 2002. They are solely reliant on what the team makes at the gate to sustain the on-field product. That’s fine, as long as the team is drawing. But when a team gets as far off the tracks as the Indians have, ownership needs to have a reservoir of rainy-day funds. Something has to jump-start success, and it’s not going to be the fans. That’s not the way it works in business. The proprietor has to bear the risk, make the investment, and get people interested in what they’re selling.

In modern times, multi-billionaires make the best team owners. The local-guy-made-good is a touching story, but if the local guy isn’t sitting on the type of fortune that will allow him to dip into the coffers for some well-placed acquisitions, the chances of enduring success go way down. At this point, I don’t see any way for the Dolans to rescue the Indians other than opening the checkbook and spending.

The ‘90s were indeed a perfect storm for the Indians. A robust economy, a new stadium and a team contending for the first time in 40 years. But the stars shouldn’t need to align that perfectly for the Indians to enjoy an era of contention again. The Indians should be able to contend even when the economy is sagging. They should be able to outspend a couple of bad moves here and there. And they should be able to put whatever resources are necessary into the farm system to minimize the number of bad moves that they need to outspend.

If the Dolans can’t make that happen, they should acknowledge that they can no longer do right by the Indians franchise, and the fans who haven’t seen a World Series victory in 64 years, and sell the team to owners who have deeper pockets and a desire to keep the team in Cleveland.

Sometimes, the burden of good stewardship is recognizing when you can’t be a good steward anymore.

Time for a change

In 1995, Art Modell used Al Lerner's private jet as a modern-day Appomattox Court House, signing the papers that ceded Cleveland's football franchise to Baltimore.

Lerner was not an active participant in facilitating Modell's move, but he was guilty by association, guilty of providing the house where the murder took place.  Since Lerner's plane was involved in Modell's escape 17 years ago, the Lerner family has been star-crossed in their football pursuits.

In 1998, Al Lerner used his vast wealth as a self-made billionaire to purchase the replacement franchise for the one that departed Cleveland on his jet. He outbid Larry and Charles Dolan, prior to Larry Dolan purchasing the Indians in 2000. From the outset, Lerner spared no expense in trying to give the new Browns everything money could buy. He lured flamboyant executive and Younstown native Carmen Policy away from the 49ers to run the show. Policy brought Dwight Clark with him as his handpicked general manager.

Policy talked a good game, but his organization-building acumen was found to be sorely lacking. Clark was outed as a clueless roster architect. Chris Palmer, their coaching hire, lasted all of two seasons and five victories.

Butch Davis took over, with a resume that included a stint as an assistant on Super Bowl winners in Dallas and as the coach who rebuilt the University of Miami football program as a national power. He led the Browns to their first competitive seasons -- a 7-9 record in 2001 and a 9-7 record with a playoff appearance in 2002, but much like Clark before him, he was exposed as a lousy drafter and an even worse locker-room manager. He was gone by 2005.

It was during Davis' tenure that Al Lerner died of brain cancer. His 2002 passing paved the way for his son, Randy, to take over the family businesses, including the Browns. Randy was a media-shy legacy owner from a privileged background. The rare media exposure he allowed seemed to indicate the junior Lerner was a quiet, intelligent person who was a seriously devoted Browns fan and seriously wanted the team to win.

The trouble is, he wasn't much of a football fan overall, and he wasn't much of a leader. With his personal interest leaning toward British soccer and a lack of desire to oversee the Browns organization on a daily basis, Lerner kept looking for the organizational guru who could take the burden of the Browns off his hands.

Phil Savage. Romeo Crennel. Eric Mangini. Mike Holmgren. They all came to Cleveland with impressive resumes. The first three went the way of Clark and Davis, exposed as poor matches for their roles. Holmgren has thus far overseen 5-11 and 4-12 seasons, and the clock is ticking.

It all doesn't really seem to make sense, given the resumes of the men who have come through Cleveland, tasked with rescuing the once-proud Cleveland Browns name. They came from key positions on successful franchises such as the 49ers, Cowboys, Ravens, Patriots and Packers. They have all failed miserably to this point.

It's as if the Lerner family has been cursed with some kind of anti-Midas touch when it comes to football. Millions upon millions of dollars spent on trying to turn the Browns around, and the net result has been a endless parade of last-place finishes and turnover at key positions.

Which is why the news this past week that Lerner is apparently on the verge of selling the Browns to a group led my Pilot Travel Centers president Jimmy Haslam III is bittersweet.

Selling the Browns before completing a turnaround had to be smong the toughest decision Lerner has ever had to make. Lerner doesn't want his family's name -- associated with success and philanthropy in other arenas -- to go down in history as failure on the NFL stage. He doesn't want his father's legacy to bear the scars. But year after year of losing, year after year of best-laid plans going awry, takes its toll.

In an interview with Scene Magazine last year, Lerner expressed a desire to see the Browns' rebuild through to completion, but "At some point, if things never change, you have to look at yourself and decide if you're the man for the job,"

If this sale happens, Lerner apparently answered that question for himself. In terms of heart and hope, he is the right man for the job. In terms of execution and involvement, he is sorely lacking. The first two qualities make you a good fan. The latter two qualities make you a good executive.

Haslam will become a man of increasing interest in the coming weeks, barring something slamming the brakes on the sale. He's the son of Pilot founder Jim Haslam Jr., who was an offensive lineman on the University of Tennessee's 1951 national championship team. The Haslam family -- which also includes Jim's son and Jimmy's brother Bill Haslam, the current governor of Tennessee -- have donated millions of dollars to the university and are highly active in community causes in their hometown of Knoxville and throughout eastern Tennessee.

Browns fans have a degree of pre-emptive suspicion about Haslam, who has been a minority owner of the Steelers since 2008 and a professed "1,000-percent Steeler fan." Fortunately, we're talking about business, not rooting interests. The reported sale price of the Browns could top $900 million. It's highly doubtful that Haslam would lay down that kind of money with a nefarious ulterior motive aimed at increasing the Steelers' already-vast competitive advantage. Saboteurs make bad businessmen.

Could Haslam move the Browns? The Browns have a lease with the city that runs through 2028. But leases can be broken through litigation and compromise. Modell did it. Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest media market, has been without an NFL team since 1996. It could be a tempting target for an ownership regime that has no ties to Cleveland.

But there is nothing in the Browns' current situation that would indicate that they're ripe for a move. Their stadium is still modern and they sell out every home game despite the poor on-field product. Holmgren told the media on Friday that Lerner asked for and received an assurance that the team would not be moved. That's about all the evidence and assurance you can ask to receive, short of getting it directly from Haslam. If and when this sale becomes final, Haslam will appear at a press conference, where the subject is sure to come up.

Who stands to risk the most from an ownership change? It could be Holmgren himself, and his handpicked staff. Haslam will be eager to make his mark as an NFL owner, and if the Browns once again disappoint on the field this season, the odds of Haslam cleaning house and bringing in his own people go way up.

As it is, Holmgren was brought in to serve as the organizational figurehead because Lerner is so camera-shy. With a new owner, a new dynamic develops with Holmgren, and that might be enough to hasten Holmgren's exit from the organization.

You should be more concerned about the futures of GM Tom Heckert and head coach Pat Shurmur anyway. They are the primary football decision-makers. It is within the owner's rights to hire his own people, but it would still be another chapter in a Browns story frought with instability and turnover. The revolving door has to stop at some point.

There is always uncertainty with any change at the highest levels of an organization. But in this case, the uncertainty of what Haslam brings to the table is probably preferable to the known quantity of the Lerner family. No one wants to see Randy Lerner go off gently into that good night as a football failure. But he and his dad had 13 years to get this right, and they never did. It is time for someone else to come aboard and captain the ship. It has been time for quite a while.

The guessing game

Mock drafts, like NCAA Tournament brackets, have been swept up in the fantasy sports culture. If your team is picking high in the draft, no matter the sport, you probably spent the weeks and months leading up to the draft reading reports and analyzing mock drafts until your bloodshot eyes scream for Visine.

As a result, you know exactly who the experts say should be selected at each pick. You've identified the best and the best of the rest, and you will become very testy if your team reaches outside of that consensus-designated boundary.

For the 2012 NBA Draft, the national basketball pundits had identified Kentucky forward Anthony Davis as the single biggest prize, a deadbolt-lock to go first overall. After Davis, they had identified a group of five other prospects as suitable selections for the teams that followed -- including the Cavaliers, picking at No. 4.

So we in Cleveland set our sights on a small selection of prospects and made up our minds that we'd be happy -- in varying degrees, depending on who you're talking to -- with any member of that group. If the Cavs took Kentucky forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Florida guard Bradley Beal, North Carolina forward Harrison Barnes, Connecticut center Andre Drummond or Kansas forward Thomas Robinson, some of us would have been less thrilled than others depending on the specific selection, but we could at least convince ourselves that the Cavs got one of the best players in the draft, and had secured a major building block for the future.

Then came draft night. And we found out that Cavs GM Chris Grant wipes his nose on mock drafts.

A year after causing a stir by reaching to select Tristan Thompson with the No. 4 pick, Grant did it again by reaching to select sophomore Syracuse guard Dion Waiters.

A report by ESPN.com writer and former Cavs beat reporter Brian Windhorst said the Cavs had whittled the No. 4 pick down to two players -- Kidd-Gilchrist and Waiters. When the Bobcats selected Kidd-Gilchrist with the second pick, the Cavs' decision was made for them.

The Cavs' front office is apparently very high on Waiters -- a prospect who granted no workouts to individual teams, possibly because he already had a promise from a lottery team. Whatever information the Cavs were able to amass on Waiters came from game film and the NBA draft combine in Chicago last month.

Whatever the Cavs saw sold them on Waiters' NBA potential, not just as a competent starter, but a first-option scorer on a winning team -- in other words, a legitimate star player. A player who was worthy of the fourth overall pick.

But convincing a fan based that was primed for names such as Barnes, Kidd-Gilchrist and Beal is going to take a bit more work. The Cavs are asking the fan base to take a leap of faith and see the star guard waiting to emerge from the shell of a backup combo guard, which was Waiters' role at Syracuse. A backup combo guard who, at 6'-4" and 215 pounds, is shorter and thinner than the prototypical NBA shooting guard.

As a fan, you flash back to Jim Paxson referring to Dajuan Wagner as "Allen Iverson with muscles," then try to swat that memory away. Do the likes of Iverson and Dwyane Wade prove that shorter combo guards can succeed in the NBA, or are they supremely-talented exceptions, thereby proving that shorter guards are indeed fighting an uphill battle against bigger, stronger competition?

Waiters may not have started, but at 24 minutes per game as a sophomore, he did play starter's minutes. He averaged 12.6 points per game, which projects to about 19 PPG in 36 minutes -- a more-than-respectable output for a realistic NBA workload. So he can score. And, heck, Wagner would likely have become a productive offensive force in the NBA had his career not been derailed by a severe intestinal disorder. Talent is talent.

But there's that nagging issue of Waiters' lack of size, and the fact that he very nearly brought Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim to his wit's end as a freshman with his utter refusal to play defense. Waiters' attitude reportedly improved as a sophomore, but his effort and competency at the defensive end bears watching.

It could be that the Cavs drafted a super-sub. Waiters might find himself hopelessly overmatched at the defensive end by bigger, stronger NBA two-guards. His NBA calling might be the exact same job he held in college -- coming off the bench for a quick-burst shot of offense against the other team's backups.

It's a necessary role on a winning team. If the offense stagnates, you need a player who can come into the game, take the ball and put it in the basket. It can force the other team to pull their backups and reinsert the starters sooner rather than later, which can work to your advantage later in games, and especially later in hard-fought playoff series.

If Waiters pans out as a new-generation Vinnie Johnson, the Cavs certainly could have done worse. But if a top-five pick yields a non-starter in any way, shape or form, it's a questionable use of resources.

After the Waiters pick, the news feeds were still churning with rumors that the Cavs were feverishly trying to make some kind of move. At first, we heard reports that they were still in hot pursuit of Harrison Barnes, selected at No. 7 by Golden State. Those rumors died off fairly quickly. But the Cavs did make a move.

At No. 17, they traded their three remaining picks -- Nos. 24, 33 and 34 -- to Dallas for the rights to North Carolina center Tyler Zeller. The pick was met with less criticism than the Waiters pick, but it still generated some controversy for those who thought three picks was too steep of a price to pay.

The Cavs, like most teams with fours pick, don't want to sign that many rookies at one time. Each NBA team can only carry 15 players, and teams as a general rule don't want almost a third of the roster occupied by rookies -- not even rebuilding teams like the Cavs.

It makes sense, then, to take your remaining picks and trade them for one player who you believe can make a real difference to your team. Zeller is a 7-footer who lacks girth, and might have a limited ability to pack on more muscle, but he is a polished four-year senior with a reputation for good post moves, a solid midrange jumper and a high basketball IQ.

Most of us probably would have been satisfied if the Cavs came out of last week's draft with one safe pick and one calculated-risk pick. The trouble is, most of us wanted the safe pick at 4 and the risky pick at 24. Instead, we got a roll of the dice at 4 and a trade-up for a safer pick at 17.

Myself, I really don't care if Chris Grant, Byron Scott and the rest of the Cavs' decision-makers walk to their own beat when it comes to building a roster. But the beat better lead to sweet music in May and June sometime in the foreseeable future.

Right now, all we have is a front office with a hard-to-decipher philosophy on drafting, and a fan base that can only scratch their heads, shrug their shoulders and do their best to try and trust that Grant and his cohorts know what they're doing.

LeBron was right

LeBron James was right. The way he left was wrong, but his reasoning was right. He needed better teammates to win a title.

Not because Dwyane Wade is better than Mo Williams, or Chris Bosh is better than Zydrunas Ilgauskas. But because LeBron respects those guys in a way he didn't respect any of his teammates here. Because the Cavs never had a superstar-commanding presence like Pat Riley in the front office.

We thought LeBron signed a shortened contract extension in 2006 because he wanted to pressure the Cavs front office to remain aggressive in building a contender around him. Actually, he signed the shortened extension to give him an escape hatch, which he used two years ago.

There was never any real sense of urgency for LeBron while he was here. Obviously, he wanted to win. But he didn't need to win. How could LeBron develop any sense of desperation when he was surrounded by legions of people both inside and outside the Cavs organization who would do anything to placate him? When he looked at the roster and saw nobody he viewed as close to an equal? When that 2010 escape pod was fueled up and ready to launch, should he decide to use it?

He simply couldn't win a title here. He didn't respect the organization enough to get desperate, to fight tooth-and-nail for a championship.

That all changed when he went to Miami, when he was faced with upholding the legacy of Riley, when he shared a locker room with Wade and Bosh, two adopted brothers from the 2003 draft class. Wade is now 30 and his body is starting to wear down from the years of brutal punishment absorbed on countless kamikaze drives into the lane. His game is gradually eroding under the weight of deteriorating ankles, knees and shoulders. In a couple of years, Wade might be a slow, depleted, pain-wracked has-been on retirement's doorstep.

Somehow, cementing the legacy of a close friend, someone you view as a competitive equal, is infintely more motivating than trying to do the same for Mo Williams or Anderson Varejao.

The first NBA title for LeBron was the culmination of two years of growth. After seven years in the cocoon of Cleveland, where no one carried the sway to demand he suffer some hard knocks and grow up, he left town in one of the most immature, self-aggrandizing ways imaginable, making his departure into an hourlong spectacle on national TV.

Then, when the public turned on him and the media made him into a villain, he added fuel to the fire by spending much of the 2010-11 season whining about how nobody likes him, how everyone wanted him to fail.

Then the Heat lost the 2011 NBA Finals to Dallas after holding a 2-1 series lead, mostly because LeBron's team disappeared in the fourth quarters of the final three games.

The summer of 2011 was the nadir for LeBron. He took a major gamble abdicating his throne in Cleveland to hook up with two other superstars in a setting where he would face extreme criticism for failure. And that's exactly what was happening.

In Cleveland, that's where we thought the story ended. LeBron the overhyped crybaby who lacked the fortitude and icy resolve to ever become a true champion, like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant.

It's true that LeBron lacks the nasty streak of Jordan or Bryant. He doesn't have an internal gland that manufactures competitive fury. But to say he's a wimp who lacks the heart and stomach to be a champion is, at the expense of Cleveland's collective schadenfreude, flat-out wrong.

What motivates LeBron? Go back to his high-school days at St. Vincent-St. Mary in Akron. As an only child, LeBron craved a sense of belonging and togetherness within a group, which he found with his high-school teammates en route to three state titles.

In Cleveland, he never had that. He had a small army of people looking to him, asking him to be the savior -- teammates, the coaching staff, the front office, a fan base starving for a championship parade. As the saying goes, it's lonely at the top. LeBron resented the burden placed on him. He longed to recapture the special relationship he and his teammates had at SVSM. In the NBA, it's all but impossible, but he figured the closest he could come was to partner with Wade and Bosh in Miami.

Which brings us to the 2012 Finals, Wade on the wrong side of 30 and Bosh pulling himself back from an abdominal strain suffered in the second round to average 14 points and 9 rebounds for the series.

Everything that LeBron experienced in the two years since he left Cleveland finally clicked. The criticism, the failure, hitting emotional bedrock, learning from experience, going through painful rounds of self-discovery. The result: He finally played like a man possessed with the desire to taste championship champagne. He neutralized Oklahoma City's beefy interior. He mauled James Harden, who is one of the best perimeter defenders in the game. He outplayed Kevin Durant, points per game totals aside.

For the first time, we saw LeBron play hungry, desperate, obsessed with getting the ring that had eluded him for nine years. For the first time since high school, LeBron had tapped into what truly motivates him. He had found a new band of brothers, and he couldn't let them down again.

That's not to say LeBron is a selfless saint. We only need to go back to the summer of 2010 to remind ourselves that's not the case. But he is anything but a lone-wolf assassin. He needs to belong before he can need to win.

While we all would have rather LeBron's maturation happen on the Cavs' watch, at least it happened, and he finally overcame his demons enough to win a ring. If it represents a corner turned, LeBron and the Heat will probably win several more. Father Time will probably prevent LeBron from equalling Jordan's six, but three or four isn't out of the question.

It's time to throw away the 2010 images of LeBron, sitting across from Jim Gray as he announced he was taking his talents to South Beach, then talking about winning five, six, seven titles like it was as easy as breathing. It is a different superstar we saw this spring. One who grew up and finally appreciated how difficult it is to win a title, how much you need to care, how much you need to find what makes you care.

Even with all the bridges burned between LeBron and Cleveland, it's still pleasing to see him realize his potential as a champion. He is, quite simply, the most gifted basketball player to ever set foot on a court.

If LeBron went down in history alongside ringless court jester Charles Barkley instead of the game's true royalty, that would have been a crime against basketball. If you think any differently, you need to take off the Cleveland-colored glasses and look again.

The quarterback puzzle

Seneca Wallace is right. Someone has to go.

With the Browns presently carrying quarterbacks Colt McCoy, Thaddeus Lewis and Wallace behind presumed starter Brandon Weeden, someone is the odd man out. Chances are, it won't be Lewis, who rides the bench for cheap, and who team president Mike Holmgren seems to like as a developmental quarterback.

That means Colt and Wallace are left to battle for the No. 2 slot behind Weeden. Somebody is going to end up traded or released between now and the season opener against Philadelphia on Sept. 9.

My question is, why not both?

It has very little to do with Colt's brother, Case, pre-emptively spouting off on Twitter following what turned out to be a fake ESPN report that Colt had been traded to the Eagles. It has very little to do with the notion that you can't keep your current starter and your ex-starter in the same locker room, for fear of fracturing the team. It has very little to do with anything that spews forth from Wallace's maw, which tends to be open a little too much at times.

It has everything to do with the simple facts of the situation.

Holmgren and/or GM Tom Heckert and/or owner Randy Lerner, depending on who you believe, pushed for the selection of Weeden at the 22nd pick precisely because the mounting organization-wide opinion was that Colt lacked the necessary physical tools to excel as an NFL QB. He didn't have the arm to make all the necessary throws. He didn't possess the reflexes to make split-second decisions. His lack of height exacerbated the other two problems. Wallace, at 5'-11" and just over 200 pounds, isn't in a much better position.

In short, the Browns had a pair of short, suspect-armed, quick-footed, scrambling quarterbacks who would just as soon make plays with their legs. Weeden is at the other end of the spectrum. He's a mountain of a man compared to Colt and Wallace -- 6'-4", 225 pounds with a long bullwhip of a throwing arm. He's going to make his dropback, make his read and throw the ball. His legs are only mobile enough to shuffle around in the pocket, perhaps buying a couple seconds to make a throw before the pass rush closes in.

So if you're going to give Weeden the first-team reps during OTAs, if you're presumably going to make him the first-team QB in training camp, if all signs point to Weeden under center on Sept. 9, barring a cataclysmic turn of events, why would you take out an insurance policy in the form of two quarterbacks who have completely different playing styles from the starter?

If Weeden were to suffer an injury, the Browns' entire offense would have to adjust on the fly to a QB with a completely different playing style. Maybe a veteran offense could make the transition. The 49ers of the 1980s won with both pocket-passing Joe Montana and fleet-footed Steve Young under center. But for an offense full of youngsters, in just its second year of learning the intricate West Coast Offense scheme, putting them in a position to potentially go from protecting a rifleman to throwing downfield blocks for a scampering human pinball doesn't seem like a recipe for success.

The better option, it would seem, would be to cut ties with Wallace and Colt -- ideally trading at least one of them -- and bringing in a veteran backup who is a dropback passer in the mold of Weeden. Free agent A.J. Feeley, who is well-schooled in the West Coast Offense, would seem like a logical fit. He's 35, so he wouldn't be more than a stopgap. He's 8-10 in his career as a starter. But at least he'd offer some degree of continuity in the event he had to step in and play. And for a young team that still doesn't figure to do any contending this year, continuity is one of the most important seeds to sow and cultivate. Lack of continuity, lack of stability and lack of organizational philosophy, have been smothering the Browns since they returned to the league 13 years ago.

Why give the gremlins a chance to creep back in?

If you still want to hold onto Colt with the idea that he might not get the job done as a starter, but he could be a quality backup, ask yourself the difference between a starter and a backup.

One play. One James Harrison shot to the head. One wrong-way knee twist. One rolled ankle. That's the difference between clipboard duty and the starting assignment -- perhaps for the rest of the season.

So if Colt is an inadequate starter in your book, he should be an inadequate backup, too. Same goes for any other quarterback. If you won't trust him to lead the team onto the field, you shouldn't trust him to wear the ballcap and hold the clipboard.

And even if Colt develops into a QB who is capable of starting and playing at a reasonably high level, he still won't develop as a plug-in replacement for Weeden.

It's simply the decision the Browns' brass has made: They wanted a tall, big-armed pocket passer. If that's the template for Holmgren and Heckert's ideal QB, Colt isn't that, and Wallace isn't that.

Even if it means bringing in a stale retread like Feeley, it still means a much-needed fresh start for the bench portion of the Browns' QB corps -- which is very nearly as important as the fresh start Weeden is giving them in the starting role.

Re-entering the living world

After 16-plus months, I'm going to try to re-launch this thing, with at least several columns a month. As always, my columns will also be cross-posted at www.theclevelandfan.com.

Excess baggage

Baron Davis' career has followed a fairly typical story arc for an NBA player of his skill level.

At his best, he's been a star. Not a league-defining superstar, but a prolific scorer and the best player on his team. It was the role he filled during his first career stop with the Hornets and during his most productive career stop with the Warriors.

His stint as a 20 point per game scorer in Don Nelson's 78-r.p.m. Warriors offense artificially inflated his value, and in 2008 earned him a 5-year, $65 million contract from the league's sucker-betters, the Los Angeles Clippers.

Davis was overpaid. His contract began to strain the Clippers, and they started looking for a team to take the lead weight off their hands.

Thursday, the Clippers found their dance partner in the Cavaliers. The Cavs are armed with the deep and open pocketbook of owner Dan Gilbert and were in the market for a first-round draft pick, which the Clips were willing to part with, if it meant offloading Davis' contract.

Exit Mo Williams and Jamario Moon, enter Davis and what appears to be a second lottery pick in the 2011 draft.

In Cleveland, we know the trade was made for the pick. Davis is collateral damage. He won't be here when the Cavs start making their upswing through the Eastern Conference in a few years -- or at least, that's the plan.

But in the interim, the Cavs are stuck with Davis. He's signed for two more years and due about $28 million over that span, so his contract is going to be difficult to buy out in any type of lump sum. The length and size of the contract also mean he'll be nearly impossible to trade until the 2012 offseason at the earliest, when his deal with reach its final year. And by then, a new collective bargaining agreement will likely be in effect, throwing another spoonful of uncertainty into the recipe.

The finances make the Davis situation a calculated risk. His attitude is a wild card that makes the deal combustible.

Davis has long been known as a mercurial player. He's quarreled with coaches and has never been afraid of expressing displeasure with a situation. His most famous friction was with Byron Scott, when Scott coached Davis in New Orleans. Davis once likened Scott to a dictator in an interview.

That would be the same Byron Scott who now coaches the Cavs. Reportedly, the two have smoothed things over from their Hornets days. But distance alters perception. With the two sharing a locker room again, proximity could cause old arguments to resurface.

Then you factor in the losing, and the fact that Davis is going from warm-weather L.A. -- his hometown -- to cold-weather Cleveland. If Davis was losing in L.A., he was at least comfortable. In Cleveland, he'll be losing, in unfamiliar surroundings, enduring miserable weather and reunited with a coach he couldn't get along with five years ago.

It doesn't exactly sound like a recipe for a successful career stop.

Ultimately, it's up to Davis to be accepting of his new situation, and if he isn't, that's his problem. He's a 31-year-old veteran, and he should be expected to suck it up and play hard for his substantial paycheck, no matter where his team calls home or what place it occupies in the standings. But that brings accountability into the equation, which is a foreign concept to much of the NBA.

Davis might not play hard. He might not get along with Scott. He might produce a lousy attitude. And unfortunately, that does become the Cavs' problem, especially next year whenever the Cavs' two lottery picks venture onto the practice floor for the first time.

Davis is a veteran with all-star credentials. He's going to pull weight with any young players. He's going to be a role model of sorts. The question is, what will Davis be teaching? How to use a screen to get open, or how to sabotage your coach? How to set up the offense, or how to get your touches and chucks, and forget about everyone else?

A lot of Cavs fans want to see Duke point guard prospect Kyrie Irving in a Cavs uniform next season. If you want Irving, you do not want Davis to be his first mentor in the NBA unless you can somehow ensure that Davis the all-star will be doing the teaching, and not Davis the moody diva.

Somehow, Scott and his staff are going to have to ensure that the latter Davis shows up, because unless Davis suffers a major injury that keeps him away from the team for a long period of time, they'll have to figure out how to assimilate Davis and all his idiosyncrasies into a team of wet-clay youngsters that will begin a critical formative process starting next season.

This might be a throwaway career stop for Davis, but after this season, it's not a throwaway period of time for the Cavs. Those two divergent viewpoints have to be reconciled. Something tells me it's not going to be easy.

The Cavs should receive high marks for making the deal. Dan Gilbert once again opened his wallet and paid big money to try and benefit his team's on-court product. He assumed a burdensome contract to get a draft pick that, properly used, can help expedite the Cavs' rebuilding process. Chris Grant deserves a thumbs-up for waiting until the deadline to get the highest possible pick.

One NBA columnist thinks Mo should have been dealt last summer. If he had been dealt last summer, it likely would have been to a playoff team. So the Cavs could have received a pick at 20 or below by dealing last summer, or they could have gotten an unrestricted lottery-bound pick by waiting. Decisions....

Of course, this is a draft weak on star power, and you might be able to get the same type of player with the third pick that you could with the 13th. I'll still take my chances with a pair of high picks. If any cream rises to the top during the NCAA Tournament, I'd want a shot at it.

That's the good part. The more iffy part is life with Baron. You can hope for an injury -- which just seems wrong -- you can hope for a mature, professional Baron Davis to show up. Or you can hope all of this is avoided and the Cavs negotiate a buyout with Davis by the end of the month.

Davis is supposed to report to the Cavs by Saturday. If that doesn't happen, that last plot might thicken. Stay tuned.

Awaiting further instruction

For years, the Browns have needed a First Monday in January Guy.

The first Monday in January is normally the start of the offseason for perennial dregs like the Browns. It's the day when the postmortem begins. It's the day when the front office takes stock of what went wrong and starts formulating the initial steps to try and fix it.

It's also the day when the coach often gets fired.

Mike Holmgren was brought to Cleveland and paid a lot of Randy Lerner's money to be the man making the calls on the first Monday in January. To be the organizational guru who can identify what is wrong with his team and how to correct it.

Monday, he made his first big call, firing Eric Mangini after a second straight 5-11 season. It's a move that is at the same time defensible and questionable.

In a business driven by wins and losses, Mangini didn't improve. In the division, he didn't improve, leading the Browns to a 1-5 record for the second straight year. His team appeared poised for bigger and better things after a pair of impressive wins over the Saints and Patriots, then fell apart in the second half of the campaign, sustaining embarrassing losses to the Bills and Bengals, and punctuating the season with a 41-9 humiliation at the hands of the Steelers.

But the Browns played competitive football for all but the final game. Mangini got the most out of a very limited roster for the season's first three months. Injuries to Colt McCoy and Scott Fujita slicked the Browns' second-half slide.

This truly was a judgment call for Holmgren, and by his own admission during his afternoon press conference, he hadn't totally made up his mind on Mangini's fate until Monday morning.

"I didn't sleep very well (Sunday) night," Holmgren said during his press conference, as quoted on Cleveland.com. "I was up a fair amount of the night thinking about this, thinking what I might have to do and trying to make the correct decision."

Mangini is a good coach. Not a great coach, but a good coach. Which is far more than we can say for any other Browns coach in the expansion era. The Browns might gain more from Mangini's replacement, or they might not. But they definitely lost something with his dismissal. They lost the coach who did the initial dirty work of taking the Browns from a circus of ineptitude to something resembling a competent, professional organization. And he took a lot of heat from the players and media to get there.

Mangini came in with the wrong idea about himself as a football guru in the mold of Bill Belichick. He botched the 2009 draft and alienated former GM George Kokinis. But when the time came to reform, Mangini swallowed his pride and became a team player with Holmgren.

He's a better coach than he was two years ago. His time in Cleveland made him a better coach. You could make a case that Mangini deserved a shot to see his vision for the Browns through to completion, maybe with a new offensive coordinator and a couple of new receivers.

That's what makes all of this more than your average bilge-water purging of NFL coaching flotsam. That's what makes this potentially a polarizing move by Holmgren.

Holmgren has placed himself on the hot seat by doing exactly what every one of us wanted him to do when he took the team president's job a year ago: put his stamp on the organization and make this a Holmgren team.

That's about to happen. Holmgren the football executive is about to build an entire franchise in his image. He plugged in his front office last year, and it yielded arguably the best free agent and draft class of the Browns' expansion era. Now we get to see if the former coach who has thrice tread a Super Bowl sideline has the right stuff to hire the best possible coach for this team.

But really, what is Holmgren's vision for the Browns' on-field product? It might still be murky, even to the man himself. Which, honestly, is a little disconcerting for those of us who want to see the most accomplished Browns executive since Ernie Accorsi move forward with a definitive plan for rescuing the franchise from the NFL's sewer.

It would be one thing if Holmgren were dead set on building the Browns around the West Coast offense and Bill Walsh football. That was never going to be Mangini. Sometimes, the pieces just don't fit. But according to Holmgren's comments on Monday, even that isn't an absolute. He says he wants the best candidates. He'll beat the shrubs looking for the best coaching candidates, no matter what corner of the football universe they come from.

"If I hire a coach, I'm going to hire a coach," he told reporters. "He's going to run what he runs, what he's comfortable with, what he knows. Will (the West Coast system) be a part of the consideration in the process? Absolutely, but I'm not going to interfere that way as the president"

Holmgren stated he won't return to the sidelines himself at this point, which eliminates the possibility that Holmgren was angling for the job all along. Apparently, he truly wants to build this team from the executive level.

So what does Holmgren want? The best possible people. That broad definition serves as Cleveland's guiding light for the time being. Maybe the coming weeks and months make the picture a little clearer. For now, we have a team president with respect-demanding credentials discarding a decent coach with room to improve for an undetermined better coach.

Holmgren has the hammer and chisel. He could sculpt a classical masterpiece to rival Michelangelo's "David," or he could scuplt a backyard garden gnome. Right now, this really could go either way.

Frankly, I was hoping for a little more from Holmgren. And I'm going to be hoping for a lot more in the coming months.

On winter's doorstep

Last Wednesday, Bob Feller died. Last Thursday, the Sun came up -- as much as it can in Ohio, on one of the shortest days of the year.

Last Thursday, life went on. Just as it went on when Art Modell gave Baltimore a new lease on NFL life at our expense. Just like when we had to suffer the final-straw indignity of watching him win a Super Bowl five years later. Just like when LeBron told us we weren't good enough for him anymore, mere months ago.

There was something of a numb feeling about last Thursday. Like waking up the morning after Game 7 of the ALCS three years ago, Game 7 of the World Series 13 years ago, after the AFC title games in '86 and '87. It's over. It's really over.

Yeah, those were games. This was a life. But Feller represented so much about Cleveland that we want to remember. With his passing, we lost one of our most important links to that past, when Cleveland was the stately lady of the lakeshore, the manufacturing mecca that helped build America into a 20th Century world power on the sweaty brows and strained muscles of the men and women who went to work at the factories and mills each day.

A time when billowing smokestacks were a sign of profit and riches, not an environmental taboo. A time when the Indians were winners, a World Series parade was fresh in everyone's memory, and Cleveland was the polar opposite of the national punchline it would become in the ensuing decades.

Paul Simon wondered where Joe DiMaggio had gone. But even when times became less simple and supposed American innocence withered in the face of social change and war in Southeast Asia, the Yankees still had Mantle. A decade later, they had Jackson and a pair of World Series titles. Then Donnie Baseball, then Derek Jeter and more titles. Now their roster is a monument to excess, even by their own standards. The cupboard was either stocked, or on its way to being stocked.

DiMaggio has been gone for 11 years. But DiMaggio's Yankees never really died. The names just change.

In Cleveland, the days of Feller are truly never coming back.

So it's fitting that Feller left us in December. A moment of silence at 7:05 p.m. before the first pitch of a midsummer home game wouldn't have yanked us out of our charmed summer existence nearly enough. We need the winter to meditate on the loss of Feller and everything he means to us and our history. We need him to not be there to throw out the first pitch of spring training, as he has been for years. We need March to become April, May, June and July, and all of the routines of what promises to be another mundane, non-contending Tribe season have a gaping hole where Feller used to be.

Then, we'll know what we've lost.

Last Thursday, the Sun came up cold and distant, offering little more than filtered light-droplets from behind hazy clouds. Downtown, street grates belched steam that covered salt-encrusted roads and sidewalks. The cold air sliced against open skin at the slightest movement.

If you wanted to pay tribute to Feller at his statue on the plaza by Gate C at Progressive Field, you had to want it. And people did come. At 10:30 in the morning, a few items lay on the base of the statue, which was splattered with salt residue like every outdoor surface in Cleveland.

A bouquet of yellow flowers. A small American flag, draped over itself. A package of sunflower seeds. A red capital A cut from a wooden block, to honor Feller's service on the U.S.S. Alabama during World War II. On the back, a note scribbled in pen:

"Mr Feller, thanks for fighting for our freedom!! Rest in peace & here's your lucky 'A!!'"

Cleveland's only sporting king is gone. Jim Brown wanted to make movies. LeBron wanted to go to school with the cool kids. That leaves Feller. A proud man with a lion's heart and an ego to match. The perfect combination of dominance and cockiness that exemplified our town, our region, in a different time, when you put a baseball career on hold indefinitely to go fight for your country because it was the right thing to do, then came back and helped your team win a World Series a few years later.

Anything was possible, and it wasn't just the hollow bloviations of a local political candidate stumping for votes.

Above the trinkets left at the Feller statue on Thursday morning, a yellow bow hung from Feller's bronze pitching hand. It's frozen in the split-second in which Feller is at the apex of his delivery, left leg airborne, ready to shove a 98-mile per hour heater down the throat of Ted Williams, or buckle DiMaggio's knees with a table-drop curve.

This was Feller at his zenith. Cleveland at its zenith. Something to admire. Something to fear. Something to reckon with. Something that now exists only in black and white and bronze.

You're the man now, Dan

The king is dead. But he can still play like one when he's motivated enough.

Maybe LeBron will wilt against the Celtics or Magic in the playoffs again next spring. Maybe his time in Miami will yield no rings. Maybe he'll retire closer to verbal sparring partner Charles Barkley than personal idol Michael Jordan on the spectrum of NBA superstars.

We can watch that play out over the next five months. But what is certain is LeBron's superlative talent, which by itself is more than enough to polish off one of the league's dregs in an early December regular season game.

National media scribes are hailing LeBron's 38-point effort in a 118-90 obliteration of the Cavs on Thursday night as a triumphant return to his old stomping grounds. LeBron gets the laurel wreath and we get painted as petty scoundrels who would dare boo such a majestic talent for having the audacity to leave our smelly burg for bigger and better things.

But LeBron's performance could have been predicted. Maybe he fed off the jeers. Maybe he was back in his comfort zone playing on the court he called home for seven years. But more likely, he was facing a team that simply didn't have the personnel to stop him.

That's the real story to come out of Thursday's game. The Heat can measure success based on the rings they win or don't win. The Cavs' forthcoming challenge is based on survival. This team is in a world of hurt, and the responsibility of yanking this franchise out of the muck will fall squarely on the shoulders of a very rich man from Livonia, Mich. who sat courtside and simmered as the Heat toyed with the Cavs.

The man is Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, now the central figure of the franchise with LeBron drinking in the vices of Miami.

Gilbert has a history of making smart business moves. He's shown an ability to get creative with developing revenue sources. But he's also a very emotional person, and he took LeBron's departure quite personally.

Gilbert did have reasons to be angry. LeBron cut off all contact with Gilbert in the weeks leading up to his decision. There were strong indications that LeBron had inappropriate contact with members of the Heat, including Dwyane Wade, while he was still under contract with the Cavs.

Then LeBron turned his departure into an hourlong TV spectacle, rejecting us in front of an international audience.

Gilbert flew off the handle with an open letter roasting LeBron in the hours following "The Decision." And you could make a case that he hasn't flown anywhere near the handle since.

Now, Gilbert's obsession is showing the world how LeBron, his cronies and the Heat conspired to wrong him and his franchise. He's retained a legal team, which is reportedly going through records as far back as 2008, trying to find evidence of collusion and premeditation that Gilbert can drop on the desk of David Stern.

In Cleveland, we think it's cool to have a justice-minded owner willing to go the Woodward and Bernstein route to try and take down LeBron. But at what price?

What is obsessing over how LeBron wronged the Cavs and Cleveland really going to accomplish? LeBron is still going to make his one or two trips to Cleveland over the next six years, he's probably going to administer beatdowns more often than not, and his teams will be far more successful than the Cavs, regardless of whether he's now a member of the Heat for life, or has yet another team in his future.

LeBron's not going to jail for this. He didn't commit a statutory crime, no matter how much damning evidence Gilbert can dredge up. He's not going to be kicked out of the league. He won't get suspended. He probably would, at most, incur a fine.

As for the Heat? The most severe punishment the league could levy against the Heat for improper contact with LeBron would be revoked draft picks. The Cavs currently own two future Miami first-rounders as part of the sign-and-trade the two teams orchestrated to complete LeBron's defection.

Is using those picks in 2017 and 2019 a fair price to pay for having a conspiracy theory proved right?

To step back and look at Gilbert's behavior since LeBron's departure, it seems as if he's more focused on getting even with LeBron than tending to the sorry state of his team. It's still early, there hasn't been enough time for events to unfold, but it's a disturbing trend to keep an eye on.

At some point, the obsession with LeBron-hate will subside for even the most passionate of fans. And all that will be left is the reality that the Cavs are a league bottom-feeder facing a lengthy rebuild. Gilbert needs to admit that reality. There is a time for stubborn defiance, and a time to cool off and get rational.

Now that LeBron has come back to Cleveland and made his emphatic statement of dominance over his haters, now might be the time to let LeBron go and let nature run its course in South Beach, where it is far from guaranteed that three massive egos are going to be able to adapt enough to win a single title, let alone form the dynasty expected of them.

Now is definitely the time for Gilbert to assess where his team is, and where he is as an owner. Along with Rock Financial and Quicken Loans, the Cavs are another of Gilbert's ventures poised to hit the skids in a down economy. Gilbert needs to tend to the Cavs like he would any of his other businesses when they're hurting.

When Gilbert took over the Cavs, many in Cleveland worried that he'd become a meddlesome owner who would make ill-informed decisions on personnel and treat the Cavs like a personal toy. Instead, he proved himself as one of the best owners a Cleveland team has ever had, pumping money into the franchise infrastructure, building a new practice facility, making improvements to his team's arena, and signing off on extra payroll burden to try and win a title.

With LeBron gone, the Cavs need that smart-yet-aggressive owner to remain in the building more than ever.

If Gilbert keeps stalking LeBron while the Cavs continue to crumble, he's back to being the owner we feared we were getting when he bought the team in 2005.

LeBron's defection was motivated primarily by greed, and it set the Cavs back at least three to five years. That's LeBron's fault. If it leads to long-term losing or the ruination of Gilbert as an NBA owner, that's Gilbert's fault.

Hopefully Gilbert can stop throwing darts at his LeBron pictures long enough to realize that.

Sea change

This is The Rivalry. This is The Game.

It's the State Up North. It's Woody and Bo. It's more than football. It's 200 years of antipathy built up between two neighboring states that once fought over the squatting rights to Toledo.

To suggest that it's anything less would be to reject your roots. Blasphemy in its most brazen form. The records aren't supposed to matter. The recent history of the series isn't supposed to matter. What matters is this November, this Saturday, somebody is going to win The Game. And you hope its your side.

That's how it's supposed to be. That's how it was. But even those who believe in the sanctity of the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry with the fervor of a faith-healed tent revivalist have to start wondering where the spice went.

The Buckeyes' 37-7 pummeling of Michigan on Saturday was anticipated. It wasn't supposed to be a game. Ohio State is a top 10 football program one loss in Wisconsin removed from national title contention. Michigan's program has devolved into a one-trick pony, reliant almost solely on whatever magic carpet sophomore quarterback Denard Robinson is capable of weaving.

The win was Ohio State's seventh straight against Michigan, their longest streak in the series, which dates to 1897. Buckeye supporters are quick to point out that it's a lopsided stretch of payback for all the years that the Wolverines swung John Cooper from a noose on the town square.

In Jim Tressel's first six years on the job, when he was matching wits with Lloyd Carr and coming out on top all but one year, it was indeed a reversal of fortune, with Carr playing the role that Cooper had played prior to 2000.

But after Ohio State bested Michigan in a 42-39, No. 1 vs. No. 2 thriller that sent the Buckeyes to the national title game, things started to change. Carr retired a year later and Michigan wooed West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez to Ann Arbor. Rodriguez promptly began an attempt to revitalize the Michigan football program in a way that you could argue is far more suited for Conference USA than the Big Ten.

Rodriguez is trying to pound the square peg of a gimmicky spread offense into the round hole of what has traditionally succeeded in the cold-climate Big Ten: defense, ball control and a good kicking game. Michigan has none of the above.

No coincidence, since Rodriguez took over in Ann Arbor, Ohio State -- along with much of the rest of college football -- has been beating up on the Wolverines. The Buckeyes have torched Michigan by a combined score of 100-24 in the past three matchups.

Even when Michigan was whipping Cooper's Buckeyes around like a rag doll for most of the 1990s, the games were still contests. The largest margin of victory for Michigan over Ohio State during Cooper's tenure was 28 points in 1991. The teams frequently met with bowl implications for both sides.

Now, a 7-5 2010 campaign is an improvement for Michigan, which went 5-7 a year ago. There is nothing for the Wolverines to play for by late November, except the role of spoiler. And against Ohio State's deep, talented squad, that's not enough to force an upset.

Which is why, from the south side of the border, Saturday's game had a very "playing Indiana in mid-October" vibe to it. You show up, you take care of business, you go home. As long as you don't have a colossal brain cramp, you're winning the game. It's just a matter of by how much, and how sharp you look while you're winning.

At some point in the future, if Rodriguez can't make the Wolverines any more competitive than what he's shown in his first three seasons, he'll be fired. And the replacement will assuredly have a background in more traditional Big Ten football. And the Wolverines will rise again.

But even if that happens, it's beginning to look like the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry might be undergoing a permanent redefining. Next year, Ohio State and Michigan will, barring a last-muinute change of heart from the Big Ten front office, be headed to separate divisions.

The game will remain on the calendar as the regular season finale for both teams. But its place on the schedule will be more ceremonial than anything else in the championship-game, Cornhusker-infused Big Ten of 2011 and after.

Gone forever will be the days when the Buckeyes and Wolverines will meet with the conference title on the line. They won't even be able to meet for a division title. Even if they're battling for their respective division titles, The Game might be The Prelude to a Rematch in the Big Ten Championship Game the following week.

The weight of the game will be laregly circumstantial in the coming years. Ohio State's games against division rivals such as Penn State and Wisconsin will have more weight in terms of getting the Buckeyes to the conference title game. Ohio State won't have to worry about a tiebreaker with Michigan.

And this all assumes that Michigan will reclaim its position as a national powerhouse at some point soon, and isn't looking at an extended stay with Purdue and Illinois in the middle of the Big Ten pack.

It will always be The Game. It will always be a border war. But it's not a marquee matchup anymore. And it might never be again -- at least as we've come to know it.

Value proposition

For the past year as fans, we've operated under one unwavering assumption when it comes to the Browns:

Mike Holmgren is the key to success, in the short term and long term. Therefore, the Browns must do whatever is necessary to keep Holmgren in the fold. If that means allowing Holmgren to scratch his still-existent coaching itch on the Browns' sideline, so be it. No matter how much improvement Eric Mangini shows, losing Holmgren to another organization would cancel it out a hundred times over.

So even if Mangini can demonstrate marked, steady on-field improvement as evidence of his staff's effectiveness, if Holmgren wants the headset, Mangini gets the boot. Is it fair? No. Is it worth it to keep the man who helped mold Brett Favre into a Hall of Famer? Yes.

Up until the Browns delivered the Saints a trick-play induced haymaker in New Orleans, that line of thinking wasn't even questioned. Over the bye week and heading toward the showdown with New England this past Sunday, there was some cause for debate, but most fans still couldn't stomach a Browns team with Mangini but no Holmgren.

But then at a press conference last week, Holmgren reiterated, in a roundabout way, his desire to return to the coaching ranks. Then Mangini took his old mentor Bill Belichick out behind the woodshed in a 34-14 roasting of the Patriots over the weekend. Mangini outclassed Belichick in the battle of coaching wits, which is kind of like out-thinking Stephen Hawking on the subject of theoretical physics.

Now, it's fair to open the floor to debate: if the time comes when Randy Lerner must decide whether to allow Holmgren to take over his team's coaching job, or risk losing him to another team's open coaching position, what decision should he make? If Mangini's team continues to trend upward, is it really in the best interest of the organization to pull the plug on his tenure just to make sure the more-accomplished Holmgren stays put?

What exactly do the Browns need from Holmgren, and is it possible that he has already put all the thumbprint he's ever going to put on the Browns?

When Holmgren agreed to take over as president of the Browns last December, he was taking over a team with no general manager and a severely-frayed coach who had been worn down by endless media criticism, the stress of turning over a roster that included human hand grenades like Kellen Winslow and Braylon Edwards, and the fracturing of his relationship with former GM George Kokinis.

The Browns of last year were in desperate need of a strong guiding hand, and Holmgren provided that almost immediately. He oversaw the hiring of Tom Heckert as GM. He dusted Mangini off and determined that the young coach was a fixer-upper, not recycle-bin wreckage.

As pointed out in a New York Times article from earlier this week, Mangini reached a moment of self-realization in January of this year. From that point forward, he became more committed to his coaching and more committed to his health, dropping weight, attempting to kick a chewing tobacco habit and -- above all -- listening to the three Super Bowls' worth of experience Holmgren was willing to impart on his quasi-pupil.

The result has been a renewed Mangini, fitter, happier, and finally past his Belichick-wannabe phase. The new Mangini is more open, self-effacing, even funny at times. Above all, he's a more confident coach who now has developing people skills to pair with a Belichick-bred football acumen.

If this really is a complete new beginning for Mangini, he's reaching a rebirth at the green age of 39. He could be the Browns' coach for a decade or longer, which would be a refreshing change from the organizational carousel we've had to endure, while the likes of Belichick and Bill Cowher stay nestled in their coaching jobs for 10 to 15 years or longer.

Holmgren, by contrast, is 62. Chances are, he wouldn't last more than five to seven years in any coaching job. That could certainly be enough time to win the Browns a Super Bowl, but once Holmgren leaves, the regime shifts again, and the Browns are right back in a state of upheaval.

At his advancing age and vast experience level, Holmgren's best possible impact on any organization is the impact felt after he leaves. Did he hire the right successors? Did he teach them the right things? Can the organization still move forward and win once Holmgren has moved to his retirement villa?

With that in mind, the best possible outcome for the Holmgren Era is one where Mangini turns into one of the most successful coaches in Browns history, Heckert reaches the Bill Polian class of roster architects, and ultimately, Holmgren becomes an unncessary layer of management.

Ultimately, the Browns don't want an organization where Holmgren has to stick around and ensure that everyone is doing their jobs right. The Browns want an organization where Heckert and Mangini are so good at their jobs, it would be an insult to keep Holmgren on the payroll as a babysitter.

Whether we realize it or not, Holmgren not only got the ball rolling in that direction, the ball might already be most of the way there. Not to a Super Bowl berth, but to an organization capable of building and sustaining that type of team.

There is still drafting to do, still coaching to be done, still decisions to be made at all levels of the Browns organization. But this franchise is already miles ahead of where they were 11 months ago. Holmgren could still stick around for another year or two and help some more -- and there is a good chance he will -- but if the Cowboys or Vikings come calling and it becomes apparent that Holmgren is going to be pacing the sideline somewhere in 2011, the Browns and Holmgren can still part ways with a clear conscience on both ends.

Holmgren still has some gas left in the coaching tank, and he might be the right coaching hire for a veteran team trying to make a Super Bowl push. But for the Browns, he's probably not the right coach. He's the right president. And in the U.S., presidents have term limits. It keeps the balance of power in check and ensures progress.

In leveland, progress needs to come in the form of Heckert and Mangini leading the Browns to better days ahead, and continuing it after Holmgren has hung up his whistle for good.

An undeserved reputation

Byron Scott's Cavaliers are burdened with a prefabricated identity this season. No matter how good or bad they are, whether they wallow among the league's dregs or compete for a playoff spot, they will be The Team That Lost LeBron.

It's branded on them, a scarlet letter, a garish tattoo.

The lack of LeBron will be the prism through which the Cavs are entirely viewed by fans and media alike. It will devalue them, it will make them the subject of ridicule whenever they visit a city. Fans will chant, columnists will take jabs at them in the local paper, the opposing team might even give the Cavs some LeBron love during the road team introductions.

(If the Cavs could have a nickel for every time the opposing team will play Will Smith's "Miami" during visiting introductions, they'd be $2.05 richer by the end of 41 road games.)

Even in the safe haven of Cleveland, where (some) fans still dare to wear wine and gold, LeBron's shadow still blocks out the Sun. We look at the current Cavs roster, and all we see is no LeBron, and ergo, no shot at a title.

When we look at the current Cavs roster, we see some iffy building blocks in J.J. Hickson and Ramon Sessions, and a cast of veterans that are of no use to a team that just had its its soul sucked out several months ago.

So, what's the use? You need a superstar -- or multiple superstars -- to win titles in the NBA. History has proven that. The Cavs have no superstar. So it's time to start pitching deck chairs off the Titanic. Liquidate the inventory. Everything must go. We're slashing prices.

Mo Williams, Antawn Jamison, Anderson Varejao, Anthony Parker, Jamario Moon -- anything and everything older than 26 that's not nailed down. This team need to be a 15-67 club within two years. It's the only way to draft high enough to get the superstar you need to win championships. Because if you don't, you're stuck in the purgatory of mediocrity, somwhere between the last lottery picks and the lowest playoff seeds.

It's the worst place to be in the NBA. Not a contender, and not bad enough to get the draft picks to get the star power to become a contender.

That is true. The middle of the pack is NBA purgatory. But let's back up for a second before we convince ourselves that you're either a 60-win team, a 60-loss team or on a treadmill to nowhere.

Finding yourself in the middle of the NBA pack isn't purgatory in and of itself. Teams get long-term sentences at Mediocre Alcatraz when they pay players more than they're worth.

If your team doles out max contracts like Halloween candy, your team is probably playing role players like stars, which is the definition of "bad contract" in the NBA. If a team has multiple 5-year, $60 million contracts on the books, it will likely be stuck treading water until those contracts becoming tradeable.

The Cavs do have some long-term contracts on the books. The contract with the most potential to be cumbersome is Anderson Varejao, who is signed through 2014 and will make $9.1 million in the final guaranteed year.

Beyond that, only Mo Williams and Ramon Sessions have contracts that the Cavs will, in all likelihood, be obligated to honor past the 2011-12 season. Mo has an $8.5 million player option for the 2012-13 season.

Daniel Gibson and Chirstian Eyenga have team options for 2012-13. The Cavs can give J.J. Hickson a qualifying offer after that season.

Other than that, Antawn Jamison's contract expires after the 2011-12 season, and there is nothing else that would make you believe the Cavs are stuck in a long-term trajectory of mediocrity. If they need to get worse to get better, the opportunity will definitely be there in a couple of years.

For the short term, we'd all have more clarity about the current Cavs if we could view them apart from the LeBron elephant that is no longer in the room. If LeBron never played for the Cavs and everything else was the same, what would we see?

The Cavs now employ their most accomplished coach since Lenny Wilkens. Byron Scott was a member of the Showtime Lakers as a player. He was hired into the coaching ranks by Rick Adelman. On Adelman's staff in Sacramento, Scott learned the Princeton offense from fellow Kings assistant Pete Carril -- the former Princeton coach who brought the offense to the mainstream. As a head coach, Scott took the offense to the Nets and Hornets, and used it to help expedite success at both stops.

The Princeton offense relies on passing, screens and ball movement. It is designed for a team like the Cavs with no true go-to scorer. The NBA version of the Princeton is modified because of the way teams play defense, and the fact that plays have to develop quicker due to a shortened shot clock. But the principles of passing, cutting and screening to create open looks for teammates is still true.

Based on media reports, Scott believes he has some pieces in place to successfully run his system. Scott thinks Andy Varejao is an ideal Princeton center due to his active feet and screening ability. The Princeton also requires multiple guards who can initiate the offense, which the Cavs now have in Mo Williams and Ramon Sessions.

Put it this way: if you could completely erase LeBron from your mind, look at this team in the vacuum of the here and now, and make a judgment, we'd be intrigued by what Scott is implementing. We'd want to see Chris Grant get on the phone to other GMs and add more pieces to this team, not scuttle the ship.

Yes, history says you do need a cast of stars to win a title. But getting and keeping those stars will be exceedingly difficult in the NBA, particularly if a lockout this coming summer yields a starkly different financial structure for the league, such as a hard salary cap.

As it is, LeBron has set the precedent: superstars do not want to play in a town like Cleveland. If the current rules stay in place regarding free agency, the next time the Cavs get their hands on a superstar, they might as well turn right around and offer him to the highest bidder.

Putting it bluntly, it's nice to think of an NBA dynasty taking shape in Cleveland. But the chances of it happening are virtually nil. In a league in which six teams have won 29 of the last 31 titles, the Cavs would be extremely fortunate to win even one fluky title at any point in the future.

With that in mind, it's probably better to build the Cavs around a coach's system instead of a superstar's talent. It presents the best possible chance for a team like the Cavs to win consistently in the future. To that end, we should be willing to give Scott and this team a chance to prove that they're worthy of being the rebuild, as opposed to the prelude to the rebuild.

But to have that mindset, you, as a fan, need to stop viewing the Cavs as a band of non-LeBrons.

The Cavs are already going to encounter enough of that sentiment every time they make a road trip this season.