NFL | Baltimore | Cleveland Browns | St. Louis | owner
Rome Rants
by
Ashley Jude Collie
AW: With this musical-chairs era of free agency, will we see a
new dynasty any time soon?
JR: Free agency has made marquee players a hell of a lot of
money and ensured that dynasties are dead. And it's made teams more
difficult for fans to relate to, especially when guys are chasing
the paycheck and jumping around from team to team like mercenaries.
I blame the system.
The rap is that because of parity, anybody can beat anybody else. I
think that any team can lose to any other team, on any given
Sunday. Frankly, I thought it was good when the Cowboys were
rolling up on people. Love 'em, hate 'em, they were a dominant
football team and it was good for the
NFL.
AW: What do you think about owners who pull up stakes and leave
fans in the dust?
JR: It's good for the owners and for the people of Baltimore
and St. Louis. But try telling a Cleveland Browns fan that it was
good for them that their team got ripped out. Imagine being a
Browns fan, going out decade after decade in miserable weather,
supporting an inferior product in an antiquated stadium, yet
they're selling out every single Sunday, cheering their guts out,
and what do they have to show for it? Owner Art Modell moves the
franchise to
Baltimore and wins a
Super Bowl. How can that possibly
be good for the NFL? It is what it is. I don't see it changing.
AW: Drunk driving, drugs, sexual assault, and murder charges -
are some players out of control? Should they be held to a higher
standard?
JR: It's garbage when the league and its apologists say that
it's just a microcosm of society. They're not like the rest of us.
We don't pay big bucks to watch sales reps do their job. We don't
buy their gear. Networks don't pay billions of dollars to televise
car mechanics doing their job.
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