October 19, 2025 • 43 mins
A professional sports franchise is more than just a team—it’s a brand. For decades, the Cleveland Browns embodied a legacy of grit and loyalty, earning a national following despite never reaching a Super Bowl. Their underdog spirit defined them, and fans held onto hope for that one fairytale season.
But in recent years, that identity has faded. Controversial decisions, questionable trades, and a disconnect between leadership and the fanbase have left the once-proud franchise struggling with its image.
In this episode, Billy Dees explores how the Browns’ brand unraveled—examining what went wrong inside the organization, how fans’ perceptions shifted, and what this story says about the delicate balance between loyalty, leadership, and legacy in professional sports.
Follow Billy Dees on X https://x.com/BillyDees
But in recent years, that identity has faded. Controversial decisions, questionable trades, and a disconnect between leadership and the fanbase have left the once-proud franchise struggling with its image.
In this episode, Billy Dees explores how the Browns’ brand unraveled—examining what went wrong inside the organization, how fans’ perceptions shifted, and what this story says about the delicate balance between loyalty, leadership, and legacy in professional sports.
Follow Billy Dees on X https://x.com/BillyDees
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You are listening to the Billy D's Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
All right, well, hello everyone, and welcome to the program.
As always, I am absolutely thrilled that you are here.
If you've never checked us out before, we are primarily
an interview and a commentary based podcast. Now today is
going to be commentary. My name is Billy D's. You
can find Ability's podcast just about anywhere podcasts are found.
(00:33):
I don't normally do sports, and today really isn't a
sports podcast. It is a category that I've just never
really got into that much as a creator.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
But today, from a.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Marketing standpoint, we're going to be talking about the Cleveland
Browns and what they have done to the brand that
is itself, the Cleveland Browns. And of course it's going
to talk about football to a degree, but this isn't
about how the plays are managed or anything like that.
(01:07):
This is about what they've done to that brand and
how important from a marketing standpoint, how important your brand is,
whether you're selling tickets to a football game or whether
you're selling golf balls, it is very important. And today's episode,
let me also say, this is an audio only.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
This is a.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Radio style podcast, which is kind of from my roots
and subscribers to the bilit D's podcast. First of all,
as you know, there are no pay wealls to subscribe
to the bilit D's podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
And secondly, we do give priority because these folks in
the podcast world are the people that have been with
(01:50):
us for the last ten years. So we don't always
do video supplements to our podcast episodes, but we always
give priority. We always make sure that is a good
sounding podcast on the podcast platforms, whether or not we
do a video cast version or not. But today is
audio only exclusive to all of the podcast platforms. Before
(02:13):
I get into some of the dynamics with what has
happened to the Cleveland Browns, let me also as a
backdrop to this, it's very important to me that I
kind of set the stage of what has happened with
professional sports over the years. And keep in mind, this
is an opinion show. A lot of the things that
I'm going to be talking about are my opinion. Some
(02:35):
of the facts that are going to be discussed about
what some of the moves they've made, and some of
the things that have happened are coming from the best
sources that I have, But I can't guarantee that everything
is true. There's going to be a lot of conjecture here,
but the bigger picture is image. And when we're talking
about image, you have to remember your audience. And for
(02:59):
all of the of the Cleveland Browns, and I'm certainly
one of them, I don't feel that enough responsibility has
been assigned to the modern football fan because this is key.
I come from Canton, Ohio, and this is the home
(03:22):
of the Professional Football Hall of Fame, and every year
I have listened to all of the enshrinement speeches, not
every single one every year, but enough of them. From
being from this area, I have decades of experience listening
to all the Enshrinement speeches and all of the different
sports commentators, both locally and nationally talking about the heroes
(03:46):
of the gridiron. Okay, I've heard these speeches ten thousand times,
and there is there's something going on in the public.
But now with this professional athletic worship, and I question
the term heroes. I really question the term heroes. Hero
to me in the classic sense of arrows, which means
(04:08):
of self. You know, when you're walking down the street
and there's a house on fire and you run into
that house, not knowing the people inside. You do it
because you don't have to. You're doing it because you
want to save the people inside. That is a heroic action.
(04:31):
You are of yourself, You're potentially putting yourself in harms way.
You are sacrificing yourself, your own well being to save
someone else. That is heroic and just being honest with
you here, professional athletes are not throwing themselves on grenades.
That's not what's happening here now. I don't want to
(04:54):
diminish the lessons of sports. I don't want to diminish
the lessons of teamwork. I not to do any of that,
or of learning self discipline and being a part of something.
These are all great things that sports can teach. And
there's some that rise to the top with incredible talent,
(05:16):
incredible talent, incredible athletic ability, and there's nothing wrong with
acknowledging them. But it's come to the level now. Even
the term enshrinement, you know, kind of has this feel
of we're inducting another saint into the church, and that
isn't what these people are. They are among you know,
(05:40):
we hear the word privileged, and oftentimes I hear the
word privilege it applied to people who really don't deserve it.
You know someone who landed a job at a local
factory paying a good wage, I said, well, that you
got that job because you're privileged. I would say that
having hero status, being paid millions of dollars, and in
(06:00):
a lot of cases, being above the law because you
play a game that is privileged. These are not heroic
figures in the classic sense, okay, and quite literally. Unfortunately,
we're in a situation now where a lot of these
(06:21):
professional athletes can get away with murder and they are
still cheered. They can beat the hell out of their
girlfriends and drag them down the hallway like a bag
of leaky garbage, and they somehow make it through that.
The narrative is, well, I'm sure the owner can hire
a real good lawyer because we really need this person
(06:44):
on the field on Sunday. This is the climate now,
and I really hate that. I really hate that. And
that's going to fold in to where the Browns have
really taken a.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Nose dive.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Now when I talk about heroes, and there's times when
I'm less critical of the term when it's applied to
professional athletes. When we talk about people at Gail Sayers
or Walter Payton or Roger star Staubach. These are people
we remember not only because they were great players, but
(07:25):
because they were great men. They were great people. There
were people that you would be honored to meet. They
stood for something that transent, transcended football, and I just
don't know, you know the uh uh Simon and Garfunkel
(07:46):
that had a lyric that said, where have you gone?
Joe DiMaggio? And not only do we not have heroes
like that anymore? Sports figures like that anymore inspire? Are
we inspiring individuals for young people? And not only do
we not have that anymore, but the audience that Joe
(08:09):
DiMaggio had is also to a large degree gone.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
You know, I.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Became a young adult back in the nineteen eighties and
I remember the Browns well. First of all, I remember
Sam Retigliano and that whole crew, But probably I got
most interested in the Browns during the cos Our years,
and this was Ozzie Newsome, Reggie Langhorn. These were individuals
(08:41):
that I genuinely liked and still do to this day.
Reggie Langhorn is on a local TV show here every
so often talking sports and he's just listening to him
and the way the perspectives that he brings to what's
going on, it's very inspiring. I'm sitting there and saying,
(09:02):
you know, I would really like to work with this
guy someday, you know, do something for him. I work
in the digital media field, and it'd be great to
do something for him. He's just a guy that's fantastic
to be around. And I understand you don't really know
who these people are all the time. Who knows what
happens when the cameras aren't on. But for the most part,
(09:27):
these were at least standards. They were ideals that are
becoming a part of a bygone era. Okay, now we
have an audience where winning is an obsession, and I
kind of have a suspicion. I don't know for sure,
(09:48):
but I kind of have a suspicion that a lot
of this is coming from all of the legalized gambling
over the last couple of years, you know, especially on
the apps now and the fantasy teams back in the
days of Joe DiMaggio, or you know, going back into
the early days of the NFL, you know, when Roger
stopback and even Walter Payton and all those people played.
(10:12):
There was an aspect of going to a game. And
at that time, especially farther back than the nineteen eighties,
there was a family structure to society, and people went
to church in the morning. And I'm not saying religion
is That's not where I'm going, but there was a
structure to life. You went to church in the morning,
(10:33):
and then oftentimes, you know, the father would take the
sons to the Browns game, and the mothers would go
with their daughters to the mall and they would shop
for clothes and they would do this and that together,
and then at the end of the day they came
together and they all had dinner together. And then Monday morning,
(10:54):
everybody went to school, everybody went to work. There was
a balance there and that's simply gone now. Now Sunday
begins with everybody staring at their phone like a bunch
of zombies and the only thing that matters is what's
happening with my fantasy team, and people get wild, they
(11:17):
get obsessed to the point, you know, I listened to
some commentators this like last week right now the Flacco trade.
Flacco was recently traded to the Cincinnati Bengals, and there was,
and we'll get into a little bit of that, because
that's not really important. What's happening with individual players isn't
(11:38):
really what this is all about. But what I'm getting
at here is there were people on the radio calling
into these these sports shows literally frothing at the mouth,
and that is not what professional sports are supposed to be.
It actually reminds me of what the Romans said with
(12:01):
the colisseum. You know, give the people circuses and bread
and they'll be happy. And what's happening now with professional
sports is they've become circuses to occupy the masses. They're
really not something that, in the classic sense, sports was
supposed to be about. And this is getting lost on
(12:21):
the youth. It's not the same as it once was,
all right, So let's go with the Cleveland Browns. Here's
where the branding of this whole thing is going to
start to take shape.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
The brand of.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
A franchise speaks a lot about its marketability, and it's
not always directly related to winning. I mean, that's certainly
a component of it, but some of the best franchises,
some of the most beloved franchises through the years, whether
they're baseball or whatever. Don't necessarily have the world's greatest
(12:59):
winning record, but they just have a certain brand, a
certain feeling, a certain nostalgia. They represent a certain geographical area.
Dallas Cowboys perfect example, America's team. Okay, they don't, you know,
they don't. They're not necessarily always every year a winning team,
(13:20):
but they win often enough. They have a very very
rich history of winning. But more importantly, it's the feeling
that you get when you know Dallas Cowboys. It represents
the West, represents America, it represents things that make you
feel good. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleader flashy. The stadium is
(13:44):
very welcoming, it's laid out, and you know, it's an
experience to go to the Dallas Cowboys football game. And
that's what makes them one of the most valuable professional
sports franchises in the world. It's not that they win
all the time. It's the feeling that you get. And
(14:06):
it even translates into a color, the navy blue, the white.
It's the whole thing. It's a color, it's a feeling,
it's an area of the country. It's something that makes
you feel good. And for a long time, the Cleveland
Browns here again, going back to the Ozzie Newsom Cozar
(14:28):
years of the nineteen eighties, they were always the lovable underdog,
even going back to Samatigliano and the Cardiac Kids, they
were the lovable underdog, and that is such a valuable brand.
Everybody likes to root for the underdog, and the lovable
(14:49):
underdog is probably one of the most valuable types of
personas you can have, because everybody's waiting for the fairy
tale to happen. And you had that a little bit
in the Kozar years. They got so close had it
not been for that infamous fumble, but they got so
(15:10):
close everybody. You know, I've always had a lot of
contacts from around the country.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
And the Browns were always one of.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Those teams that if you know, your team didn't make it,
if your team didn't you know, got out, didn't make
the playoffs, or they got into the playoffs but were eliminated,
it was always yeah, okay, well my team didn't make it,
but I really hope the Browns go. The Browns had
a universal I would say, everybody liked them.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It was they had this this history, this rich history.
I mean, if you knew anything about the history of
sports at all, but even even Cleveland in general, in
this area of the world, with the Browns meant it
was they they represented the underdog, the working class. They
represented the gritty areas of Cleveland where people worked hard.
(16:07):
And you know, the namesake of the Cleveland Browns. You know,
Paul Brown is one half hour drive. His hometown is
half hour drive from where I'm at in this area.
Can't Ohio is where the NFL was born. So that
you know, the Cleveland Browns represented such a century almost
(16:28):
of this game and what it meant to the local people.
It was such a wonderful brand. Well, the Browns are
still an underdog, but are they lovable?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
What changed?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Why are the Cleveland Browns now talked about with a
certain feeling of contempt? And I'll tell you where it started,
And that started with the on Watson drade. Now, I
want to be very clear here when when when I'm
(17:06):
talking about Deshaun Watson and that whole thing, I don't
know what the facts are. I mean, there's only so
many people who really knew what happened with the allegations
with with Deshaun Watson. There's only a few who really
really know. But from a marketing standpoint, what are you
(17:26):
bringing into your house that is going to serve your brand?
What are you what are you bringing in? Okay, Deshaun
Watson had let's say a lot of baggage, and I know,
people start to piece me all out what he was
actually convicted on and versus this and versus that, and
(17:48):
what is provable And this is where you're starting to
veer off what your brand is supposed to be. This,
this is this is bigger than that. You know, I
did for many many years. I did a lot of
MC work and there were what we're called morals, clauses,
(18:09):
and a lot of the stuff that I was involved in.
It's perfectly legal to do some things. For example, it's
legal for a man like me to go to a
bar and.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Hit on women. It's legal to do that.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
But when I'm on the job, when I'm representing a
company affair, that is not what I should be doing
at that event.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Okay. And when you are brought in as a.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Major, multi multi multi million, matter of fact, multi hundred
million dollar individual, there is a certain responsibility to understand
that you are part of a brand, and it's beyond
that it's beyond it the owners. What was behind this decision.
(19:04):
That's that's where things started to go off the rails
for the brand that what once was the lovable underdog.
This is where things went awry.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
A New York Times investigation kind of looked into this
Deshaun Watson things, and apparently he booked what was reported
as sixty six different masseuses during a seventeen month span
from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one. So here again,
(19:38):
we don't know about these these assault allegations. We don't
know exactly what happened. Okay, because oftentimes, not talking about
this case, but in general, predators will put themselves into
situations where it's a he said, she said situation. Okay,
they don't go into into a beauty parlor or something
(20:00):
like that where there's ten people working and put somebody
in a bad situation. They do it when it's a
one on one. So by its very nature, these things
are structured in a way where it's very hard to
determine exactly what did happen, especially when it comes to criminality.
All right, but appearances, what appearance? Does this have sixty
(20:22):
six different messuses? And these were all trunk slammers. These
were small individual people or people that work for very
small local groups. Now, sixty six over seventeen months. I
don't know how many that is a month. You can
do the math on it. But the question becomes, if
(20:45):
you need a massage, if you need your body worked on,
and you're a professional athlete and you have access to
some of the best physical therapists in the world, the
best doctors in the world, who can give you a massage,
who can give you physical therapy, who can give you
all those things, what are you doing with this? What
(21:08):
is the real purpose behind this? Do you? Is it
really that hard for a professional athlete to get their
body worked on that they have to go to sixty
six small individual female massuses?
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
It also has been reported that the Houston, Texans were
involved in providing him a hotel and also provided him
with a non disclosure agreement that the women had to sign. Now,
if this is true, for what purpose is this? When
was the last time you went to a masseuse or
(21:48):
you went to a physical therapist and you had to
sign a non disclosure agreement or have the have the
provider sign a non disclosure agreement. Does any of this
sound right? In one of these lawsuits, Watson paid a
SPA owner who connected him to multiple non licensed women
(22:11):
for massages. He paid five thousand dollars for what she
claims was to buy SPA equipment. Now, if this was
a politician in a similar situation, would you really buy that?
What is a professional athlete doing mired down in these
situations is physical therapy? Is getting a massage that difficult
(22:36):
to acquire as a professional athlete, and then that brings
in all the allegations and all the common denominators and
all this other stuff. Why was this situation even happening?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Now?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
If you are still listening to this, and here again,
when it comes to what was actually proven what was alleged,
we can piecemeal that out, but I want you to
be honest with yourself. If you're not going to be
honest with me, if you're not going to be honest
with some of the things that I just talked about,
be honest with yourself. If, especially if you're a man
(23:09):
listening to this and you're defending this, I want to
ask you a question. If you had to go to
work one day and your wife was home alone or
your daughter was home alone. Would you want a plumber
with this exact same resume going to your house when
(23:33):
you're not there? Just be honest with yourself if you're
not going to be honest with me. And why on
earth would you put someone who has that resume, that
set of circumstances in their background. Why would you give
them all most a quarter of a billion dollars to
(23:56):
represent your franchise to be the person that young children
is going to wear their jersey. Why would you do that? Well,
there's a calculation. There was a calculation that was made,
and I guarantee i'd hear again. I wasn't there, but
I can almost almost guarantee. I would bet a small
(24:18):
amount of money because I don't like to put large
amounts of money at risk, but I would bet that
somebody made a calculation. They said, yeah, he's going to
bring in a lot of criticism, He's gonna you know,
he's gonna get a lot of women's groups angry, but
winning is going to take care of that. So that
(24:40):
was the calculation. The calculation was this guy's very skilled
at the Browns at that time, had most of the
tools on the field necessary to win and they showed
Baker Mayfield, which is a whole nother story, someone who
played with a lot of enthusiasm for that team. They
showed him the door. They basically said, hey, don't let
(25:02):
the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Okay. And as a matter of fact.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
There was a quote from somewhere, I'm not sure who
said it, but there was a quote from somewhere that
somebody at the Cleveland Browns said, now we have an
adult in the room, because they felt, you know, obviously,
the reference was to a lot of the you know,
the bravado that Baker Mayfield had, and now they have
(25:30):
an adult in the room. What I just described earlier,
the circumstances, the cloud of dust from which this person emerged.
That person is the adult in the room. Of course,
this was all predicated on the fact that he was
going to start winning the playoffs, were going to start
(25:53):
to become a regular thing and a super Bowl eventually,
and they knew that there were still going to be
people who were critical of him, critical of the situation,
but for the most part it would go away, just
like it did in Pittsburgh. They made a calculation, I'm
not sure what I'm not sure which is sadder. I'm
(26:15):
not sure if it's if it's the fact that they
made this calculation as part of where they wanted their
brand to go. I'm not sure if that is more
sad than the idea that had the winning started with
the Shawn, that it would have gone away, that they
would have been right. That is the part I'm not
(26:37):
sure which is worse. But sometimes when you make these
types of deals where there's a gamble involved, the gamble
is that the person is going to come in and
they're not going to do shit. And that's where a
lot of times these deals with the devil don't work
out because you really can't trust the devil.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And the winning didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
If anything, the performance on the field eroded, and the cover,
the cover that was supposed to provide a blanket a
certain forgetfulness to what happened in Houston, did not appear.
(27:24):
The curtains never closed on the controversy. So now you
have the worst of all worlds. You shelled out a
mountain of money on a player that did not pay
off and has a backstory that has severely damaged your brand.
(27:46):
It's the worst of all worlds, And now what you
have is a brand that's no longer the lovable underdog.
What you have is a brand now that from the
top down are assholes. You have a brand now that's
(28:12):
equatable not only with losers, not only with bad sports management.
But you're now in a category where the lovable is gone.
The man behind the veil, the man behind the curtain.
(28:37):
Like the Wizard of Oz has been revealed, there are
no lovable brounds. Okay, there's people who gambled with millions
of dollars and gambled with the idea that winning was
going to bring them a lot of money, and once
the winning started, nobody would care about any of the
(28:57):
controversies that came with this deal. So now the criticism
of this team in the last couple of years has
really changed. Okay, when they make a buffoon call, it's
not Hawa where that Brown's thinking, why do I.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Watch this game? It's not that anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It's you assholes, That's what that is. What has happened.
They have damaged one of the most cherished brands that
you could possibly have in terms of professional sports, and
(29:43):
they've turned their organization into an organization of contempt. People
don't laugh anymore, Oh, those funny Browns when they make
bad decisions in the draft. They don't laugh about bad
trades anymore. They don't laugh about bad play calling. I
(30:04):
don't know why I always stick with this team about
I sure do love them.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
That is gone.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
What is now is you have an organization in Cleveland
manipulating hundreds of millions of dollars in the local economy,
in the local media, and all this other stuff that
has gone astray.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
It's one thing to be about winning.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
When you're doing it in the context of what Vince Lombardi,
and if you don't know who Vince Lombardi is, is legendary
coach of the Green Bay Packers, okay, and his was
all about hard work and sacrifice to win. And you
had that with the Cleveland Browns as well. I mean,
Paul Brown is part of the history of professional sports,
(30:52):
you know, the inventor of the face mask and so
many other things that we take for granted today. That
is the legacy that you had had and what did
you do with it. You can't always win, but at
least you had that wonderful legacy, that wonderful brand that
stood for something. So now that that veil is gone,
(31:15):
and maybe it's always bullshit. You know, maybe these ideals
that we hold up to the old days of sports,
maybe they were all bullshit, but they were good bullshit.
They were bullshit that you would be happy that your
son or your daughter was aspiring to. There was a
little glimpse of that I heard Tom Brady speaking. And
(31:36):
I'll give Tom Brady this. You know, there's a lot
you can criticize about some of the business decisions he's
made here lately and other stuff. But I'll tell you this,
one thing that I don't believe you can take away
from him is what makes Tom Brady great is that
he wasn't great. He didn't have the natural ability that
(31:57):
Patrick Mahomes or something like that had. He was not
that He made himself that. And I was listening to
him one day and he was talking about how he
was on the team and he was only getting two
reps as a backup quarterback, and he went to the
coaches and complained, he said, how do you expect me
(32:18):
to develop? How do you expect me to do anything
with this team? And I'm only getting two reps of practice?
And the coach said, to him, You're never going to
do anything with this team because you're too focused on
what other people's opportunities are. You're you're too worried about
what the other quarterbacks are getting. You're not you're not
(32:41):
concentrating on the opportunities that you do have. And he
went home and he said he contemplated that, and the
next day when his name got called for those two reps,
he sprinted into that huddle like it was the super
Bowl and he was going to make sure that those
two reps were the best reps that those coaches saw
(33:05):
all day long.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Those are the.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Types of lessons now here. Again, you can say, well,
that's a lot of colorful high talk and it's bullshit.
That's fine, but it's good bullshit. It does translate into
real world applications one hundred percent. What have the Browns offered?
What has this hold Deshaun Watson thing? What has any
of that? What part of that is good bullshit? What
(33:32):
part of that is good bullshit? None of it? And
it has destroyed the brand that is the Cleveland Browns.
Now even some of the things that have happened more recently,
we were in production today October nineteenth, twenty twenty five.
Some of the things that have happened here recently from
a public relations standpoint with the team. For example, the
(33:53):
trade of Joe Flacco, who was the number one quarterback,
to the Cincinnati Bengals that made Dylan Gay the number
the number one quarterback because he was the backup to
Joe Flacco and Shador Sanders, who is number three. You
would expect that to be automatically number one leaves two,
(34:14):
goes to one, three goes to two. Pretty easy math, right.
The head coach of the Cleveland Browns couldn't get it
out of his mouth when he was asked, Now, I
don't know what happened with Shador standards or what the
politics is around this person, but in what world is
it hard to say, Okay, our number three quarterback is
now our number two quarterback. This is the type of
(34:37):
bullshit that isn't funny anymore because you are perceived as
an asshole. You're not the lovable Browns anymore. You're an asshole.
So when you can't even get something like that out
of your mouth, when you can't even say his name,
(34:58):
I have no idea what hap happened here with this
shedor Sanders. I understand here, again, getting back to branding,
you don't want to have someone with a very famous,
domineering father becoming a distraction. And quite frankly, with Travis Kelsey,
had he been a rookie and just been drafted, bringing
(35:19):
somebody like Taylor Swift in would have been a major distraction.
Now he was already well established when that started, that's
a little different. But when you're bringing something like that
in to an organization where teamwork and respect is so
important in that team, I understand that having a domineering
presence in your life as a rookie is a big distraction,
(35:42):
fair enough, But with that being said, there's something really
odd about the way this young man was handled in
this organization.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
All right. I don't know who.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
And that's the thing too, there's all this mystery about
why he was brought in to begin with. Was it
the owner, was it the general manager, or was it
the coach? There's all this static, and this static isn't
funny anymore. It's not the lovable Cleveland Browns just bumbling
through the league anymore. It's not that it's a bunch
(36:12):
of assholes. That is what the brand has become and
I don't know if it's recoverable. I don't know if
it's recoverable. Okay, what you have now, even if this
team starts to win anytime soon, it's going to have
an asterisk by it. I don't know that the Lovable
(36:36):
Browns can make a comeback. It was decades in the making,
and it just took a staff of the ownership, of
the management and the coaching to totally destroy the brand.
They forgot about why they were loved. I understand winning
(36:58):
is important, and sometimes you want to take a shortcut,
and sometimes you want to gamble a lot of money
on a particular player, but you have to keep sight
of what your brand is, what has kept your fans loyal,
what has kept the advertisers coming back, And now everything
even this stadium deal, which I'm not going to get
(37:21):
into the specific so that even that has a cloud
over it.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Now it just has this ugly cloud over it.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
And in years past, a new stadium would have been
something that a lot of people would have been happy about.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Oh great, there's going to be a new stadium. Our
good old Browns are going to play there. That's not
the case anymore.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
You're going to have an expensive stadium that a lot
of big money people are going to profit from, and
it's all going to go to a bunch of bassholes.
That's where we're at now with the Cleveland Browns and
getting back to the power of branding. Don't forget about
your brand, you know, and that applies to so many things,
(38:05):
just like there's so many things in life, you know,
you could take from sports and put into life. It's
so true. Your brand is all you have. Even as
an individual. The identity of who you are has the
most value of anything else. Whether it's your personal relationships,
(38:28):
your friendships, how you're going to land your next job,
all of that translates into the brand that is you.
If you have a local shop in your neighborhood, you
fix lawnmowers. Okay, people will forgive the time they brought
(38:49):
their lawnmower in and it didn't quite work like and
they had to take it back. What matters is how
you handled that situation. Everybody doesn't always get it right
the first time, especially when they're doing them over and
over and over again, the same task over and over again.
There's bound to be a time when something slips through.
People understand that, but What they will not understand is
(39:10):
when you go back and say, hey, look my lawnwer
it's still doing the same thing. Can you take a
second look at it? And you get a bunch of
grief that damages the brand that is your repair shop.
When you say, yeah, well maybe I missed something, let's
take it, or maybe it's something else. Let's take another
look at it here and I'll get it fixed for you. Okay.
(39:31):
This is what makes or breaks a brand. And when
you have a legacy of being lovable for the way
you lose, you know, it was the fumble in the
last minute of the game that costs the Browns. I
so hope they can win next year. It's that that
(39:53):
is gone. And if you do manage to pull a winner,
now it's going the question is going to be at
what cost did it come? That is where we are
at with branding and alls. I can say, is I hope,
I really hope. I've made a lot of mistakes in
(40:15):
my life. I really have, but I can honestly say
there's been a certain consistency in the person that I
am and before I make decisions. A lot of times,
especially as I've gotten older, I've taken a moment and
paused and said, is this moment how I am going
(40:36):
to react to this? Is this a moment that is
going to redefine my brand in a negative way. This
applies to so many things in life, not just your business,
not if you're a musician, if you're an author. The
things you run out and say, what you do reflects
(40:56):
on your brand. You know, I've I'm not going to
talk about politics too much on this episode, but you know,
so many professional athletes, so many entertainers have now thrown
their hat in the ring when it comes to politics,
and they've said things that they know nothing about and
they end up looking stupid, and now all of a sudden,
they're not the brilliant actor anymore. They're not the brilliant
(41:20):
rapper or singer or whatever it is that they do.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
They're an asshole.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
So my message for today is to be mindful of
your brand. And I'm going to try very hard to
take my own advice each and every day. Very mindful
of your brand, because it's the one thing, for the
most part, that you can control, barring some outside thing
that is beyond your control. But for the most part,
you manage your brand yourself and it doesn't cost anything
(41:51):
necessarily to have a good brand. Sometimes it costs a
little bit to get the message of your brand out there,
but the pillars of who you are, what your mission
is in life or in business, is something that you
at your core can present with no cost, and you
can manage it for the most part at no cost.
(42:15):
And once it's damaged, that opportunity to mold it is
often gone forever. A good brand means everything. Hey, I'm
Billy D's. Thank you so much for checking out The
Billy D's Podcast. You can find the Ability's Podcast anywhere
(42:37):
podcasts are found. As far as social media goes, I'm
on most of the major ones. I don't spend a
lot of time cultivating that. However, we do maintain the
presence on X, which is the former Twitter at Billy
D's on X. Thank you so much for listening to
the program today and we will talk again very very soon.
(43:05):
I'm Billy D's and host of the self titled podcast,
The Billy D's Podcast. We are primarily an interview and
a commentary based podcast featuring authors and creators talking about
their craft, advocates for community issues, and myself in an
array of co host discussing current events. There's no partisan
renting and raving going on here, just great content. You
(43:27):
can find the Billy D's podcast on your favorite platform
and on Twitter at Billy D's. Thank you, and I
hope you listen in
You are listening to the Billy D's Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
All right, well, hello everyone, and welcome to the program.
As always, I am absolutely thrilled that you are here.
If you've never checked us out before, we are primarily
an interview and a commentary based podcast. Now today is
going to be commentary. My name is Billy D's. You
can find Ability's podcast just about anywhere podcasts are found.
(00:33):
I don't normally do sports, and today really isn't a
sports podcast. It is a category that I've just never
really got into that much as a creator.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
But today, from a.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Marketing standpoint, we're going to be talking about the Cleveland
Browns and what they have done to the brand that
is itself, the Cleveland Browns. And of course it's going
to talk about football to a degree, but this isn't
about how the plays are managed or anything like that.
(01:07):
This is about what they've done to that brand and
how important from a marketing standpoint, how important your brand is,
whether you're selling tickets to a football game or whether
you're selling golf balls, it is very important. And today's episode,
let me also say, this is an audio only.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
This is a.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Radio style podcast, which is kind of from my roots
and subscribers to the bilit D's podcast. First of all,
as you know, there are no pay wealls to subscribe
to the bilit D's podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
And secondly, we do give priority because these folks in
the podcast world are the people that have been with
(01:50):
us for the last ten years. So we don't always
do video supplements to our podcast episodes, but we always
give priority. We always make sure that is a good
sounding podcast on the podcast platforms, whether or not we
do a video cast version or not. But today is
audio only exclusive to all of the podcast platforms. Before
(02:13):
I get into some of the dynamics with what has
happened to the Cleveland Browns, let me also as a
backdrop to this, it's very important to me that I
kind of set the stage of what has happened with
professional sports over the years. And keep in mind, this
is an opinion show. A lot of the things that
I'm going to be talking about are my opinion. Some
(02:35):
of the facts that are going to be discussed about
what some of the moves they've made, and some of
the things that have happened are coming from the best
sources that I have, But I can't guarantee that everything
is true. There's going to be a lot of conjecture here,
but the bigger picture is image. And when we're talking
about image, you have to remember your audience. And for
(02:59):
all of the of the Cleveland Browns, and I'm certainly
one of them, I don't feel that enough responsibility has
been assigned to the modern football fan because this is key.
I come from Canton, Ohio, and this is the home
(03:22):
of the Professional Football Hall of Fame, and every year
I have listened to all of the enshrinement speeches, not
every single one every year, but enough of them. From
being from this area, I have decades of experience listening
to all the Enshrinement speeches and all of the different
sports commentators, both locally and nationally talking about the heroes
(03:46):
of the gridiron. Okay, I've heard these speeches ten thousand times,
and there is there's something going on in the public.
But now with this professional athletic worship, and I question
the term heroes. I really question the term heroes. Hero
to me in the classic sense of arrows, which means
(04:08):
of self. You know, when you're walking down the street
and there's a house on fire and you run into
that house, not knowing the people inside. You do it
because you don't have to. You're doing it because you
want to save the people inside. That is a heroic action.
(04:31):
You are of yourself, You're potentially putting yourself in harms way.
You are sacrificing yourself, your own well being to save
someone else. That is heroic and just being honest with
you here, professional athletes are not throwing themselves on grenades.
That's not what's happening here now. I don't want to
(04:54):
diminish the lessons of sports. I don't want to diminish
the lessons of teamwork. I not to do any of that,
or of learning self discipline and being a part of something.
These are all great things that sports can teach. And
there's some that rise to the top with incredible talent,
(05:16):
incredible talent, incredible athletic ability, and there's nothing wrong with
acknowledging them. But it's come to the level now. Even
the term enshrinement, you know, kind of has this feel
of we're inducting another saint into the church, and that
isn't what these people are. They are among you know,
(05:40):
we hear the word privileged, and oftentimes I hear the
word privilege it applied to people who really don't deserve it.
You know someone who landed a job at a local
factory paying a good wage, I said, well, that you
got that job because you're privileged. I would say that
having hero status, being paid millions of dollars, and in
(06:00):
a lot of cases, being above the law because you
play a game that is privileged. These are not heroic
figures in the classic sense, okay, and quite literally. Unfortunately,
we're in a situation now where a lot of these
(06:21):
professional athletes can get away with murder and they are
still cheered. They can beat the hell out of their
girlfriends and drag them down the hallway like a bag
of leaky garbage, and they somehow make it through that.
The narrative is, well, I'm sure the owner can hire
a real good lawyer because we really need this person
(06:44):
on the field on Sunday. This is the climate now,
and I really hate that. I really hate that. And
that's going to fold in to where the Browns have
really taken a.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Nose dive.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Now when I talk about heroes, and there's times when
I'm less critical of the term when it's applied to
professional athletes. When we talk about people at Gail Sayers
or Walter Payton or Roger star Staubach. These are people
we remember not only because they were great players, but
(07:25):
because they were great men. They were great people. There
were people that you would be honored to meet. They
stood for something that transent, transcended football, and I just
don't know, you know the uh uh Simon and Garfunkel
(07:46):
that had a lyric that said, where have you gone?
Joe DiMaggio? And not only do we not have heroes
like that anymore? Sports figures like that anymore inspire? Are
we inspiring individuals for young people? And not only do
we not have that anymore, but the audience that Joe
(08:09):
DiMaggio had is also to a large degree gone.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
You know, I.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Became a young adult back in the nineteen eighties and
I remember the Browns well. First of all, I remember
Sam Retigliano and that whole crew, But probably I got
most interested in the Browns during the cos Our years,
and this was Ozzie Newsome, Reggie Langhorn. These were individuals
(08:41):
that I genuinely liked and still do to this day.
Reggie Langhorn is on a local TV show here every
so often talking sports and he's just listening to him
and the way the perspectives that he brings to what's
going on, it's very inspiring. I'm sitting there and saying,
(09:02):
you know, I would really like to work with this
guy someday, you know, do something for him. I work
in the digital media field, and it'd be great to
do something for him. He's just a guy that's fantastic
to be around. And I understand you don't really know
who these people are all the time. Who knows what
happens when the cameras aren't on. But for the most part,
(09:27):
these were at least standards. They were ideals that are
becoming a part of a bygone era. Okay, now we
have an audience where winning is an obsession, and I
kind of have a suspicion. I don't know for sure,
(09:48):
but I kind of have a suspicion that a lot
of this is coming from all of the legalized gambling
over the last couple of years, you know, especially on
the apps now and the fantasy teams back in the
days of Joe DiMaggio, or you know, going back into
the early days of the NFL, you know, when Roger
stopback and even Walter Payton and all those people played.
(10:12):
There was an aspect of going to a game. And
at that time, especially farther back than the nineteen eighties,
there was a family structure to society, and people went
to church in the morning. And I'm not saying religion
is That's not where I'm going, but there was a
structure to life. You went to church in the morning,
(10:33):
and then oftentimes, you know, the father would take the
sons to the Browns game, and the mothers would go
with their daughters to the mall and they would shop
for clothes and they would do this and that together,
and then at the end of the day they came
together and they all had dinner together. And then Monday morning,
(10:54):
everybody went to school, everybody went to work. There was
a balance there and that's simply gone now. Now Sunday
begins with everybody staring at their phone like a bunch
of zombies and the only thing that matters is what's
happening with my fantasy team, and people get wild, they
(11:17):
get obsessed to the point, you know, I listened to
some commentators this like last week right now the Flacco trade.
Flacco was recently traded to the Cincinnati Bengals, and there was,
and we'll get into a little bit of that, because
that's not really important. What's happening with individual players isn't
(11:38):
really what this is all about. But what I'm getting
at here is there were people on the radio calling
into these these sports shows literally frothing at the mouth,
and that is not what professional sports are supposed to be.
It actually reminds me of what the Romans said with
(12:01):
the colisseum. You know, give the people circuses and bread
and they'll be happy. And what's happening now with professional
sports is they've become circuses to occupy the masses. They're
really not something that, in the classic sense, sports was
supposed to be about. And this is getting lost on
(12:21):
the youth. It's not the same as it once was,
all right, So let's go with the Cleveland Browns. Here's
where the branding of this whole thing is going to
start to take shape.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
The brand of.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
A franchise speaks a lot about its marketability, and it's
not always directly related to winning. I mean, that's certainly
a component of it, but some of the best franchises,
some of the most beloved franchises through the years, whether
they're baseball or whatever. Don't necessarily have the world's greatest
(12:59):
winning record, but they just have a certain brand, a
certain feeling, a certain nostalgia. They represent a certain geographical area.
Dallas Cowboys perfect example, America's team. Okay, they don't, you know,
they don't. They're not necessarily always every year a winning team,
(13:20):
but they win often enough. They have a very very
rich history of winning. But more importantly, it's the feeling
that you get when you know Dallas Cowboys. It represents
the West, represents America, it represents things that make you
feel good. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleader flashy. The stadium is
(13:44):
very welcoming, it's laid out, and you know, it's an
experience to go to the Dallas Cowboys football game. And
that's what makes them one of the most valuable professional
sports franchises in the world. It's not that they win
all the time. It's the feeling that you get. And
(14:06):
it even translates into a color, the navy blue, the white.
It's the whole thing. It's a color, it's a feeling,
it's an area of the country. It's something that makes
you feel good. And for a long time, the Cleveland
Browns here again, going back to the Ozzie Newsom Cozar
(14:28):
years of the nineteen eighties, they were always the lovable underdog,
even going back to Samatigliano and the Cardiac Kids, they
were the lovable underdog, and that is such a valuable brand.
Everybody likes to root for the underdog, and the lovable
(14:49):
underdog is probably one of the most valuable types of
personas you can have, because everybody's waiting for the fairy
tale to happen. And you had that a little bit
in the Kozar years. They got so close had it
not been for that infamous fumble, but they got so
(15:10):
close everybody. You know, I've always had a lot of
contacts from around the country.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
And the Browns were always one of.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Those teams that if you know, your team didn't make it,
if your team didn't you know, got out, didn't make
the playoffs, or they got into the playoffs but were eliminated,
it was always yeah, okay, well my team didn't make it,
but I really hope the Browns go. The Browns had
a universal I would say, everybody liked them.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It was they had this this history, this rich history.
I mean, if you knew anything about the history of
sports at all, but even even Cleveland in general, in
this area of the world, with the Browns meant it
was they they represented the underdog, the working class. They
represented the gritty areas of Cleveland where people worked hard.
(16:07):
And you know, the namesake of the Cleveland Browns. You know,
Paul Brown is one half hour drive. His hometown is
half hour drive from where I'm at in this area.
Can't Ohio is where the NFL was born. So that
you know, the Cleveland Browns represented such a century almost
(16:28):
of this game and what it meant to the local people.
It was such a wonderful brand. Well, the Browns are
still an underdog, but are they lovable?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
What changed?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Why are the Cleveland Browns now talked about with a
certain feeling of contempt? And I'll tell you where it started,
And that started with the on Watson drade. Now, I
want to be very clear here when when when I'm
(17:06):
talking about Deshaun Watson and that whole thing, I don't
know what the facts are. I mean, there's only so
many people who really knew what happened with the allegations
with with Deshaun Watson. There's only a few who really
really know. But from a marketing standpoint, what are you
(17:26):
bringing into your house that is going to serve your brand?
What are you what are you bringing in? Okay, Deshaun
Watson had let's say a lot of baggage, and I know,
people start to piece me all out what he was
actually convicted on and versus this and versus that, and
(17:48):
what is provable And this is where you're starting to
veer off what your brand is supposed to be. This,
this is this is bigger than that. You know, I
did for many many years. I did a lot of
MC work and there were what we're called morals, clauses,
(18:09):
and a lot of the stuff that I was involved in.
It's perfectly legal to do some things. For example, it's
legal for a man like me to go to a
bar and.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Hit on women. It's legal to do that.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
But when I'm on the job, when I'm representing a
company affair, that is not what I should be doing
at that event.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Okay. And when you are brought in as a.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Major, multi multi multi million, matter of fact, multi hundred
million dollar individual, there is a certain responsibility to understand
that you are part of a brand, and it's beyond
that it's beyond it the owners. What was behind this decision.
(19:04):
That's that's where things started to go off the rails
for the brand that what once was the lovable underdog.
This is where things went awry.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
A New York Times investigation kind of looked into this
Deshaun Watson things, and apparently he booked what was reported
as sixty six different masseuses during a seventeen month span
from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one. So here again,
(19:38):
we don't know about these these assault allegations. We don't
know exactly what happened. Okay, because oftentimes, not talking about
this case, but in general, predators will put themselves into
situations where it's a he said, she said situation. Okay,
they don't go into into a beauty parlor or something
(20:00):
like that where there's ten people working and put somebody
in a bad situation. They do it when it's a
one on one. So by its very nature, these things
are structured in a way where it's very hard to
determine exactly what did happen, especially when it comes to criminality.
All right, but appearances, what appearance? Does this have sixty
(20:22):
six different messuses? And these were all trunk slammers. These
were small individual people or people that work for very
small local groups. Now, sixty six over seventeen months. I
don't know how many that is a month. You can
do the math on it. But the question becomes, if
(20:45):
you need a massage, if you need your body worked on,
and you're a professional athlete and you have access to
some of the best physical therapists in the world, the
best doctors in the world, who can give you a massage,
who can give you physical therapy, who can give you
all those things, what are you doing with this? What
(21:08):
is the real purpose behind this? Do you? Is it
really that hard for a professional athlete to get their
body worked on that they have to go to sixty
six small individual female massuses?
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
It also has been reported that the Houston, Texans were
involved in providing him a hotel and also provided him
with a non disclosure agreement that the women had to sign. Now,
if this is true, for what purpose is this? When
was the last time you went to a masseuse or
(21:48):
you went to a physical therapist and you had to
sign a non disclosure agreement or have the have the
provider sign a non disclosure agreement. Does any of this
sound right? In one of these lawsuits, Watson paid a
SPA owner who connected him to multiple non licensed women
(22:11):
for massages. He paid five thousand dollars for what she
claims was to buy SPA equipment. Now, if this was
a politician in a similar situation, would you really buy that?
What is a professional athlete doing mired down in these
situations is physical therapy? Is getting a massage that difficult
(22:36):
to acquire as a professional athlete, and then that brings
in all the allegations and all the common denominators and
all this other stuff. Why was this situation even happening?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Now?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
If you are still listening to this, and here again,
when it comes to what was actually proven what was alleged,
we can piecemeal that out, but I want you to
be honest with yourself. If you're not going to be
honest with me, if you're not going to be honest
with some of the things that I just talked about,
be honest with yourself. If, especially if you're a man
(23:09):
listening to this and you're defending this, I want to
ask you a question. If you had to go to
work one day and your wife was home alone or
your daughter was home alone. Would you want a plumber
with this exact same resume going to your house when
(23:33):
you're not there? Just be honest with yourself if you're
not going to be honest with me. And why on
earth would you put someone who has that resume, that
set of circumstances in their background. Why would you give
them all most a quarter of a billion dollars to
(23:56):
represent your franchise to be the person that young children
is going to wear their jersey. Why would you do that? Well,
there's a calculation. There was a calculation that was made,
and I guarantee i'd hear again. I wasn't there, but
I can almost almost guarantee. I would bet a small
(24:18):
amount of money because I don't like to put large
amounts of money at risk, but I would bet that
somebody made a calculation. They said, yeah, he's going to
bring in a lot of criticism, He's gonna you know,
he's gonna get a lot of women's groups angry, but
winning is going to take care of that. So that
(24:40):
was the calculation. The calculation was this guy's very skilled
at the Browns at that time, had most of the
tools on the field necessary to win and they showed
Baker Mayfield, which is a whole nother story, someone who
played with a lot of enthusiasm for that team. They
showed him the door. They basically said, hey, don't let
(25:02):
the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Okay. And as a matter of fact.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
There was a quote from somewhere, I'm not sure who
said it, but there was a quote from somewhere that
somebody at the Cleveland Browns said, now we have an
adult in the room, because they felt, you know, obviously,
the reference was to a lot of the you know,
the bravado that Baker Mayfield had, and now they have
(25:30):
an adult in the room. What I just described earlier,
the circumstances, the cloud of dust from which this person emerged.
That person is the adult in the room. Of course,
this was all predicated on the fact that he was
going to start winning the playoffs, were going to start
(25:53):
to become a regular thing and a super Bowl eventually,
and they knew that there were still going to be
people who were critical of him, critical of the situation,
but for the most part it would go away, just
like it did in Pittsburgh. They made a calculation, I'm
not sure what I'm not sure which is sadder. I'm
(26:15):
not sure if it's if it's the fact that they
made this calculation as part of where they wanted their
brand to go. I'm not sure if that is more
sad than the idea that had the winning started with
the Shawn, that it would have gone away, that they
would have been right. That is the part I'm not
(26:37):
sure which is worse. But sometimes when you make these
types of deals where there's a gamble involved, the gamble
is that the person is going to come in and
they're not going to do shit. And that's where a
lot of times these deals with the devil don't work
out because you really can't trust the devil.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And the winning didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
If anything, the performance on the field eroded, and the cover,
the cover that was supposed to provide a blanket a
certain forgetfulness to what happened in Houston, did not appear.
(27:24):
The curtains never closed on the controversy. So now you
have the worst of all worlds. You shelled out a
mountain of money on a player that did not pay
off and has a backstory that has severely damaged your brand.
(27:46):
It's the worst of all worlds, And now what you
have is a brand that's no longer the lovable underdog.
What you have is a brand now that from the
top down are assholes. You have a brand now that's
(28:12):
equatable not only with losers, not only with bad sports management.
But you're now in a category where the lovable is gone.
The man behind the veil, the man behind the curtain.
(28:37):
Like the Wizard of Oz has been revealed, there are
no lovable brounds. Okay, there's people who gambled with millions
of dollars and gambled with the idea that winning was
going to bring them a lot of money, and once
the winning started, nobody would care about any of the
(28:57):
controversies that came with this deal. So now the criticism
of this team in the last couple of years has
really changed. Okay, when they make a buffoon call, it's
not Hawa where that Brown's thinking, why do I.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Watch this game? It's not that anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It's you assholes, That's what that is. What has happened.
They have damaged one of the most cherished brands that
you could possibly have in terms of professional sports, and
(29:43):
they've turned their organization into an organization of contempt. People
don't laugh anymore, Oh, those funny Browns when they make
bad decisions in the draft. They don't laugh about bad
trades anymore. They don't laugh about bad play calling. I
(30:04):
don't know why I always stick with this team about
I sure do love them.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
That is gone.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
What is now is you have an organization in Cleveland
manipulating hundreds of millions of dollars in the local economy,
in the local media, and all this other stuff that
has gone astray.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
It's one thing to be about winning.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
When you're doing it in the context of what Vince Lombardi,
and if you don't know who Vince Lombardi is, is legendary
coach of the Green Bay Packers, okay, and his was
all about hard work and sacrifice to win. And you
had that with the Cleveland Browns as well. I mean,
Paul Brown is part of the history of professional sports,
(30:52):
you know, the inventor of the face mask and so
many other things that we take for granted today. That
is the legacy that you had had and what did
you do with it. You can't always win, but at
least you had that wonderful legacy, that wonderful brand that
stood for something. So now that that veil is gone,
(31:15):
and maybe it's always bullshit. You know, maybe these ideals
that we hold up to the old days of sports,
maybe they were all bullshit, but they were good bullshit.
They were bullshit that you would be happy that your
son or your daughter was aspiring to. There was a
little glimpse of that I heard Tom Brady speaking. And
(31:36):
I'll give Tom Brady this. You know, there's a lot
you can criticize about some of the business decisions he's
made here lately and other stuff. But I'll tell you this,
one thing that I don't believe you can take away
from him is what makes Tom Brady great is that
he wasn't great. He didn't have the natural ability that
(31:57):
Patrick Mahomes or something like that had. He was not
that He made himself that. And I was listening to
him one day and he was talking about how he
was on the team and he was only getting two
reps as a backup quarterback, and he went to the
coaches and complained, he said, how do you expect me
(32:18):
to develop? How do you expect me to do anything
with this team? And I'm only getting two reps of practice?
And the coach said, to him, You're never going to
do anything with this team because you're too focused on
what other people's opportunities are. You're you're too worried about
what the other quarterbacks are getting. You're not you're not
(32:41):
concentrating on the opportunities that you do have. And he
went home and he said he contemplated that, and the
next day when his name got called for those two reps,
he sprinted into that huddle like it was the super
Bowl and he was going to make sure that those
two reps were the best reps that those coaches saw
(33:05):
all day long.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Those are the.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Types of lessons now here. Again, you can say, well,
that's a lot of colorful high talk and it's bullshit.
That's fine, but it's good bullshit. It does translate into
real world applications one hundred percent. What have the Browns offered?
What has this hold Deshaun Watson thing? What has any
of that? What part of that is good bullshit? What
(33:32):
part of that is good bullshit? None of it? And
it has destroyed the brand that is the Cleveland Browns.
Now even some of the things that have happened more recently,
we were in production today October nineteenth, twenty twenty five.
Some of the things that have happened here recently from
a public relations standpoint with the team. For example, the
(33:53):
trade of Joe Flacco, who was the number one quarterback,
to the Cincinnati Bengals that made Dylan Gay the number
the number one quarterback because he was the backup to
Joe Flacco and Shador Sanders, who is number three. You
would expect that to be automatically number one leaves two,
(34:14):
goes to one, three goes to two. Pretty easy math, right.
The head coach of the Cleveland Browns couldn't get it
out of his mouth when he was asked, Now, I
don't know what happened with Shador standards or what the
politics is around this person, but in what world is
it hard to say, Okay, our number three quarterback is
now our number two quarterback. This is the type of
(34:37):
bullshit that isn't funny anymore because you are perceived as
an asshole. You're not the lovable Browns anymore. You're an asshole.
So when you can't even get something like that out
of your mouth, when you can't even say his name,
(34:58):
I have no idea what hap happened here with this
shedor Sanders. I understand here, again, getting back to branding,
you don't want to have someone with a very famous,
domineering father becoming a distraction. And quite frankly, with Travis Kelsey,
had he been a rookie and just been drafted, bringing
(35:19):
somebody like Taylor Swift in would have been a major distraction.
Now he was already well established when that started, that's
a little different. But when you're bringing something like that
in to an organization where teamwork and respect is so
important in that team, I understand that having a domineering
presence in your life as a rookie is a big distraction,
(35:42):
fair enough, But with that being said, there's something really
odd about the way this young man was handled in
this organization.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
All right. I don't know who.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
And that's the thing too, there's all this mystery about
why he was brought in to begin with. Was it
the owner, was it the general manager, or was it
the coach? There's all this static, and this static isn't
funny anymore. It's not the lovable Cleveland Browns just bumbling
through the league anymore. It's not that it's a bunch
(36:12):
of assholes. That is what the brand has become and
I don't know if it's recoverable. I don't know if
it's recoverable. Okay, what you have now, even if this
team starts to win anytime soon, it's going to have
an asterisk by it. I don't know that the Lovable
(36:36):
Browns can make a comeback. It was decades in the making,
and it just took a staff of the ownership, of
the management and the coaching to totally destroy the brand.
They forgot about why they were loved. I understand winning
(36:58):
is important, and sometimes you want to take a shortcut,
and sometimes you want to gamble a lot of money
on a particular player, but you have to keep sight
of what your brand is, what has kept your fans loyal,
what has kept the advertisers coming back, And now everything
even this stadium deal, which I'm not going to get
(37:21):
into the specific so that even that has a cloud
over it.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Now it just has this ugly cloud over it.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
And in years past, a new stadium would have been
something that a lot of people would have been happy about.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Oh great, there's going to be a new stadium. Our
good old Browns are going to play there. That's not
the case anymore.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
You're going to have an expensive stadium that a lot
of big money people are going to profit from, and
it's all going to go to a bunch of bassholes.
That's where we're at now with the Cleveland Browns and
getting back to the power of branding. Don't forget about
your brand, you know, and that applies to so many things,
(38:05):
just like there's so many things in life, you know,
you could take from sports and put into life. It's
so true. Your brand is all you have. Even as
an individual. The identity of who you are has the
most value of anything else. Whether it's your personal relationships,
(38:28):
your friendships, how you're going to land your next job,
all of that translates into the brand that is you.
If you have a local shop in your neighborhood, you
fix lawnmowers. Okay, people will forgive the time they brought
(38:49):
their lawnmower in and it didn't quite work like and
they had to take it back. What matters is how
you handled that situation. Everybody doesn't always get it right
the first time, especially when they're doing them over and
over and over again, the same task over and over again.
There's bound to be a time when something slips through.
People understand that, but What they will not understand is
(39:10):
when you go back and say, hey, look my lawnwer
it's still doing the same thing. Can you take a
second look at it? And you get a bunch of
grief that damages the brand that is your repair shop.
When you say, yeah, well maybe I missed something, let's
take it, or maybe it's something else. Let's take another
look at it here and I'll get it fixed for you. Okay.
(39:31):
This is what makes or breaks a brand. And when
you have a legacy of being lovable for the way
you lose, you know, it was the fumble in the
last minute of the game that costs the Browns. I
so hope they can win next year. It's that that
(39:53):
is gone. And if you do manage to pull a winner,
now it's going the question is going to be at
what cost did it come? That is where we are
at with branding and alls. I can say, is I hope,
I really hope. I've made a lot of mistakes in
(40:15):
my life. I really have, but I can honestly say
there's been a certain consistency in the person that I
am and before I make decisions. A lot of times,
especially as I've gotten older, I've taken a moment and
paused and said, is this moment how I am going
(40:36):
to react to this? Is this a moment that is
going to redefine my brand in a negative way. This
applies to so many things in life, not just your business,
not if you're a musician, if you're an author. The
things you run out and say, what you do reflects
(40:56):
on your brand. You know, I've I'm not going to
talk about politics too much on this episode, but you know,
so many professional athletes, so many entertainers have now thrown
their hat in the ring when it comes to politics,
and they've said things that they know nothing about and
they end up looking stupid, and now all of a sudden,
they're not the brilliant actor anymore. They're not the brilliant
(41:20):
rapper or singer or whatever it is that they do.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
They're an asshole.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
So my message for today is to be mindful of
your brand. And I'm going to try very hard to
take my own advice each and every day. Very mindful
of your brand, because it's the one thing, for the
most part, that you can control, barring some outside thing
that is beyond your control. But for the most part,
you manage your brand yourself and it doesn't cost anything
(41:51):
necessarily to have a good brand. Sometimes it costs a
little bit to get the message of your brand out there,
but the pillars of who you are, what your mission
is in life or in business, is something that you
at your core can present with no cost, and you
can manage it for the most part at no cost.
(42:15):
And once it's damaged, that opportunity to mold it is
often gone forever. A good brand means everything. Hey, I'm
Billy D's. Thank you so much for checking out The
Billy D's Podcast. You can find the Ability's Podcast anywhere
(42:37):
podcasts are found. As far as social media goes, I'm
on most of the major ones. I don't spend a
lot of time cultivating that. However, we do maintain the
presence on X, which is the former Twitter at Billy
D's on X. Thank you so much for listening to
the program today and we will talk again very very soon.
(43:05):
I'm Billy D's and host of the self titled podcast,
The Billy D's Podcast. We are primarily an interview and
a commentary based podcast featuring authors and creators talking about
their craft, advocates for community issues, and myself in an
array of co host discussing current events. There's no partisan
renting and raving going on here, just great content. You
(43:27):
can find the Billy D's podcast on your favorite platform
and on Twitter at Billy D's. Thank you, and I
hope you listen in
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!