Post-game reviews; Browns lose more than a game

Quickly, to update my earlier piece on the media hype of the  Browns' QB crisis:

The reviews of the Monday night snore were distinctly  flavored with the acidity of a lovers' quarrel.  The Beacon Journal headlined "QB hopefuls  don't impress''  and the story reaffirmed it  by describing  the historic performance  as "perhaps the biggest dud since the Y2K  Scare".

The Plain Dealer took a  meaningless  more humane course by calling for a reader poll on whether  Brian Hoyer or Johnny Middle-Finger Football Manziel should be the starter. (One fan proposed dressing Tim Tebow for the next game!  You can understand the desperation.)

But  shouldn't some of the red faces be shared by the media for the  electrified buildup of the QB gold rush that asked us each day which guy should start?  Unfortunately, the Browns  didn't play on Broadway Monday night, where bad reviews can close a show in an instant.  .

They are left, instead,  with Hoyer and Manziel, for better or worse and the show must go on.

The third good thing to occur in Cleveland

If, as the saying goes, good things come in threes,  watch for one more good thing to happen in Cleveland. There's the Republican National Convention.  And in case you missed it,  LeBron James is returning.

The third? My hunch is that Johnny Manziel Football will tell the Plain  Dealer that he will spend the next four weekends reading poetry to Cub Scouts. (You heard it here first!)

Johnny Football: Get over it. I ain't changing

Has there ever  been a rookie professional athlete  like Johnny Manziel who burst onto the stage with less aplomb and more defiance of his critics?  After five fun-loving weekends away from the field, dutifuly recorded in the media,  Manziel drew a line in the mythical sand to reporters at the Browns' site in Berea, telling them that he has absolutely no thought of changing his lifestyle, no matter what anybody else thinks.

"I am not going to change who I am for anybody," he declared,  adding that he didn't want to live in a shell.

As we all know, professional football is a brutal sport, and as a quarterback, Manziel's  moment of further reflection on his life may come  with the arrival in his face  of a crushing defensive end who gets paid to ruin the other guy's week end.

Johnny Football upstaged by LeBron Basketball

No sooner had people started to raise eyebrows about supernova Johnny Football's (a.k.a.Manziel} off-the-field revelries than along came LeBron Basketball (a.k.a. James) to upstage him in the media.   Unless you have been  engaged in a life-and-death personal emergency the past few days, you will know  that LeBron has decided to end his ties with the Miami Heat to pursue his claim as the NBA's greatest player for wherever it will take him - physically and financially..

For the moment at least,  the sports crowd, particularly in northern Ohio, may find less distracting  Johnny Football's' repeated weekend escapades that have shown him riding an inflated swan or swigging champagne from bottle to lips. As we've learned from our livelihood  in LeBron's hometown of Akron, there isn't much on the planet that will distract  the media from reporting his minute- by-minute existence.

Ever since he ceremoniously left the Cavaliers four years ago to take up with the Heat, LeBron has been the source of wistful yearning among the Cavs fans (even those who may have scorned him for leaving) that he would make a MacArthur-like return to bring an elusive championship to a Cleveland sports franchise.

Until  LeBron's  next move is determined, the scribes and broadcast commentators  will drench themselves in  speculation that could encourage the Plain Dealer to spread Terry Pluto over six full pages in a Sunday edition, building on the four that  his voluminous sports profundity was given recently.  (If you're looking for an excessive  first in urban journalism, you need look no farther.)

As for Johnny Football, he may have to ask what a guy has to do to match LeBron's celebrity.    For starters, he  might play his first minute in an actual NFL game.