CLEVELAND, Ohio - In franker times, they were called exhibition games.
Pete Rozelle, on his way to inducing some members of the NFL's media to be spun as fully as sugar into cotton candy, decreed decades ago that these often shoddy performances should be called "preseason games."
Nice try, but what used to occur during exhibition games (because that's what they are) recalled, oh, being tortured like the political prisoner who was forced to listen to the sound track of "Naughty Marietta" over and over again in Woody Allen's movie "Bananas."
Let's just say, after a 1-15 season, the bar was set pretty low for excitement at the Factory of Sadness.