BEREA, Ohio – My father never missed his Browns on Sunday.
He was from the generation that drove to Erie, Pa., to watch blacked-out home games. He was the guy in the neighborhood scaling his outdoor antenna, risking life and limb like Clark Griswold hanging Christmas decorations, to pull in some station in Ontario, Canada televising his team.
My dad lived long enough to see the Browns win their last playoff game on New Year's Day 1995 and died months before Art Modell moved the franchise to Baltimore. Cancer sucks but it spared my old man from having to see something he loved unconditionally taken from him.