Tough?

Here's a phrase I'm done with: Cleveland fans, when asked about being Cleveland fans, will say, "it's tough." I hear it all the time. It's tough to be a Cleveland fan.

Um, no. It's not. It's just sports. And we're not playing.

Being a Cleveland fan is a lot of things. It's not fun; it's boring; it's frustrating; it's stupid; it's something to do; it's tradition; it's a reason to drink beer; it's a losing endeavor; it's an unrewarded proposition; it's fruitless; it's a misguided point of pride; it's somewhat embarrassing; it's something to talk about; it's something to think about when avoiding real life. These are all things I know and all things I fully accept. If I didn't, I wouldn't care about how Kyrie Irving looked in his first preseason game. I'd just, you know, learn about the Eurozone crisis, or something.

But is it tough? Really? If you honestly are sitting there Sunday, watching the Browns lose again, for the millionth time — in your warm house, sipping a cold one — and thinking to yourself "Man, this is TOUGH! I don't know how I do this!" then you are an idiot. Pat yourself on the back for being able to endure such a struggle of the human will and then kill yourself.

For some people it might be tough just because of the Cleveland part. If they live in Cleveland, odds are they have no job or a shitty job and can't ever get their snow-covered car to start in the morning, and so all of that stuff tangles up with Travis Hafner's injuries and the Cliff Lee trade and makes being a Cleveland fan tough. But it ain't. And those people are probably just whiners anyway.

I say this lovingly as I have, I'm sure, done this myself. If I looked in the archives of this dumb blog, I'd probably see myself saying "Man it is TOUGH being a Cleveland fan." But that's because I'm an idiot sometimes, too.

Watch the clip of James Harrison giving Colt McCoy a guaranteed ticket to pissing himself and forgetting who is wife is when he's 50 years old again. Man, being a Cleveland athlete ... now THAT's got to be tough.

Tough is just a word, and not even that strong of a word, but it bugs me now. I think it bugs me because it has become the Cleveland fan's default ethos. It seems like any Jhonny-Peralta-Come-Lately can plop down at a bar stool, watch a game and say casually, "Man, it's tough being a Cleveland fan," and then pay their tab, forget about the game and go home to jerk off and beat their wife.

Look, it's definitely DUMB to sit there and watch the Browns on Sunday, and it's a WASTE OF TIME, and it's ANNOYING to watch them never play a meaningful game, and it's PATHETIC that all of our teams ultimately fail, and blah blah blah and so on. But when this happens, I just look at some mock drafts and think about next year. Done. Not so tough. ... and sure, I get close to tears with how frustrated and angry I get, and I waste hours on the phone discussing how much I hate these teams and the decisions they make and how much time I spend watching and thinking about what's going to happen next and what just happened ...

Wait, what was I saying again?

Oh yea. Tough. It's an inaccurate descriptor. For those of you taking my words to heart, here is what you can use instead:

"Being a Cleveland fan — It fucking sucks."

Next round is on me. Go teams.