Today we tackle the more hopeful years of this Cleveland sports generation. From a belief that Jamir Miller was the finest linebacker in the AFC to the arrival of LeBron James, here are some of the finer New Year’s Day thoughts we’ve had.
Remember, this countown is based on hope, not actuality. Therefore, New Year’s of 1999 was a time of excitement because the Browns were coming back; we had no way of knowing what would happen during one of the worst NFL seasons in history. That season, of course, affected the way we thought about the dawning of the year 2000.
Here is 6-1 one of the New Year’s Hope list:
6. 2002 – John Lucas is not the answer, the Indians are A-OK and the Browns are on the way up
The first glass of champagne at the MoneyMike College Dreamhouse in 2002 was sipped with a special hope that the Browns, coming of a 7-9 record in Butch Davis’ first year, were really onto something special. The team’s offense was still terrible, but Davis appeared to have a natural leadership tendency and he promised us that first round pick Gerrard Warren, his boy, was going to become the stellar defense player that Courtney Brown was simply not becoming. Moreover, the emerging Jamir Miller made us all think we had found our linebacking leader for the future.
Sure, the Cavs stunk in 2000-01 and had brought in John Lucas to continue the stinking in 01-02, but the Indians had made the playoffs in 2001 with a 91-71 record to make things all right.
5. 2001 – Butch is here, another Tribe playoff run and why did I decide to say something about the Cavs in every section
Few things stoke fan excitement more than change, so even though the 2000 Browns season was forgettable – they went 3-13, averaged 10.1 points per game and Spergeon Wynn and Doug Pederson both earned time behind center – Chris Palmer was beheaded (I think that’s what happened to him, have you seen him since 2000?) and University of Miami coach Butch Davis was handed the keys to the team. Though he was unproven in the NFL, he was a successful college coach who seemed to follow his gut, something we could all appreciate after watching Palmer founder for two years when it came to decision making.
The Browns’ hope for success coupled nicely with the hope that 2001 would be another great year for the Tribe. The ‘90s team was nearly all gone, but new owner Larry Dolan hadn’t torn the team apart like we all feared and John Hart was still was still at the helm… kind of.
I tire of thinking of ways to insult the Cavs teams of our generation, so I will fulfill my obligation to say something about the city’s feelings for them in 2002 by throwing random notes together: Randy Wittman, no Shawn Kemp, 32-50 in 1999-2000.
4. 2007 – Hoping the Tribe’s slide was for one year, the Cavs are the toast of the town and the Frye/DA debate begins
Let’s get the ugly out of the way: New Year’s 2007 came just days after the Browns ended the 2006 season at 4-12. The offense ranked 30th in the league in scoring and coach Romeo Crennel fell to 10-22 in his first two seasons as a head coach.
Now forget about all that. What we were really talking about in 2007 was the emerging Cavaliers. They went 50-32 in Mike Brown’s first season and by the start of the ’06-07 season there was no longer a way to keep LeBron out of the conversation about the five best players on the planet. After advancing to the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs in the season before, 2007 was set to be a showdown with the Detroit Pistons or Miami Heat in the East. Of course we knew we could never beat either one, but we were ready to take them to six, maybe even seven games.
Finally, the Indians were coming off a disappointing 2006 where they went 78-84, but the hype for 2007 was building. The team that won 93 games in 2005 was still there and guys like Grady Sizemore and C.C. Sabathia seemed to be ready to come into their own.
3. 2006 - Frye the local guy, LeBron’s new coach and the Indians are back
It appeared that all would be right for Cleveland in 2006: The Indians were coming off a 93-win season in ’05 where they narrowly missed the playoffs, the Cavs hired Mike Brown and his in-depth knowledge of the Spurs’ success and the Browns, coming off of a mediocre 6-10 season in Romeo Crennel’s first campaign, had Akron’s own Charlie Frye ready to start throwing to a finally-healthy Kellen Winslow II. Yep, things were finally coming up Cleveland…
2. 2004 – Rookie LeBron and who cares about anything else
If you could create a short toast from the thoughts of Cleveland hopefuls on New Year’s 2004 it would have to be something like this: Who cares if everyone else stinks, we have LeBron.
Midway through LeBron’s rookie campaign it was obvious this kid was going to be special. In a town rife with ‘special’ guys who actually turned out to be ‘atrocius’ players, this meant that the future was indeed something to look forward to.
Sure, the Butch Davis era was falling apart and new Tribe manager Eric Wedge had about as much personality as a pair of dress socks, but who cares, we got LeBron!
1. 2008 – The year of the playoffs
What, you didn’t know I would put this year at the top of the list? Of course the next year is always the one where we have the most hope, that’s the whole point of this stupid list.
Beyond the fact that 2008 is the only year where I’m truly able to remove all cynicism, this is also a year where all three of our teams have a legit shot at making the playoffs.
Sure, something will happen to prevent that, but think about what we’ll see in 2008: The Cavs defending their Eastern Conference championship (sure, they’re awful right now, but things have to turn around, right?), the Indians defending a Central Division championship and the Browns coming in off a generational-best 10-6 record.
That’s not to mention that we will get to see LeBron, a reigning Cy Young winner, and a Browns team with two Pro Bowlers. Two! Now is the hour of our content.
Now, on to the usual rants for which S*KM pays me top dollar:
The money you’ll lose and the weight you’ll gain: Undoubtedly every extra spoonful of whipping cream you put on your holiday pie this past week has come with the forethought that you will burn it off with a rigorous routine of squat thrusts and isolation curls at the beginning of the New Year.
Similarly, as you gave each gift, purchased on your high-interest credit card, you forgot about the price because, after all, ‘tis the season and everything, and made a declaration that you would be more fiscally responsible in 2008.
‘What a slimmer and more financially sound me you should expect this year,’ you would say to us if you had a platform on which to speak.
Of course, the only thing that makes your declaration different than the thousands of other Americans saying the same thing this week is that you read S*KM, and your hopes will be debunked before you even begin. It’s a new hope-dashing agenda we’ve set here at the site to save you money on gym memberships.
The fact of the matter is, if you are an average American – which you probably are, whether or not you like to hear it – you will gain about 1.4 pounds this year and you will go another $1,000 in debt. Those figures can vary depending on which study you read, but give you some idea of where you’ll be.
MoneyMike is no stranger to debt or weight gain, so this portion of the column does not come from a soapbox of any sort. Not only has my bank account been chewed through by more than $20,000 in student loans, but my 18-22-year-old self made no effort whatsoever to control spending on items such as drinks, pizzas and 1998 Jeep Wranglers. All this occurred in a terrible congruence with a disinterest in my workout routine. The end result makes me an average American: I’m in severe debt and my body mass index chart indicates I should lose 12-16 pounds. Also, I despise soccer.
So what can we, as average Americans, do to make things better? New Year’s resolutions have long been the popular way to wash away last year’s sins by promising to do better this time around. Similarly, one portion of the two-party government system, like the Republicans in 2004, will often promise to do better if reelected…
With that in mind, I will give some advice for more realistic changes. I would also love to see posts from people who have even better ideas.
My short-lived days of athletic ability left when I retired from high school sports and went on a four-year mission to figure out which beer was best to bong after dinner. With that new lifestyle, long lost were the days when trying to bench press impressive amounts of weight had any practical use for me, which released the air from my workout balloon. Instead, late-nigh college eating, followed by poorly formed diet habits once I became a real adult, merely blew up the spare tire around my midsection and put me further from any hope of shapeliness.
Though this is something I’m still struggling with today, the first thing I had to do was learn to get myself in shape in a way that made sense to me. I’m not a runner, and I no longer enjoy arduous hours of weightlifting, so I found new ways to knock out calories. First, my Resident Lady Friend and I took up cycling. It’s as lame as it sounds, but two or three days a week during the summer/fall we took romantic bike rides through the Cleveland Metroparks. It was like a Meg Ryan movie.
As things got colder, I gave up any self respect I had and joined a pick-up basketball league for guys 25 and up. It’s a sad league with several 40-year-old men playing shirt-skin games, but it keeps me active – which has also led me back to the gym a couple days a week to build some leg strength so I can be a strong defender to make up for my lack of basketball skills.
Again, these things haven’t given me a six-pack or helped me become model of the year, but I have lost 15 pounds since spring of 2007 and, though I need to lose 12-16 more, I can see my jaw line again.
Beyond my best advice, I have also pulled a resource from my circle of powerful friends. (It should be noted that despite MoneyMike’s rather prominent place in the field of business journalism I am by far one of the least decorated 20-somethings in a group of friends that includes two engineers subcontracted by NASA, a gaggle of soon-to-be lawyers, a young executive at Texas Instruments, a p.r. director at Rice University and a guy who lives in Chicago doing something or another.)
Monsieur Funk, a former roommate and one of the aforementioned engineers, is a weight-loss veteran. After building his weight up on some of OU’s plentiful and affordable late-night pizza distributors during our college years, Msr. Funk tipped the scale at a little more than 310 pounds by the end of 2004. With the weight punishing his knees and overexerting his heart, he came to the kind of mathematical conclusion his brain is built for: A long life would not come from such a lifestyle. In turn, he changed his diet sharply and developed a superior health routine. The cherry on his health Sundae came when he ran in the Cleveland Marathon in May of 2007 at a weight of 215 pounds. Here’s what Msr. Funk had to say about losing weight when asked for a brief paragraph on the topic:
‘The most important thing for me was to make smaller goals that lead to your desired outcome. When pushing the scales at 300-plus pounds, it was too far off for me to think about dropping down to 215. So I set a goal to hit 275 by the end of March ’05. After completing that, I decided to shoot for 250 at the end of June. Knowing that the weight would come off slower as time when on, my last goal was to be at 230 by the end of September ’05 (this one was the hardest to make). I’ve gone down well below that and back up some since then, but I maintain my benchmark of 230 as a high point. You’ll always fluctuate when it comes to weight, but if you establish goals about where you want to be and are willing to do the work, you’ll meet your goals and maintain them. As for the weight loss, there were no games or gimmicks. I stopped eating fast food, ate more fruits, vegetables, and low-fat protein. While I was in the weight-loss part, I made the commitment to exercise at least once every day. Even if it was only for 20 minutes.’
As for debt, the long-term perspective is one that is hard to teach but invaluable to learn. One quick statement best sums up the idea: today’s debt decreases future spending potential. Since I would like to one day own a house and a car that doesn’t have a crack in the windshield, this idea hits home for me. The idea that today’s extra round of Christmas Ale – which is not needed for many reasons – can hurt my potential to one day buy a house is pretty resounding. The statement has slowly helped me climb out of debt, so maybe it will work for you. Try saying it aloud: today’s debt decreases future spending potential.
MoneyMike’s Green with Irony Watch (running item): Normally I save this portion of the column for ripping some person or company claiming to go green while actually continuing to pollute, but this week I just want to rip an all-out polluter. During one of my several family/friend visits during the holiday season I came across a wealthy man who simply refused to recycle for reasons as shallow as, ‘I can’t make a difference with one blue bag of recycling.’
Never mind that this close-minded attitude is the cliché for non-voters and focus on the fact that recycling, unlike voting, is the exact place where one person can make a difference. This man, the father of a friend, lives in a large house and owns two Porsches. It would be an understatement to say he is leaving a large footprint on the earth. Therefore, it would be the least he could to do to recycle to help wash that out. To say he can’t make a difference as one person would be like someone voting Republican six times in six states because he didn’t think his one vote would help the Democratic Party.
Sports Banter of the Week (occasionally forgotten item): This was originally supposed to run in my Dec. 17 column, but I forgot to include the section. It’s from Friendly Matt, the best story teller at my day job, and it came via e-mail on the day the Mitchell Report was released:
‘All I have to say is …. Denny Neagle?
Back in high school I got a poster from a Three Rivers Stadium giveaway that had Neagle rearing back for a fastball on it. Emblazoned at the top was the slogan, “Winners don’t do drugs.â€â€™
Next week: Like everyone else I will just go ahead and award LSU the BCS trophy before the game because the SEC could NEVER lose to a Big 10 team, and we’ll see if you beat the over/under on how many times you’d go to the gym before retreating back to your life of ordering takeout from your parents’ basement.
-MoneyMike doesn’t enjoy athletic competitions that pit Florida against Michigan because it confuses his natural tendencies of hate. If you have comments for MoneyMike please send them to cottrill.m@gmail.com or post something silly below.
Is that true about the recycling? I would have left all of my empty Mike’s Hard Lemonades on his driver’s seat if I had known that.
On an un-related note- I rooted for Michigan. As much as I hate them, when they play outside of the Big 10 (I hate that they won’t just rename it the big 11) you have to. It was refreshing to see a team from the cold weather conference to be able to handle “SEC speed.”
Mike, you don’t get two porches by spending all your time recycling.
Money, we think alike in so many ways… I don’t like soccer either.