DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum A VERY interesting article about Haslam every Browns Fan Needs to Read.

This article is a BIG eye opener to how things actually work behind the scenes. The Haslams are complete and total morons, and not only that, they are snakes. they broke their word and agreement with Sashi Brown, They purposely pit people against one another creating an absolutely disgusting toxic environment.

I take back EVERYTHING I ever said about Jr.(Randy Lerner) there is a worse owner than him which I didn't think was possible. That owner is many magnitudes worse than Jr and their names are Jimmah and Dee Haslam.

Read the article, its unreal. thats what were up against.

Didn't we already discuss this story at great length when it came out nearly a year ago?

It's where the infamous line about Dorsey "flexing his muscle" came from when he hired Freddie.

Yes - but when there is blood in the water ....

This pretty much sums it up. It is VERY scary. It also illustrates that the Haslams really haven't learned ANYTHING during their tenure as owners. I don't see any real success until they sell the Browns. This is really awful to read.

Dee Haslam being quoted from the article:

"We just don't know what we are doing," Dee said in the office around that time, according to multiple sources in the building, a refrain they had heard her utter before but that she denied through a team spokesman. "If we'd known how hard it would be, we never would have bought the team."

Do us all a favor: SELL THE TEAM! You have ZERO clue about what to do and I'm certain you'll get a great return on your investment. Stop trying to learn about something you are CLEARLY unable to do! The Cleveland Browns fans deserve better!

I cannot even believe the NFL allows such incompetence at the ownership level. This franchise is an embarrassment to the city of Cleveland and the NFL. I hate Goodell and wish he would fix this.

The Haslams can go to hell. The sooner the better.

The NFL expects more accountability from its players than they do their owners.

Could you imagine what would happen if one of their players was arrested for soliciting prostitution at a massage parlor like Kraft was?

At least they are TRYING to learn and seem invested personnally. I remember Randy Lerner in a "new coach" search press conference being told Mangini was just fired and was avaliable. He lit up and said wasnt aware of that. A week later he was our coach. He HAD no clue and no interest in football. He hired a name and went back to his Bank business. Id rather have a stupid but learning Passionate owner than one that could care less about the record. Until one of us here gets our hand on a Billion dollars, the best we can do is be glad he's willing to spend money trying to fix this mess.

Actually, for the most part, Lerner knew his limitations and tried to hire the people he felt was best for the job and allow them to do their job. He got it wrong but he didn't try to convince himself that he knew how to micromanage people who were experts in their field while he knew nothing about it.

Now we have a marketing guy who butts his nose into things he knows nothing about by continually pressing the panic button in his office.

To say which is worse is purely subjective. The results have been similar.

Hard to get a take on this old article.

At one point it said Haslam was never charged in the Pilot fiasco, then said despite audio and video evidence against his claim of not knowing. Sorry, had a DA had that evidence, he would have been charged.

A biased hack article that makes me question every written word.

Yea.. Don't know many really rich people that got it by being nice guys in business. Most are cut throats by nature. Look at all the big names in history and see how nice and honest they were.. At the end of their lifes or after... They become saints for donating around the world and having colleges and Museums after them. Gates, Ford, Carnegie etc, etc.. They built america and took every dime they could on the way..

I don't understand since the Haslams started In the Steelers organizations how come they learn
From their business model

Except that both Junior and Jimmy are the heirs to men that built their fortunes. Oh, how many heirs I’ve known. New York City is overflowing with them.

Asking which is worse, an unplugged knownothing looking for any qualified person(s) to take over responsibility or a meddling knownothing trying to learn on the job while still sticking his his wrench in the works is a fools errand. Well, I will say that the unplugged chief can work IF they manage to hire good people who don’t need a lot of accountability. That’s rare. They have to be good at that one thing... hiring well. That is a very under rated skill.

I’ve said this in other threads and some of you are already on the same wave length. We will never be a well run team as long as a highly business-dysfunctional person runs the show. I’ve been in C-suite corporate America for over 30 years and finding a well run, world class company headed by a micro managing knownothing, regardless of how much he wants to be good, is non existent. They’re always looking for the wrong things; Short cuts, big payout gambles, easy control, short term positive feedback, etc. They can’t or won’t focus long term, big picture, incremental equity building, culture building etc.

The best chiefs do a few things well; Know their own limitations and hire well to cover those gaps. Understand the limitations of the people they hire and not ask them to work extensively in those capacities. Define roles and accountability frameworks, create a culture of clear communication where, despite all the natural human politics and agendas and BS, everyone basically understands what the hell is going on and is pulling in the same general direction. Everyone doesn’t have to be friends or nice and happy but there needs to be a framework and systems and team plans that everyone in the building understands and accepts. The chief is the one who lays that out.

Judging from everything I’ve seen and read, there is little hope that the Haslams will ever create anything like this. Not because they’re terrible people or dumb or crazy but because they’re simply not those kinds of people, they don’t have the natural instincts and/or aren’t learning what really needs to be known. The best we can hope for is we luck out, a coach GM combo come in that understand all this and Haslam gleans juuuuust enough to bugger off most of the time. I feel like we’ll know almost immediately if our lotto ticket hits this time or not. I’m really not counting on it.

I will add that when people come from a marketing background it only compounds the problem. Market requires quick results or a change in marketing strategy. It's a high turnover, quick response type of process. And that's exactly what we've seen.

Except marketing strategy doesn't seem to integrate very well with operational changes. Haslam might know something about marketing (see Manziel being drafted) but he knows ZERO about football operations or hiring people to run it. Of course, he's infinitely rich so he BELIEVES he knows more than he actually does. That's where the disconnect is. And it will NOT change - it is he personality. Browns fans will continue to support this failure because they're desperate. And the cycle continues. Haslam gets richer, fans waste their time and money and the frustration grows. Until the fans STAY AWAY from the stadium, nothing will REALLY change. It is what it is. An out of control dumpster fire. Stay warm folks.

Maybe the dumpster fire will put off enough heat to help keep us warm.

Yeah we did... Just a bit short of a year ago.. Knight says the Jimmy is a Moron.. What I got out of it is a business man who is trying to get a handle on how things work at the base level.

This is Old news...

Well, any one of you guys can pony up the billion and a half it’ll take to buy the franchise. Until then, it’s his toy to play with as he sees fit.

Until Jimmy removes himself from the football side, the Browns are going NOWHERE. The only consistent element of the franchise will be recycling coaches and players. Oh, and one other thing: LOSING. Stay out of it or sell it Jimmy. I won't hold my breath.

Jimmy sounds like a guy that will smile in your face then stab you in the back. Hey, that sounds like a song. Anyway, unfortunately not much fans can do about bad ownership.

Unfortunately in order to buy something the owner, or owners, have to be willing to sell.

True. I think if the right offer came along, the Haslams would do it, though.

HAS ANYTHING CHANGED IN CLEVELAND OVER THE LAST 365 DAYS?

Someone pointed out that we already discussed this article a year ago...so why are we discussing this subject again?

My question...HAS ANYTHING CHANGED WITHIN THE BROWNS ORGANIZATION OVER THE LAST YEAR?

There was an effort a year ago to portray the Haslams as owners who finally "got it" and were stepping back allowing those they hired to do their jobs.

It's now obvious that Jimmy continues to be an owner who can't keep his fingers off of the franchise..the Browns continue to be a toy that Jimmy loves to play with.

IS JIMMY HASLAM STILL TRYING TO MAKE HIMSELF INTO A "FOOTBALL GUY"?

Without a doubt, Haslam still wants to be known as the Browns "football guy", who happens to be the Browns owner.

The fact that the Haslams attempted to sell themselves as owners who finally "got it" and would not be so closely involved with the football side, then reality strikes and now we are back to the GM and HC reporting directly to the owner, Jimmy Haslam.

How will the reality of how the Haslams operate affect the coaching search?

Mike McCarthy didn't want anything to do with the Browns and our HANDS ON owner.

Will the other coaching candidates view the Browns as an undesirable place work?

Some suggest that the Browns will be left with the LEFTOVERS and those who are the most qualified will not work for a meddling owner like Jimmy and Dee Haslam.

And our misery to watch the results of it.

You have to remember Jimmy is good at marketing. That's why everyone keeps falling for the same story year after year. The word is getting out and the smarter guys are avoiding the Browns like the plague. Good. Jimmy deserves to eat the continuous flow of crap sandwiches just as he continues to serve the same crap to the fans. Screw Jimmy Haslam.

Do yourselves a favor: STAY HOME and watch the games if you must. But don't you DARE give this incompetent thief another dime. If you do, then you're the fool.

That may be true for Lerner. Not so much for Haslam. His dad had maybe 10 gas stations. A nice sum, but hardly the empire it turned in to because of Jimmy's vision.

Like him or not, we need to be fair and understand the facts.

The fact is he's a marketing guy that sells products other people develop. He's great at marketing and built a fortune around it. In marketing, if one strategy doesn't work you quickly move on to your next marketing campaign.

He has no idea how to actually build a product or the patience it takes to do so.

I mean if we're going to discuss the facts.

Seeks a million opinions and get mired in culling them out to come to decisions.

well said

The thing is, to a point I agree with Peen. Haslam is great at doing what he has done at Pilot Flying J. I go on trips to see my mother in law and stop at a Pilot Flying J on those trips. He's done a wonderful job of taking products other people provide and wrapping them up in a great way of presenting them.

But as with the Browns, Pilot flying J has a big turnover in personnel.

That's what people don't seem to understand. Just because someone has "success as a businessman" doesn't mean that businesses are all the same. A family business is ran by the one at the top with no accountability from anyone else. The corporate structure has a board with checks and balances in place. Businesses who develop products have research and development, people in charge of testing and approving those products. Marketing people take the products other companies create and figure out the best way to package those products in a way to attract customers.

Different people are successful at different things and that's no sure sign they can make the transition into a totally different structure with totally different ways of doing business.

I saw you say that before. I let it slide, but that is faulty thinking.

Building Pilot was building a product. The product is the business. The Brand. You don't have to build hammers.

Here, he doesn't build football players. He doesn't build a coach. There is little difference between building the brand Pilot and building the brand Cleveland Browns.

I will say to this point, he did a much better of building the idea of travel centers, and building them rather than simple gas stations then he has in building the Browns brand.

It may stay that way forever, or it might change next year.

Last year everybody was happy we had John Dorsey headed to his second year and he was going to pick the next head coach.

I actually like the set up this year. Hire the coach, then let him have major say in who is going to be the GM. Seems the two should be tied together. You win together, or you lose and get fired together.

The Browns brand was built long before he got here. His only job was to make the brand stronger by putting a winning product on the field. The results speak for themselves.

I already said the results to this point aren't good. I was just pointing out your analogy to building a product was flawed. Just because his centers sold gas refined by some other company, or sold oil blended by Valvoline doesn't mean he didn't build a product/brand.

As to the Browns brand...as fans we like the brand, but it was pretty bad long before Haslam entered the picture.

We may have been the first team to tank, and it got people fired. The funny thing is it looks like other teams are following the blueprint. It's hard to build through the draft when you win 5-6-7 games.

I think Dorsey got canned mostly because of his total fail in selecting his coach. I do think he might have stayed had he not stepped on toes all over Berea. Nobody like a AHOE.

I don't know about that. Here lately I've seen a lot of support for an AHOE.

OK....most people. I am one and some people like me.

When John was hired questions were asked but nobody really said much....comments like he didn't fit in or his style wasn't what the Chiefs needed.

As in you sig, one of the first things he did was put down Depo and the previous FO with his they didn't get real players comments.

True or not, that is just pretty rude to say., especially when some of them still work in the building. You just don't do that, at least in public.


Anyway, you can have the last word. I know you will. I am talked out at this point.

I really hoped he worked out, but after his hand selected coaching hire, I am glad we moved on, and I was wrong just like John, I thought Freddie just might be lightening in a bottle. Turns out he was more like 1 cap....you know, roll caps for your toy six shooter when you were 7 years old. pop...not even blasting off a whole roll with your dads hammer.....you know what I am talking about. We all did that....at least us old guys.

Can you even buy those anymore? Probably not. Glad I grew up when I did. We learned lessons, and they weren't always painless. I am sure your burnt your index finger a few times on one of those wood burning sets you got for Christmas....here, go play with a soldering iron for a while, or burn yourself on that creepy crawler mold.

Chemistry sets, we don't even need to go there. I wonder what will happen if I put some ammonia on this?

We lived Bubba. We didn't need people telling us what not to do. We learned what not to do. We learned how not to set a rat trap...lol....I did.

And we lived through it all.

What were those caps called...Redcaps? I know the paper was red. I think it was redcaps.

You gotta get back to "Greeny stickem caps".