An amazing thought occurred to me last evening. Perhaps it stemmed from a bit of serendipity. As I was I leaving my sisters to drop off Dan Brown's acclaimed new novel, she had to mention to me that she could no longer support the Cleveland Browns and, in fact, was going to boycott them for their lack of on field success. When I got home, I logged into Facebook to see I had been invited to a new group entitled "Boycott the Browns" and how could you not join after sitting through so many miserable seasons of losing football. For the record, my sister is not on Facebook but I will consider her a member in good standing along with countless other Clevelanders who are fed up with this mess of a franchise.

Then I began to wonder. Is the Lerner family the worst ownership group in the history of Cleveland sports? I think the answer is "yes" despite the fact we "boast" both Ted Stepien and the Robison brothers who owned the National League Cleveland Spiders which amassed a record that will never be close to be broken by going 20-134 (.130) in the 1899 season. And considering Stepien is probably regarded as the worst owner in NBA history and the Cleveland Spiders debacle is still being brought up over 100 years later, Cleveland probably has the worst owners in the history of pro basketball and Major League Baseball. It looks like we have the compiled the hat trick with the Lerner family, who lose at an absolutely mind blowing pace year in and year and year out.

So how did I come up with the fact that the Lerners are more inept than both franchises that will be forever remembered for their poor play? Well, I actually looked at the circumstances surrounding the other franchises. Ted Stepien's Cleveland Cavaliers, a laughing stock of epic proportions in the annals of the NBA, were nearly bankrupt when he bought the Franchise. The Richfield Coliseum would house 3,000 hardcore basketball fans in their arena that sat over 20,000. Stepien compiled a record of 66-180 which comes out to a winning percentage of .268. The Browns record since they restarted in 1999 stands at 54-111 (.331 winning %). Imagine the team the Lerners would field if 10,000 or so would show up to see the Cleveland Browns at the Stadium on a regular basis. Stepien would later say about his time in the owners box:

“I don’t feel I failed. I rescued a bankrupt organization.”

So now you are probably now wondering how the Lerner's could possibly be worse than the Robinson brothers who ended up folding the franchise after the worst season in professional sports, and were so pitiful that opposing teams would not even travel to League Park and saw the team playing an astounding 101 road games. Well, to the Robinsons' defense, they were actually trying to lose games. The team sold off every valuable player (which included future Baseball Hall of Famers Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, and Bobby Wallace) to the Saint Louis Perfectos (which were formerly named the Browns and are the existing Cardinals franchise). Why on earth would an owner do that you ask? Well, they happened to own the Saint Louis team and wanted to stack their newly purchased club with the immense talent that we had here on the Northcoast. It is no surprise that Major League Baseball soon banned owners of franchise to control more than one team at a time following their evil plot. By the way, the St Louis team went from just 39-111 in 1898 to a respectable 84-67 in 1899.

While it was a close call between the Robinson brothers and the combination of Randy and Al Lerner, the deciding factor has to be how this franchise originated in the first place. If you go back to 1995, the year of the dreaded Browns move to Baltimore, you will remember a man by the name of Al Lerner who helped broker the deal to the city which made Art Modell a very rich man. Modell will be forever vilified by Browns fans but how can you forgive the person (and the family that inherited the club) who flew him to Baltimore to make the deal happen. Yes, that was Al Lerner, who likely saw the angle to live a dream and become the owner of a relocated or expansion team in his hometown, which is exactly what happened four years later. And until the Lerner family sells the Browns team, the curse of his actions will probably haunt us suffering Browns fans as we watch losing season after losing season with no end in sight. At least we Clevelanders have the "bragging" rights to having the worst 3 owners in the history in each of the major sports played in this country.