Dawgs By Nature is holding a tournament throughout March to determine the greatest Cleveland Browns ever. It's going to be madness. The winners of each round will be chosen by you. The bracket will be revealed on March 11 and the first round of voting will begin a few days after. The first step is to narrow the field to 64 contenders. We need your votes to decide who gets in as well as the seeding. The vast majority of the contenders are former or current Browns players, but coaches and other prominent Browns figures are eligible too. This will be the ultimate showdown among the best, or even most awesome people ever to be associated with the historic football franchise known as the Cleveland Browns. Only one will win the title: "DBN All-Time Browns Bracket Champion" aka The Greatest Cleveland Brown of All-Time (according to DBN).

After the jump there are 80 suggestions, many of which are obvious and others that might be considered on the bubble. You get to decide who makes the cut. You can start now by ranking them in this survey.

UPDATE: I added the automatic qualifiers that were nominated in the comments below. I will continue to update those as they come in.

Obviously, this is a Browns twist on the NCAA's March Madness tournament to determine the Division I Men's Basketball championship. In the next month, and as we've seen already, the NFL draft is going to dominate the discussion around here. I thought this would provide a nice occasional break from that. Not that there's anything wrong with draft talk, but it can sometimes become tiresome to debate the same RG3/trade up points over and over again.

The criteria for this tournament can be anything the DBN reader wants it to be. Greatness on the field doesn't have to be the only deciding factor. Perhaps you feel that Romeo Crennel in all his jolly glory should earn him at least a 10 seed, or maybe you think that'd be a travesty. You decide. If you've already ranked those in the survey, feel free to use this thread to debate who you think should or shouldn't make it in and why.

The following are the 80 Cleveland Browns figures that are currently in the running (in a very loose order):

1. Jim Brown
2. Ozzie Newsome
3. Paul Warfield
4. Otto Graham
5. Paul Brown
6. Joe Thomas
7. The Cleveland Browns Fans
8. Lou Groza
9. Dante Lavelli
10. Leroy Kelly
11. Marion Motley
12. Len Ford
13. Frank Gatski
14. Bobby Mitchell
15. Clay Matthews
16. Bill Willis
17. Mike McCormack
18. Joe Delamielleure
19. Gene Hickerson
20. Mac Speedie
21. Bernie Kosar
22. Hanford Dixon
23. Frank Minnifield
24. Michael Dean Perry
25. Brian Sipe
26. Joe Haden
27. Ray Renfro
28. Greg Pruitt
29. Phil Dawson
30. D’Qwell Jackson
31. Josh Cribbs
32. Kellen Winslow
33. Braylon Edwards
34. Kevin Johnson
35. Eric Steinbach
36. Alex Mack
37. T.J. Ward
38. Jabaal Sheard
39. Ahtyba Rubin
40. Webster Slaughter
41. Gary Collins
42. Bob Gain
43. Dick Schafrath
44. Mike Pruitt
45. Frank Ryan
46. Tommy James
47. Don Cockroft
48. Earnest Byner
49. Jim Ray Smith
50. Jerry Sherk
51. Kevin Mack
52. Doug Dieken
53. Eric Metcalf
54. Dub Jones
55. Jim Houston
56. Walt Michaels
57. Bill Glass
58. Horace Gillom
59. Warren Lahr
60. Paul Wiggin
61. Walter Johnson
62. Cody Risien
63. Milt Morin
64. Brian Brennan
65. Dave Logan
66. Shaun Rogers
67. Phil Taylor
68. Tim Couch
69. Colt McCoy
70. Al Lerner
71. Blanton Collier
72. Romeo Crennel
73. Derek Anderson
74. Peyton Hillis
75. Jamal Lewis
76. Joe Jurevicius
77. Jerome Harrison
78. Leigh Bodden
79. Eric Wright
80. Sheldon Brown

Automatic qualifying comment nominations:

1. Eric Turner
2. Jim Donovan
3. Marty Schottenheimer
4. Sam Rutigliano
5. Thom Darden
6. Chip Banks
7. Leroy Hoard
8. Dawgs By Nature
9. Lawrence Vickers
10. Bob Golic
11. The Dawg Pound
12. Anthony Pleasant
13. Vince Costello
14. Tom DeLeone

Note: The order of the automatic qualifiers does not reflect the bracket seeding.

If you feel that this list snubbed anyone specific, feel free to nominate that person in the comments. If the comment gets enough recs, they could still make it on the bracket.

*Please rec this FanPost so it will stay at the top and people can continue to provide their opinions on who should make it in up until Selection Sunday.