FanPost

First Energy Stadium Renovations, a Fan Relocated

Alec Scheiner on Twitter

I told Chris Pokorny back in March that I would write an update about the status of our season tickets in the Dawg Pound. You can find my article here. In a quick recap, I had my childhood dreams of Dawg Pound season tickets crushed by the stadium renovation.

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www.clevelandbrowns.com

Just like my feelings about LeBron have changed in light of his most recent decision, the bitterness of the renovation has since subsided. There is no sense in staying angry over events you cannot control, especially since you can’t change who you are as a Browns fan and the excitement of training camp is very near. The news is that we didn’t get back into the Dawg Pound after being put on a waiting list until May. We now have season tickets in the upper section of the opposite end zone, seats which are closer to the field than we were previously.

I apologize to Chris for taking so long to write this update. We knew about our relocation in June. The truth was I didn’t want to think about our season tickets until now. I’m barely surviving the wait for the season, and if I have to listen to another analysis of Johnny Manziel’s night life, I’m going to go crazy. It’s been a long time, at least to me, since we’ve seen those orange helmets come out of that tunnel, and I want the season to be here already.

Sure, we’ve had a great summer in sports so far: LeBron’s decision to come home, U.S. Soccer in the World Cup, and the Indians getting back to .500 ball after the All-Star break. But I know there’s a part of us that just crave the sport of football in Northeast Ohio. That same craving made my dad and I realize that nothing could stand in the way of seeing the football team we love, and that we had to renew our season tickets no matter where we would sit.

The 2014 NFL Draft was pretty special for Cleveland. Once we took Manziel at 22, I knew the hype and the media coverage would dominate us. So much so, that ESPN’s Darren Rovell reported that the Browns sold more than 2,000 season tickets within a day of Manziel being drafted. Manziel also leads the NFL in jersey sales even though he has not been named the starter and has yet to play in an NFL game. Being on a waiting list to get relocated back in the Dawg Pound, I knew our chances were slim.

Browns President Alec Scheiner says the stadium has a different look from last season with the renovations, and you can see that in photos that he posted on his Twitter account (@scheiner_alec). I know fans and I will appreciate the new technology of the stadium with the scoreboards and sound system, something the stadium desperately needed. I was just not a fan of removing seats from one of the rowdiest and noisiest sections in the NFL.

Most of our friends that we sat with were able to get back into the Dawg Pound, even people with lesser seniority than we have. I’m not going to complain. That’s just how the relocation worked out. When I wrote my first article, I thought I could somehow convince the Browns organization that taking seats away from loyal season ticketholders wasn’t right, as silly as that sounds. I thought that by complaining enough, they could get us back into the Dawg Pound into better seats. But what it made me realize throughout this entire process was the underlying reality that this is a business, and we are just a number to them.

Don’t get me wrong. Our season ticketholder representative was extremely helpful and polite. But even he could only do so much for us. I should be grateful for the seats that we do have, and I’m thankful that my dad and I decided to keep the father-son tradition alive. We will continue to upgrade every year until we get back into the Dawg Pound, but I’m ready to make new memories with the people around us in our section. I feel that a lot of the fans were in the same situation we were and were relocated all around the stadium. I hope everyone around us likes standing on 3rd down because I will make them.

It’s time to go back to tailgating in the Muni Lot. It’s time to take back our sport on Sundays. It’s time for football, and it’s always time to bark like a Dawg. In Cleveland, they say we hope for the best and expect the worse. But this time of the year when training camp starts, it’s always filled with feelings optimism and hope, a very fitting time around the birthday of the city of Cleveland (July 22). Nothing else seems to matter in sports because Browns training camp will get the front page of the paper. We are probably viewed by the rest of the nation as borderline nuts, and I love it. We show blind loyalty for a team that has been a combined 73-151 since 1999. It’s in our blood, it’s what we are. I live for this and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Go Browns!



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