Football fans show loyalty — but not to Buffalo team
Many started following Browns before Bills existed
NIAGARA FALLS — Cleveland Browns fans are a rare breed in these parts these days.
It shouldn’t be too surprising, considering Niagara Falls has been considered Buffalo Bills Country for 48 years.
But before the Bills were born, die-hard football fans in the Cataract City had to root for someone in the National Football League. A lot of them chose the Browns.
It makes sense, considering the Browns, along with the New York Giants, were the teams shown most regularly on television during pre-Bills days. Furthermore, the Browns had more talent than Hollywood from 1946 to 1965, and it’s easy to see why Falls natives Steve Panepinto and Al DeGregorio opted to adopt the brown and orange as their official football colors for life.
Fourteen of the Browns’ 20 Hall of Fame players (former coach Paul Brown also is a Hall of Famer) took the field during that era, including Otto Graham and running backs Marion Motley and Jim Brown.
“I really liked Otto Graham. I thought he was a tremendous quarterback and I just [stayed with them],” said DeGregorio, who has been a Browns fans since 1952, when he was 9 years old. “I’m not one of these guys that is a fly-by-nighter that goes with one team and then, when they lose, go with another. . . . I’ve always loved the Browns. I’m going to love them till the day I die.”
So, will DeGregorio be in attendance Monday night when his team visits Ralph Wilson Stadium to play the Buffalo Bills?
“I won’t go to a game at [Ralph Wilson] Stadium,” he said. “If you wear any other team’s colors . . . they want to fight with you. I’ve been to Pittsburgh, I’ve been to Detroit, and this stadium is the worst anywhere.”
DeGregorio went to last year’s Monday night game at The Ralph with his son, Marc, a Dallas Cowboys fan. They didn’t stay to see the Cowboys’ winning rally because Bills fans made their lives too difficult.
“As much as I love the Browns, I won’t go to that stadium,” said DeGregorio, who will either watch the game at home or on Marc’s big-screen television.
There are about 10 to 15 old-school Browns fans who gather on Sundays in J. T. Wheatfield’s on Niagara Falls Boulevard to watch their team.
When the Bills played the Browns last season in Cleveland, there was the normal yelling back and forth between the fans but nothing out of the ordinary, according to J. T. Wheatfield’s bartender/chef Adam Benzel.
He expects the atmosphere Monday to be more peaceful because the Browns backers who usually show up on Sunday afternoons don’t “usually come out” for nationally televised night games.
The official Browns Backers Worldwide affiliate for the Niagara Falls area and Southern Ontario is the Niagara, Ont., club, according to Cleveland Browns Coordinator of Fan Avidity Melanie Long. She said that group formed in 2001 and has a membership of 258, which meets at the Flats Bar and Grill in St. Catharines, Ont.
Panepinto won’t go to Flats or J. T. Wheatfield’s. He prefers to watch his beloved Browns in the comfort of home, just as he did when he was a small boy. Panepinto has rooted for Cleveland since he was 6, when the Browns were members of the All-American Football Conference.
While he’s hoping that playing under the Monday night lights will provide the Browns a spark, just like last month when they upset the defending champion New York Giants in prime time, he doesn’t like Cleveland’s chances against a reeling Bills team that’s lost three straight games.
“I don’t think the Browns will beat them because they have no defensive backfield,” the 67-year-old Panepinto said. “I think [Bills QB Trent] Edwards will finally wake up. . . . If he watched the game against Denver [a 34-30 loss in which Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler threw for 447 yards], they’ve got to know they can throw against them.”
To be a Browns fan is in many ways similar to being a Bills fan. The heartbreaking and painful moments seem to stand out more than the happy ones. Sure, Bills’ fans will forever be haunted by the image of Scott Norwood’s 47-yard field goal attempt for the win in Super Bowl XXV sailing wide right. But at least the Bills have made it to four Super Bowls.
The Browns, with four NFL Championships (1950, 1954, 1955, 1964) to their credit, have not reached the big game. Their best chances at getting to the title game were dashed each time by the John Elway-led Denver Broncos in the late 1980s. And if “The Drive” and “The Fumble” aren’t torturous enough, there’s the Super Bowl title the old Browns, er, Baltimore Ravens won in 2000, five years after leaving Cleveland.
The fan bases of both teams in the Monday night game have been surprising loyal and continue to flock to their stadiums, even though they’ve been bitten more than the mailman. The Bills haven’t sold out every home game since this century, but they do have more than 50,000 season-ticket holders this year — even though they haven’t made the playoffs since 1999.
A 2006 Bizjournal study reported Cleveland Browns Stadium has been filled to capacity roughly 99.8 percent of the time. The Browns are 39 games under .500 and have appeared in the playoffs once in their second life.
When the Browns went into forced hiatus following the 1995 season, the Niagara Falls chapter of the Dawg Pound sulked, with some even turning to the red, white and blue of the Bills for comfort, according to Panepinto.
He opted to temporarily adopt the Miami Dolphins while waiting for the Browns to return because he lost money many years ago while placing a bet on the Bills to beat the New York Titans — a game in which Buffalo blew a big lead only to lose by a point. The Titans, now known as the Jets, were a one-point favorite.
At the moment, DeGregorio and Panepinto both are feeling a tad bit cranky because the new version of the brown and orange hasn’t found the formula for success. Their record is 3-6, though DeGregorio has an idea of how to cure the Browns ills.
“I would like to see that whole coaching staff gone,” he said, “and have them bring in [former Steelers Super Bowl winning coach] Bill Cowher.”
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