Browns Fans Plan Parade for 'Perfect' 0-16 Season; Cleveland Considering the Event

CLEVELAND, OH — There's a song from the Bee Gees' 1968 album "Idea" called "I Started a Joke." It's a mournful ballad, and it opens with these lyrics, "I started a joke which started the whole world laughing, but I didn't see that the joke was on me, oh no."

Who knew that the Gibbs brothers' melancholy melody would, nearly five decades later, so perfectly encapsulate the Cleveland Browns 2016 season? The team is currently 0-11, a mark of ineptitude unmatched in its bitter recent history. They lost on Sunday to their rival Pittsburgh Steelers, and there is little hope among the fanbase of the team snapping the losing streak in the remaining five games.

There is, however, hope for a "perfect season" parade. Chris McNeil, better known as Reflog_18 to his social media followers, created a Facebook event called the "Browns Perfect Season Parade (0-16)" after the team's Week 9 loss to the Cowboys. When the team was annihilated 35-10 by Dallas, McNeil felt he needed to express his growing frustration with the team. As a joke, he created the event.

"It hit me after the Dallas game. There are only so many times you can make the same jokes about the Browns being bad on Twitter before actual depression sets in," McNeil says. "So I had the idea for the parade. I thought 'What the hell?' and threw it up there."

Then his joke started the whole world laughing. Overnight, between 2,000 and 3,000 people said they were interested in the event. Now, with Week 11 just finished, the event has 3,600 confirmed attendees and another 6,700 people saying they're interested in attending. Maybe they're waiting to see if "perfection" actually happens and the Browns go winless for an entire season.

The only team to go 0-16 over the course of a season was the Detroit Lions in 2008. However, that team went 4-0 in the preseason, and some Browns fans are arguing that by virtue of an 0-4 preseason, Cleveland could be home to the worst team in the history of the National Football League. For some fans, that's the silver lining to this season's debacle; at least the Browns would be the best at something, namely being the worst team to ever play football.

McNeil thinks the parade and the social media around the event have become a place for Browns' fans to vent their frustration and find a creative outlet for their pent-up football angst. He reiterated that the parade was only a joke to him at the beginning.

"It was definitely meant to be a lighthearted page at the beginning," he says. "I did not anticipate the amount of work that I'd be doing now."

The Punchline Is Real Now

McNeil, 37, is a marketing professional. He has no experience planning parades. But on Nov. 11 he announced to the world, via Twitter, that he had filed paperwork with the City of Cleveland for the right to hold an actual, honest-to-God parade in honor of the Browns' possible 0-16 season. The news drew headlines from around the country, with USA Today and Complex filing stories about the parade.

Still, until right before that announcement, the parade seemed like a joke, a funny thing to mention on social media, an ironic thing to say you were going to. Then one of McNeil's followers messaged him a link to the paperwork needed to hold a parade in Cleveland. So McNeil filed the necessary paperwork, and the city got back to him with a response: Come to a Steering Committee meeting on Dec. 7 and make your case. That's when things got real and his announcement was made.

"I have every intention of putting this thing on," McNeil says now.

And he is certainly putting in the work necessary to create the parade. He is soliciting volunteers on his website, and he says that he has already had people submit float ideas and gotten interest from bands interested in playing during the event.

One float idea was to recruit all, or as many as possible, of the Browns' former quarterbacks from 1999 to now and plant them on a float. With 26 starting quarterbacks beginning with Tim Couch, that would be a mighty crowded float.

The city of Cleveland would not comment on the parade, saying that discussion would be had at the Steering Committee's meeting. The Browns simply did not reply to a request for comment on the parade. McNeil says the team has also not responded to his multiple requests for a meeting.

Courting Controversy

There are roughly two camps when it comes to feelings on this parade. The first says Cleveland fans deserve to celebrate something related to their football team, even if it is their gross incompetence. Let the city be proud of its teams for whatever reason it wants. Let the beaten-down Dawg Pound take solace in how hilariously awful the team is.

The other camp feels that actually holding the parade would be a disgrace to the city and to a proud, if battered, sports tradition.

On the event's Facebook page, Adam Kane says that the possibility of a parade is the only thing making the losses bearable. Others have said they're hoping the event happens no matter what. Some are even rooting for the Browns to lose out.

"I was thinking to myself, I really want them to go 0-16," McNeil says. "But I'm a season ticket holder. I was at the Steelers game. Honestly, I would have loved to see them pull that game out. I guess I'm just hedging my bets now."

McNeil twisted his dilemma into a positive. Instead of hoping for a win or a loss, he's going to be happy either way. "It's like financial advisers always say, diversify. Well, I'm diversified on the Browns. I'll be happy win or lose," he says.

Some fans find the parade disrespectful and ridiculous. "An 0-16 season this year might be the best case scenario for the longevity of the team in the future, but it's nothing to celebrate, even in jest," says Brad Aronson, a lifelong Browns fan from Bay Village. "With an owner with a quick trigger, a parade might be just enough to set him off and burn it all down to the ground again. So let's all hope that the team can put together at least a win or two for the rest of the season, for the sake of the team, the owner, and the city."

Others are just in disbelief that the event will actually happen, saying there's no way the city allows the parade to march through Cleveland.

Finding Out

There are five games left on the Browns' schedule. The winless Cleveland team will play the New York Giants, Cincinnati Bengals, Buffalo Bills, San Diego Chargers and the Steelers. The Bengals, another Ohio team, have the worst record of the bunch at 3-6. The Chargers are 4-6, and the Steelers and Bills are 5-5. The Giants are an impressive 7-3. Yet, at least on the surface, all of the teams left on the schedule seem a class above the Browns.

"I really want to buy into what the front office is doing," McNeil says. "I know they need to bottom out to eventually come back. I understand that. But it's not like they have a track record of success that leads me to believe this is going to work out."

While he cheers for the team as a season ticket holder, he'll keep marching forward with his parade plans. In fact, McNeil says he recently met with comedian Mike Polk Jr. The meeting may produce contacts for McNeil that have experience planning parades. As Dec. 7 and his meeting with the Steering Committee comes closer, all of it starts to seem more real.

"This isn’t about me. It’s about us as Browns fans. On the event page, people have gotten awful creative," he says. "They want to have different season ticket sections represented in the parade. They want street bands. In a very odd way, admittedly, it’s energized the fans around the Browns in a way that the team wouldn’t have."

When your team is 0-16, sometimes a joke is all you have left to energize you.

Photo from Rick Uldricks, Patch