Misery Loves Company: Welcome to Misery Sports Co (Ep. 1)

Hey, everyone. I’m Trevor, your chief officer of Shattered Dreams. I’m Zack, executive director of generational Heartache. And this is the Misery Sports Company, the official podcast home for fans of terrible teams. If you’ve ever convinced your friends. Actually, our best player is our kicker, then you belong at MSK. Each week, we unfortunately take a look at our teams and try to convince ourselves it’s not that bad. It’s not that bad. Today on the podcast for episode one, we want to introduce you to your Chief officer of Shattered Dreams. That’s me and your executive director of Generational Heartache, Zach, and give a glimpse into why we founded this company built on pain, suffering and top shelf cope. So, Zach, what is MSK here for? Yeah. So what is Misery Sports Co all about? We are a podcast for the long suffering fans. We dive into heartbreak. We look at the gut punch moments that really define fandoms across the country and really the world, but always with humor and a connection to each of these fanbases. Even if your team has had its share of glory and it may be riding a high, you’re welcome here too, because every fan knows misery in some form. We’re also not here to shame or mock a fan base, and that really leads into our core values. Trevor. So what are those? That’s right. We here at Misery Sports Co adhere as well as we can to our core values, which are number one to poke fun. We’re here to admire in a way the pain that is being wreaked on the innocent people in sports fandom too. We’re going to laugh together. We’re not coming at this from a cynical or hateful place. We have done so much laughing to keep from crying that we’re really good at it. And finally, we build up what our teams have torn down trying to find ways to encourage folks, hey, maybe it’s not so bad. And to take a humorous look at what is a sad, sad state of affairs. That’s right. Let’s get to know your MC leadership team. Trevor, take it away. How did you get into your fandom? That’s a great question. I have to admit, I came into sports consciousness later in life. I was definitely not somebody who grew up going to games with, uh, my dad or anything like that. He hates crowds, so we didn’t do a lot of that. Um, but we watched a lot of Ohio State football. So I was born in Ohio, lived there for the first eight years of life, and, uh, grandfather worked at Ohio State and indoctrinated the rest of the family to love the Buckeyes. So I became a huge Buckeye fan. And when I was, uh, six years old, one of my earliest memories is gathering around the The Tube TV with the family in the basement and Dayton, Ohio, and watching Eddie George when the Heisman Trophy in nineteen ninety five, and I had no clue really what I was getting into. I remember asking my parents which one is the Buckeye? And they said, It’s Eddie. And we cheered when they said his name. And I thought, that guy’s amazing. I’m gonna I really want to follow, you know, what he’s up to. And, you know, as fate would have it, he was drafted fourteenth overall by the then Houston Oilers. And maybe if that team had stayed in Houston, my life would be great. But they didn’t. Uh, and they eventually became the Tennessee Titans. And when I regained NFL sports consciousness in high school, I thought, oh, yeah, I remember, uh, watching when they got to the Super Bowl. I remember looking at my dad when we were one yard short and saying, what happens now? And him telling me nothing. You lost pain. Just pain from an early age. And, uh, that was really it. I thought their colors were sick. I thought the Titans was cool. Uh, as we’ll talk about later. They were pretty good at that time. And so I then hitched my wagon to the Tennessee Titans. But, uh, a peek behind the curtain. I also moved to Texas. So I’m a fan of the Dallas Stars who are crushing it lately. Uh, the Dallas Mavericks, who I will spend much time what they’ve done to me in the past. In the past year, uh, and I also my dad grew up in Illinois, so I’m a big Cubs fan. So that would have been the team I chose. And then twenty sixteen happened. So I definitely focusing on the Titans. with a little sprinkling of Chelsea FC. I could not tell you three people on Chelsea right now. I know we’re spending a lot of money, but I couldn’t. I have no clue who’s on the team. Uh, but I loved the Drogba years. But that’s me. Some good stuff with the Titans weighing me down in the most miserable of ways. How about you, Zach? What you got going on? Yeah, similar to you, Trevor. Born and raised in Ohio. Um, so a lot of Ohio roots with the sports teams. Um, had the Buckeyes really? The Buckeyes were the tent pole right when the storms came. They were consistent, um, always doing well, always having winning seasons. But on the flip side, um, I was a Cleveland fan as well. So I had the Browns. And really, my first memories were when they returned in nineteen ninety nine, which is pretty much the worst time to ever start a fandom. Um, so with that has been generational trauma, as I have mentioned in my title this week. Um, on top of that, Cavaliers, um, follow the Columbus Crew, Columbus Blue Jackets. And then similar to you, the the coverage of English Premier League soccer football, if you will, was not as popular in the early two thousand. So I saw hey Arsenal’s crushing it. They have Thierry Henry. And from that point on I’ve been an Arsenal fan for the last twenty, twenty five years, um, which also has been a ton of heartbreak and second place finishes. So, um, fits right in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it really does. So now. Yes. Take it away. Qualifications. Um, tell us a little bit about the breakdown of the show. Trevor, how is this going to go from week to week? What’s the style. What are we going to do in terms of our format. So here at Misery Sports Co, we will fire up the offices every week and take a look at how things are doing in the world of miserable sports fandom. We’ll kick things off with a round up of our own teams, their ups and downs, and plenty of frustrations along the way. Then we’ll deep dive into the history of a long suffering fan base. We’ll unpack their heartbreak. What have they gone into? And maybe by learning about other people’s suffering, we will learn to appreciate our own even more. And surely there’s teams out there that are suffering far more than we are. There’s got to be right there. Oh, for sure, there’s got to be there. They’re out there. We will find them. We will break it down. Uh, and maybe over time, we will see them rise to glory. Who knows? Uh, that is what we will do each and every week. Awesome. But first, into the weekly recap. Hit us with our first sponsorship. Trevor, who have we been sponsored by? Yes, we have, uh, many great sponsors for this show and we thank them. Our first sponsor is draft day championships. Friends giving you grief because your team started zero and two. Tell them to shut their fat mouth and take a gander at your authentic draft day championship. That’s right, draft day championships. Because Mel Kiper didn’t hate what you did with that fourth round linebacker draft day championships. Thank you for being our first sponsor. We appreciate you. That’s right. Browns and Titans draft day champions. Um, so it is now time for the weekly earnings report here at Misery Sports. So we’re going to give you a weekly recap of the ways that our teams have disappointed us this week. So Trevor Titans world kick us off. Um, it was a great time to be a Titans fan this week. It was just really special after starting. Oh and one but losing to the Broncos and yet another opening week where we should have won the game. We hosted, we returned to the exciting town of Nashville with a really packed stadium. In fact, the team had to stop announcing the attendance as the tickets they’ve sold and actually say how many people attended the game because they were getting clowned so hard for announcing sellouts when we couldn’t fill the two hundred? Like, forget the three hundred that’s empty. That’s nobody’s up there. We couldn’t even sell the two hundred. They hosted the Rams. And this year, as I’ll talk about, is really just about cam Ward, our quarterback Cameron Ward. The Titans drafted him with the number number one overall pick in the draft and have had very high hopes coming off a two year Will Levis experiment, which I lived through. Um, we just want yeah, we just want cam Ward to stay alive and show us flashes. This is really similar to twenty sixteen when we drafted Marcus Mariota with the second overall pick. You just want to you just want hope. Like you just want to see something where you’re like maybe if I just stick with this long enough I will see something nice. Like I don’t have to see it today I’m a patient guy. But tell me that we didn’t waste the first overall draft pick. And I gotta say, so far, he has looked great. His decision making is you can tell he wants the deep ball, which in college football. Right. Everybody wants the sexy deep ball. So he needs to check it down a little bit more. It was a hard fought first half. We actually took a lead into half time three point lead that quickly left. Uh, third quarters for the Titans is nightmare territory. I will look up the stat and bring it to you at some point this year on how much we’ve been outscored. Uh, and we’ve just, uh, we fumbled it away. But cam Ward had his first touchdown to another one of our rookies, like Ironman or out of Stanford. That was really exciting. He scrambled and then threw it across his body like thirty yards, which you’re never supposed to do. But it was an exciting time. And then we lost by fourteen points. So, uh, you know, overall how good are the Rams? I don’t know, I’m going to lie and tell myself that they’re really good so that I feel better. Um, but maybe with the stadium we go back to twenty twenty. Right. So in the pandemic times, people would donate and you would put cardboard cutouts in the stadium. And maybe that was we start filling the stadium with cardboard cutouts. Five dollars, Trevor, five dollars. We’ll put your face. Yeah, we could have one in there. That’s not a bad business model. That was probably the easiest we’ve ever sold tickets to a Titans game was when we were popping up cardboard cutouts of people. Uh, it’s just it’s a sad state of affairs, man. It really is. I will keep it very brief with the Browns. So the Browns play the Ravens coming off of a heartbreaker. So we should have won. Last week we played the Bengals. We lost by one point with our kicker missing a chip shot field goal for three points and an extra point that would have sent us to overtime. I will. Yup. I won’t go that far into it. We’re playing the Ravens. And guess what? They decided that that week specifically the Browns are coming to town. We are going to celebrate thirty years of Baltimore football running. Why? So in nineteen ninety five, they took the team from Cleveland. Moved it. Oh my gosh, that’s so sadistic. They said, hey, we’re going to celebrate. Screw you guys. That’s so our players felt so disrespected that they lost by twenty four. Oh my gosh. Terrible terrible performance. Oh my gosh. I will have some moral victories at the end with our just our wonderful players. Um, but yeah, just a rough start to the year. Oh, and two, baby. That’s so messed up that they did that. I, I did not see that in the news at all. That’s really messed up. Baltimore. We hate you. Collectively. That’s our stand with love. And we know you’ve been through a lot with the Orioles, but we don’t we don’t vibe with the Ravens here. Um, before we step into the office of the VP of Moral Victories, we have another sponsorship. Zach. Yeah. This, uh, this segment is going to be brought to you by Johnny Manziel’s playbook shredders making sure your game plan disappears as fast as Johnny Footballs career. Oh, man, that’s a good product. That’s gonna move a lot of you. It’s gonna move a lot of units. It’s going to be like two hot spots. There’s going to be people in Cleveland and then everybody down in College Station, and they’re not going to be able to keep them in stock. They love them. They’ll just keep signing them to. You’ll pay. You’ll pay double for Johnny for Johnny football signature. He’s got a table at Comic-Con. He’ll slap a box and he’ll sign a thing for you. Oh, shoot. Well, what a great sponsorship. I’m so glad they’re here. Um, in our Office of Moral victories, if we look over on the VP’s wall, we see the plaques of the employee of the week. So, Zach, for the Cleveland Browns this week, who is your employee of the week? I am going to spotlight Grant Delpit as my employee of the week. Grant is our starting safety for the Cleveland Browns. And before the game he said, and I quote Derrick Henry is not hard to bring down. That’s a bold stance now. Credit, credit. Credit to the Browns defense. They held Derrick Henry to eleven carries for twenty three yards are okay. We lost by twenty four. Trevor. How we lose by twenty four. He rushed for twenty yards. Explain this. Gosh I mean it’s a morals right? Yeah. He in that game. He was totally right. Oh my gosh. That’s just pain. Just pain. That’s great for us. Um so I am going to highlight Zach. Have you ever heard of Morgan Cox? Do you know who Morgan Cox is? Yeah. He is perhaps the most talented. And I think he might actually be the Titans longest standing member. He is our employee of the week as our long snapper. Morgan Cox, our long snapper had to do a lot of work, and they weren’t for extra points because we weren’t scoring touchdowns. He had to successfully long snap App five punts for field goals because we can’t get into the, you know, into the end zone. And one extra point and they were all successfully snapped and gosh darn it, those were the cleanest looking plays of the day. So Morgan Cox, congratulations. Yet another employee of the week here at Missouri Sports Company. Well done Mr. Cox. Good job. All right. All right. Before we go to our next segment, I think we’ve got another sponsor. We do this next segment on deep dives of our teams is brought to you by the back of the playbook. Hey, did your offensive coordinator just call three straight runs up the gut? Well, now you can literally double his play call options with our patented back of the playbook. No more wondering why is there so much writing on that thing when he’s called the same god dang play seven times in a row? Back of the playbook. That’s too soon. Um, Kevin Stefanski is always holding a play card. It looks like he’s going to Denny’s. He’s ready for breakfast. There’s stuff on the back. We can all see it. It’s back there. Brian Callahan does the same thing. Turn it over. You have plays back there. Yeah. So a deep dive, deep dives. Traditionally we will go into another sports team that is outside of our fandom. Right. So we might go into college. We might go into a pro sports team and we’re going to do a deep dive. So we’re going to give you some history, some of the highlights, the lowlights, and just give you an idea of what it is to be a fan of that team. Um, and for this week, we’re going to focus on our own teams just to kind of kick it off. So we’re going to focus on the Titans in the Browns. Trevor I have no idea and I don’t remember. Is it me? Yeah. Go for it dude. Yeah. All right. So the Cleveland Browns I’m going to take you on a little bit of a history lesson. We’re going to go through the highs and lows. And then I’m going to introduce you to just the cluster that it’s been since I started being a fan. Okay. Cleveland Browns started their team in nineteen forty four. Okay. Their coach is Paul Brown to start. Um, at that point, he is a legend. He’s a legend in Ohio high school coaching. He coached for the Buckeyes. Everybody knows him. So when Cleveland gets a team. They think, okay, how do we create a team name? We’re going to go out to the fans. And so the fans, they do a poll and the fans are like we want the Browns. And Paul Brown is like well wait a second. That’s kind of weird. Like I don’t know. What’s the second one? And the second one was the Panthers. And he took a look and he was like, well, there was an old Panthers team. They were awful. So we’re going to go ahead and go with the Browns. So from him yeah off of Paul Brown. He just took all the credit for that. That’s wild. He just. Our mascot is Brownie the Elf. Don’t ask me why. No idea. Um, he’s kind of funky looking. Um, looking at the first twenty years. Right. So if you were just starting out as a Cleveland sports fan, you sat in the stands for the first twenty years. We won eight championships. Gosh dang. So we started in the All-America Football League. We won the first four seasons and we were like, alright, peace out. We’re going to the NFL. Continue to win. How did we win? We had Otto Graham, Hall of Fame quarterback. He won seven championships. Mr. Jim Brown, Hall of Fame running back came in and won in the sixties. Mhm. Do you remember the Lou Groza Award in college for the best kicker. We had freaking Lou Groza for twenty one seasons. I was born eighty years late. I need to go back. Gosh. So you’re talking about just an era of success that will never be matched ever in Cleveland Browns history. Um, so they they got off to a really nice start. Okay. Then you go to the seventies. Super mediocre. Nothing to really report there. You know, five hundred losing seasons there kind of wavering and flying in the wind. And then come the eighties. So the eighties are when the cardiac kids come in. You got Brian Sipe, Bernie Kosar, some big time quarterbacks. We go to three straight AFC or three AFC championships in the nineteen eighties. And this is really where the heartbreak begins. It’s been positive every single time we played the Denver Broncos The drive, the fumble. That’s when the something started. Michael Jordan hit a shot over Cleveland and they were like, alright the shot. Screw you guys. A lot of heartbreak. Some good years, right? We were in the playoffs. Nothing to sneeze at, but, um, we could never get over the hump and get into the Super Bowl. So that leads us to the nineties, right? And you’re like, okay, we’re coming off a pretty good seasons. Our coach in the nineties was this scrub. His name was Bill Belichick. And in ninety four he had Nick Saban as a defensive coordinator. Um we were okay. We did alright in the early nineties. Right around that time Art Modell starts getting a little itchy. He’s like, okay, I want to move the Browns. I think I want a new stadium first. Ohio said no. So Art Modell, the owner of the Browns, moved the team in ninety five and said, Bill Belichick, you’re not good enough. See ya. So he fired Bill Belichick, moved them to Baltimore. That’s where I enter in. Right. So I was born in the nineties. What a great time to come into this story. It’s perfect. Just, uh, we’re really coming in when profits are at an all time low. We’re starting to sink. There’s actually no profit because the team doesn’t even exist. So the NFL brings Cleveland back in ninety nine. And, um, we start the supplemental draft, right? We have no players. So how how in the world do you do you go from no players to starting a team to trying to win. So they give us a supplemental draft and I don’t really understand why. But we got the short end of that straw. So they let every NFL team, uh, give up five players to the draft. And the Browns could select one of those players. Well, if we selected from a team, that team could then pick two of the remaining four players and pull them back and say, oh, just kidding, you can’t take those. Oh, so I don’t really understand the format. We were set up to fail. We had the number one pick in the the first draft that year, and I’m digging around, right? And I’m like, okay, is there anyone in this timeline that could have changed our trajectory? Who was in this supplemental draft? There was one person. He had not completed an NFL pass, but the Saint Louis Rams had let Kurt Warner be available. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So we didn’t obviously draft him. No. You got him. No, no I cannot believe Kurt Warner is going to walk through both of these stories and stomp on our hearts. That is insane to me. I did not know about that. And I know it impacts your timeline. So I was like, it actually negatively impacted both of us. That is unreal. He ripped your heart out. I could have had him on my team. We would have broken him. We all know that. But, um. But he would have been yours. I digress. Yeah. Yeah. So we’re into ninety nine, right? This is my fandom from ninety nine to twenty twenty five and beyond. Um, we have a Sunday Night Football game to start the season. It’s against the Steelers. We’re getting hyped, baby. We’re ready to go. We lose forty three to nothing. Oh, no. First the first game. Oh no. Nothing good happens. So I’m just going to recap twenty six seasons of me watching this godforsaken team. Twenty six seasons, four winning seasons, three playoff trips. Why wouldn’t you go to the playoffs when you’re winning that fourth? I’ll get into it. Forty quarterbacks forty forty. Um, they’ve lost two hundred and seventy eight times since I’ve started watching. Thirty four percent winning percentage. Oh my goodness. Um, yeah. Misery Sports Co was built on teams like this, twelve head coaches as well. So we’re going to just fast forward. Now we’re going to speed Run. So two thousand and seven we actually have a pretty good team in the preseason. Romeo Crennel flips a coin to decide our quarterback in a preseason game. That’s where we’re at folks. We’re flipping coins to decide. Uh, we had a great season that year. We went ten and six and we were first place in the AFC North with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Hey, we should be good to go, right? Got a great team. Top five in offense in the NFL. Love it. We don’t make the playoffs. No we don’t make the playoffs Trevor no. So we lost the tiebreaker to Pittsburgh. Who who had the sixth spot. None other than the Tennessee Titans. Oh no. Oh. What year was this? Two thousand and seven. Okay, so this was after the realignment and everything. Uh, yep. Yep. Um, I can remember specific games won’t go into it. Horrible. Uh. Gut punch. Twenty fourteen we get Johnny Manziel. The rest is history with him. Twenty seventeen off of a one in fifteen season. Hue Jackson says I will not go one in fifteen again or I will jump in a lake. He goes, oh, and sixteen well. And so in the league, technically, technically he delivered. He’s a man of his word. I did not go one and fifteen but play the tape back. I get, I guess, that we can go into the lake. Um, man. Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s pretty much it. Twenty eighteen we got Baker Mayfield, who led us to the playoffs. He was so good that we got rid of him, so he’s gone on to have a great career. We, uh, signed a quarterback that has done nothing for us and is a quarter billion dollars richer. So that is my fandom and history of the Cleveland Browns. Goodness, that’s like you said. That is why MSC was created. It was built on the backs of Browns fans. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re doing this. I can tell you in oh seven we immediately lost a wild card game to San Diego. The Chargers were in San Diego at the time. We scored six points. Uh, but they they only scored seventeen, so we had that going for us. I remember sitting at college watching Philip Rivers just do whatever he wanted. I was going to say is that Philip Rivers and LaDainian Tomlinson? You betcha it was. You betcha. It was. Yeah. Really fun. Really good stuff. Well, give us a rundown of the Tennessee Titans. So it’s funny that your Browns membership started around ninety nine because that is similar to when mine started. So the Titans have only been around since ninety seven. So before that they were the Houston Oilers. They had sweet uniforms a really rich history. Um, like they were a very cool franchise. And, um, our owner decided that, uh, he was done very similar situation where, you know, for better or worse, just didn’t get stadium that he wanted. Um, and just needed to leave. So he chose to pack up this much like the Browns very historic franchise Tries and take it to Nashville. But there’s only one problem with that is when you go to Nashville, you have to have a place to play football. And they didn’t. And so for two years, they were commuting to Memphis and playing in the Liberty Stadium, where the Liberty Bowl is, because it was much bigger than I assume Vanderbilt had, like a really tiny stadium at the time, and that wasn’t feasible. And if you’ll, um, review our geography, Nashville is about in the center of Tennessee, and Memphis is all the way in the western tip, so it’s not like it was next door. So for two seasons, they were, uh, commuting to Memphis. Those first games in Memphis had some of the worst attendance of football, not just in, you know, the last however many years since like the fifties, we were talking like two of those games drew fewer than eighteen thousand people. And this is an NFL game. So you had NFL teams coming to town. There’s not a lot going on in Memphis. I mean they got the Grizzlies now which is legit. But like this was the only show in town. So this should have been a huge red flag early on of how did they not plan for that. Right. Like hey I want to think through it. Go. Hey man. You should probably think about, like, a stadium. No, I just want to get out of here. You know what? There’s a stadium in the state, and that’s going to be good enough for us. Like, they they didn’t think it through. It just wasn’t great. Um, so I again, had watched Eddie George win the Heisman in ninety five. He gets picked in ninety six. Um, has, you know, is earning his way into the league, uh, ninety seven to ninety eight. They go eight and eight, which I would kill for eight and eight. I would do terrible things to someone. If the Titans went eight and eight this year, that’s where I am. Really not in a good way. Um, but in nineteen ninety nine, they opened, uh, what was then LP field. It was also called the Coliseum. It was a very it still is. It’s now Nissan Stadium. Uh, it’s just one of those classic big NFL stadiums where everything has to be huge. And it’s totally opposite of like, the direction that we’ve gone now with like the Falcons and the Rams have really cool smaller stadiums and Nashville is getting a cooler, smaller stadium in two years. And I joke that there’s no more overhead shots of empty seats. If you can’t it’s going to be enclosed. So boom, no more. No more of those shots and it’s going to be more cardboard. Can’t do it. More cardboard cutouts. There goes our model. I didn’t think about that. We got two years. We got to cash in on that. So in ninety nine they go on uh, a bit of a run. They finish Thirteen and three, and Houston as a franchise had not been to the playoffs since ninety three, so this is only six years. But before that, they had made the playoffs every year since eighty seven. So from eighty seven to ninety three, they were in the playoffs. They never made it to a conference championship, but they were in the playoffs that year. Uh, is is fun that I remember being like, oh my gosh, the Titans are in the playoffs. Like their jerseys are so cool. Eddie George is amazing. Twenty seven he was just a, um, uh, a physical runner, smaller than Derrick Henry, but like one of my favorite videos is him, Ray Lewis coming up to tackle him, and he just stiff arm him into the ground and it’s incredible. So he’s a physical dude. He’s funny. He’s just fun to watch. Like those highlights of him at Ohio State with the big shoulder pads. He’s just a great runner. Like he’s just he’s great. Uh the Jacksonville Jaguars only lost three games in nineteen ninety nine. All three of those games were to the Tennessee Titans. So we beat them twice in the regular season, home and away as a division opponent. And then we beat them in the conference championship to go to the Super Bowl. Uh, that ownership of the Jacksonville Jaguars has not relented at all. I mean, even Jaguars fans today are like randomly we’re owned by the Titans. There’s not a lot we can do about it. Is that Mark Brunell? Was he the quarterback? That’s right. Yes that’s right. Yeah. His team was amazing that year. Uh, they, you know, were fourteen and two, and then they run into us and somehow we have their number. Um, but before that, we had a home game against Buffalo. And one of my first, like, real memories was watching the Music City miracle. Um, which there was no hope of us winning this game. There were only, you know, less than a minute to go at the very end. Um, and we it was a lateral. They lateraled the ball on the kickoff, um, and ran it back for a touchdown in a very controversial, unlikely play. And I just remember thinking that was so cool. Fast forward to the Super Bowl, which seems crazy to talk about that. The Titans were in the Super Bowl. Um, Steve McNair is was such a fun quarterback and made a lot of crazy plays. Like he would scramble and then just launch it. He had a great pass to Kevin Dyson that nobody remembers to set us up with just sixteen seconds left. Uh, we need to score a touchdown. We have no timeouts. Kevin Dyson catches a catch over the middle, gets tackled and is one yard short to tie the game. One yard short. The clock runs out. That’s the last game of the play. And we lose the Super Bowl. Um, but we just got to the Super Bowl. Things are going to be great, right? Uh, next year we go to the divisional playoffs and we lose. I think that was to Tom. Yep. Uh uh, no, that was not to Tom Brady. Yet we do lose to Tom Brady. First we lost to the Ravens. Baltimore. We hate you. Um, we go to the playoffs a few more times. Uh, we have Steve McNair until two thousand and five, and then we draft, uh, Vince Young, uh, who is the Titans version of Johnny Manziel, uh, has some fun plays. It’s crazy. We go to the playoffs. Um, a year that he’s, uh, hurt. The next year we go to the playoffs again. So this is now when I’m in college. Kerry Collins had a fever dream of a season where we went thirteen and three. We lose to the Ravens again, hated Baltimore. And then after that we do not go to. That was two thousand and eight. We don’t go back to the playoffs until twenty seventeen. So we have a nine year playoff drought, which is nothing like it has been discussed earlier, baby, but it hurt nonetheless. We’re going through coaches like Mike Munchak, Ken Whisenhunt, um, Mike Mularkey. We finally get um, uh, Vrabel, who were, you know, both big fans of having been through the Buckeyes. Uh, I think he’s a great coach. We have some good years. And then Ryan Tannehill turns back into a pumpkin. Uh, Derrick Henry goes to my least favorite team and we’re back in the cellar. We went three and thirteen and get the number one overall pick. So times are not great. Uh, they’re not great. But what’s really not great, and this is weird. What bothers me more about the Titans is Not really the wins and losses. It’s just like it feels like they’re the laughing stock of the of the, you know, of the league. And people don’t show up for the games like there’s other teams that suck. People go to the games. Nobody goes to Titans games. And it’s like, we don’t care. Like just even if you’re terrible, it would be so fun to be passionate, but the product’s been bad, so that bothers me more than anything. I can’t. I would love a documentary on Vrabel getting let go, kind of like the Cowboys did with Jerry Jones and this whole thing on Netflix. Like I, I don’t understand, you know, Mike Vrabel, AJ Brown, Derrick Henry. They’re just like it’s a whole thing. It did fall apart. And there’s there’s probably like five or six players in that saga. And it was a perfect storm of people making bad choices. And it all it all came together during that period, we had at least three first round picks that all busted up. It was just it’s sad, but that’s how I got here. I’ve met ever in in the history of me meeting people on this earth. I have met one other Titans fan of just talking to somebody and being like, oh, you like football? Who do you follow? Oh, I follow the Titans. I think there’s twelve of us out there. But I love the pain. That’s why. That’s why I’m here. I love the pain. The pain is the truth, I love it. And we share our misery here at Misery Sports Co. Yeah. Oh, thank you for sharing. Of course, before we kick to our next segment we have another sponsor. So this segment will be sponsored by Josh Gordon Smokehouse. Our specials are get suspended regularly, but they’re always worth the wait. The talent’s there, Zach, the talent’s there. So jumping into our final segment, we’re going to kind of meld this one together. Trevor. So I want to do pep talk. We’re going to talk. You know, we’re going to encourage our teams. But before that we’re going to do our Twitter, our tweets. Um, so let’s visit the Twittersphere. Um, whether it’s a crazy stat or a comment, um, the forum is open to share in the misery. So what are you seeing out there? It is my favorite tweet that I saw this week. Thank you Eli Landers out there who tweeted on SeatGeek. It is currently cheaper to go to the Titans versus Colts game this weekend than the Vanderbilt versus Georgia State anchor down. Oh no. That is an NFL game that is cheaper to walk into Then a fun college team playing Georgia State. Those tickets are more expensive. So that’s that’s where we are. How about you, Zach? Oof! I have two. So I came across one. It’s from actually another podcast with Ryan Clark, but he had, um, Steve Harvey on his podcast. And Steve has been a lifelong Browns fan. Oh, I didn’t know that. Um, so credit goes with this retweet to Gucci. See you. Um, I do have some audio. Are you ready for it, Trevor? I am ready. Hit me with it. All right, here we go. Here’s Steve and his current comments. I am praying to God that shadow gets an opportunity to show what he can really do. And I think that would be probably the best thing for him. But knowing the Cleveland Browns, they dumbass going to trade. Uh, whatever you think about shaders. I just keep praying for him to get an opportunity, though. Who is the second quarterback taken by the Browns this year? Um, they got Dillon Gabriel from Oregon. He’s, uh. He’s pretty small. He’s five eight on a good day. Um, I don’t again, I don’t care who’s playing quarterback. I just want to win. If it’s if it’s Dillon. Obviously, Steve has a strong opinion. Um, and then I also found this one from Davis. Matich. Thank you. Davis. Thanks, Davis. And I quote, it will never not be funny when Baker is referred to as a comeback story. And the thing he came back from was being a Cleveland Brown. Oh my gosh, what a story. We’re in a dark place. Bakers killing it though. Bakers doing so well. Bakers playing well. Dude, when it’s fourth quarter, it’s Baker time. He’s got it. Uh, our coaching staff hated him, but he’s got it. You know he does. And it felt like he kind of leaned into the Cleveland feel like the, you know, the grit. And I don’t know man I love Baker. Hard working. He had some moxie. That’s just. We can’t have that. You’ve taken us to our first playoff game. Get out of here. Yeah, you gotta go. That’s ridiculous. You gotta go. Um, okay. So looking forward to next week. Let’s give a little pep talk. Maybe it’s to the fans, maybe it’s to the team. You know, maybe it’s just a one little word of wisdom. What do you got from sports? Misery co. Oh, I just want to take a quick second and just speak to the Tennessee Titans because they have a they have an upcoming game against the Colts that again tickets are affordable. Get you a family of six. Come on come on down and you can come in for twenty bucks. Uh, I just want to speak to them and kind of give them a peek in. Listen, I was a fan of this team when Andrew Luck played for the Colts. We play the Colts twice every year because they’re in our division Andrew Luck. Well, first of all, it’s not fair that they went from Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck. But that’s another thing Andrew Luck had to retire because he you know of his injuries while he was in the league. He never lost to the Tennessee Titans. He beat the Tennessee Titans eleven straight times. If we were playing the Colts and Andrew Luck was healthy, that was an insta loss. Well guess what, I’m looking over at the sideline. I don’t see Andrew Luck anymore. He gone. In fact, they got the corpse of whoever they’re trotting out. I assume that Daniel Jones is still playing I haven’t looked. Who cares? You know who’s not playing Andrew Luck? He’s off somewhere in a mountain, probably chopping down a tree. And as long as Andrew Luck isn’t over there, we got a shot. So, yeah. The Colts were the first team in NFL history not to punt in their first two games. Who cares? Andrew Luck is gone. We got this. You can do this. What do you love your pep talk. Um, you know I’m going to speak to the Browns fans out there. You know we’ve we’ve been here before, guys and gals. We’ve been here before. We’re. Oh, and two, uh, the Packers are coming in. Don’t worry about the Packers. Worry about the process and the process is really fail. Tank. Do whatever you gotta do to get that top pick. Uh, you know, maybe maybe green Bay shows up and, you know, Micah Parsons is like, I want the day off, coach. I don’t, you know, I don’t want to play. Yeah, we don’t know. Um, I’m hoping to see, you know, the rookie quarterbacks, either Dillon Gabriel or Qadir Sanders. You know, we’ve got some young players. Um, but we’ll see, because after that is at Detroit. And, you know, things just don’t get better. So hang in there, Browns fans. We’ve been here before. Trust the process and maybe maybe we’ll pull it out. Our kicker just got injured I saw that just today. No. Um yeah. The one that missed the extra point and the field goal got injured and I don’t I mean, maybe that’s maybe that’s a positive, I don’t know, Blessing in disguise. You never know. Yeah. So that was a pretty weak pep talk. But, you know, it’s all I got at this point. That’s how every pep talk to Browns fans should end. So. Well, you know. See you guys next week. Yeah. We’ll see you next week when we tune in. Oh shoot. Well that’s that’s going to do it for this week folks. Thank you for spending time with us here at Misery Sports Company. Until next time I’m Trevor and I’m Zach. Have a great week. We’ll see you next time.