Training camp log: Day 1

Ha, I'm kidding. Not that I didn't attend training camp this morning (I did), but that I would post any sort of daily log about it. For that matter, I don't really know if today was the first day of camp. I sort of just wanted to check it out once, and it was about what I expected.

Any hacky blogger or professional can give you opinion, analysis, and insight into the key questions surounding the 2009 Browns: who's going to be the QB? How will the influx of new players affect the defense? Will any rookies step up?

I'm going list funny things that I saw.

- I arrived with my work cohort AT, and quickly started off with one of many staph-related jokes of the day. Hilarious.

- I knew that Braylon Edwards, the team's resident dummy, had failed a physical earlier this week, and wondered aloud where he was. Running "sprints" on the alternate field where kickers were kicking and Ryan Pontbriand was dominating, was the answer to that question. Someone mentioned his basketball-related injury and I speculated as to whether he was unable to catch basketballs as well.

-Head Coach Eric Mangini paces around in a dark top and appears to rarely say anything. I think you have to do this as a head coach, staying above the fray and overseeing things. Or maybe he was hung over - one of the two.

- Some goofball fan yelled to a group of assistants: "Hey coaches, we want to win against Pittsburgh!" The coach quickly responded, "We want to win against everyone." Well spoken.

- When the team moved to more footballish action instead of group drills, Jerome Harrison fumbled almost immediately and was assigned a penalty lap. He ran it incompletely and incredibly lazily. Last year made it clear that he's not a coaches' favorite, and I think maybe I see why.

- The first down markers listed "P" instead of "1" on 1st downs. Still haven't figured this out. The rest were numbered correctly.

- The Browns blared music from time to time to force players to concentrate. The selections were pretty diverse because the individual players supposedly picked them. Owing to the team's demographic makeup, many of the songs were rap. At one point, a country song came on, and one fan remarked, "Fraley music!"

- Instead of pinnies, NFL players wear these ridiculous colored skullcap things over their helmets to identify one unit from another in situations where the white/offense, brown/defense thing isn't applicable. These struck me as largely ineffective.

- The circumstances here are irrelevant. If you're wearing Minnesota Vikings gear to Browns training camp, you are an idiot. Get your brain fixed.

- One girl behind me somehow got it in her head that Cleveland Browns Stadium was on the other side of the "wall" that turned out to be one side of the Browns' practice fieldhouse. We're a long way from downtown, honey.

- During a discussion of the Big Ten roots of some Browns both favorable (Robiskie) and unfavorable (Edwards), AT pointed out that not all Browns fans are Buckeyes fans and vice versa, citing Steubenville Buckeye/Steeler fans. Some guy with a giant bag of sunflower seeds and a ridiculously long goatee overheard and came up, jokingly telling us that "hey, you'd better not say anything bad about Steubenville." So I didn't tell him about how dirty it was and how much my parents hated living there. He told us he was actually a Steeler fan here to see Adam Hoppel (#67), a kid from his area's high school, then spent like the next 15 minutes telling us uninteresting factoids about Hoppel. I really don't remember asking. Sadly, there was no way to escape this non-conversation. Wow, what a surprise that the one steeler fan at Browns camp turned out to be the biggest douchebag there.