The Loop
What could be more Cleveland Browns than live-streaming the open-casket funeral for their bulldog mascot?
OK, so before we get to the Cleveland Browns bashing, we want to start by saying this, at its heart, is a very sad story. Earlier this month the Browns' bulldog mascot Swagger passed away suddenly at the age of six from a combination pneumonia and cancer. Six is way too young for a good boy to go, and we certainly feel for Swagger's humans and all those that he came into contact with him as he roved the Dawg Pound sidelines the past several seasons. That said, grief has its limits, and the Browns, in typical Browns fashion, crossed them this weekend when the team held an open-casket funeral for their beloved canine co-worker and allowed the whole grisly scene to be live streamed on Cleveland dot com's Facebook page. Yes, this is a real thing that actually happened.
We've showcased a variety of Browns-centric tomfoolery—from accidentally projecting hardcore in the team facility to live TV reports of fans plummeting off vans in the parking lot—on The Loop over the past several years, but a dead pooch displayed in a coffin for all to see may well take the cake. To make matters even more morbid, Swagger's son SJ was in attendance, keeping vigil beside his dog dad's casket as the afternoon wore on.
Tough stuff for canine lovers across the board, especially on a day when McGruff the Crime Dog was sentenced to 16 years in prison for, you guessed it, doing crimes. So let's try to just forget all of this and move on—too scrub that lasting image of a lifeless Swagger from our mind's eye. A simple so long to the prince of the pound and the king of our hearts would have sufficed. But this is the Browns we're talking about. Nothing ever makes sense.