Drew Carey has given up on the Cleveland Browns. This was the fact that kept echoing in my head as I watched every minute of the Browns’ humiliating and brain-dead 37-3 loss to the Bengals on Sunday. Drew Carey — Mr. Cleveland, the city’s native son, a guy who has had his own Cleveland Indians bobblehead day, a man who (like me) cried after Brian Sipe threw the Red Right 88 interception against Oakland in 1981 — has given up on the Browns.
“You don’t have to support them just because they’re in Cleveland,” he told me two days before the game. We were in Las Vegas, him to host the NASCAR Awards show, and me to ride in a race car and spin donuts with Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“You don’t have to support them,” Carey said. “You don’t have to do it. … If somebody owned a sandwich shop in Cleveland, and they were selling (bleepy) sandwiches, you don’t have to buy the (bleepy) sandwiches just because they’re from Cleveland. You could buy sandwiches from anywhere. You could buy them from a chain."