Random New Year thoughts

Happy New Year!  Here are some random thoughts about Cleveland-area sports:

Browns - I only saw parts of two games this year:  Lions game (most) and Ravens game (last two minutes).  Mayfield looked bad in both those vignettes.  However, the future is bright.   He has the intangibles.   Even though it was a long time ago I can't imagine how different the reincarnation of the Browns franchise would have been had management taken the same care to protect Tim Couch as the current management took to protect Mayfield.   That first year or two will go down as one of the biggest mysteries for me in the history of Cleveland sports.  It also shows you how a franchise can spiral out of control and how a franchise can look like a Phoenix just by appropriately applied management.

Cavaliers -We are now in full rebuild mode.   However, JR Smith and Kevin Love are albatrosses around the Cavs' collective necks at this point.   Was it worth the few extra season ticket packages they sold to keep Smith, Love and company together?   It sure looks now like it wasn't.  Let's hope we get something out of those two goys and any other expendable players we dump before the trade deadline.

Indians - I understand the cost-cutting, still-competing tact the FO has to take.  But some of the early season trades for various 4A pitchers and sub-.200 hitters still are frustrating to a prospect-geek like me.  Considering that Tulo just signed a major league minimum deal with the Yankees, Luplow and Moroff and these pitchers (and even Bauers) better provide something to the 2019 Indians way above and beyond what their stats would suggest they will or WHY BOTHER?!?!  It will be interesting to see how the rest of off-season free agency goes and how the summer plays out as far as international amateur free agent signings.   Obviously teams aren't supposed to spend as much in Latin America as they are in the US based on signing pools for the Rule 4 draft and for foreign amateur players, I still think you will see the Indians spend like drunken sailors (relatively) in Latin America compared to the money they will spent on the US draft.   If are not looking closely I think you might end up ticked off about how we approach this year's draft...until you see how we spend in Latin America.   I hope then fans will get the shift in philosophy I see with the Indians in obtaining amateur talent.

Ohio State football - Glad to see Urban Meyer win his last game.     Hope Haskins leaves but the rest of the on-the-fence guys stay.   While Haskins is probably a year too early for the NFL he would clearly be a year too late if he came back to school and entered next year's draft.  He is the very rarest of cases where even though he hasn't played long in college there is nothing left for him to prove at that level.  That being said, there is a lot of talent on this roster and frankly, unless your goal is to be a playoff team, there is plenty of quarterback talent, too.   Is Justin Fields the icing on the cake that lets us make the playoff or would he be the fly in the ointment?  Frankly I don't think I want to find out as there are probably several other quarterback transfers who would love to be backups at OSU to finish their careers.   As far as OSU recruiting goes, looking at Clemson and Alabama it now appears that college football IS 100% about how many 5-star recruits you get and we got some more this year AND a lot of the 5-stars we got last year actually red-shirted so we should be good for years to come regardless of how the quarterback situation plays out.  That and some hopefully excellent upgrades by Ryan Day to fill out his coaching staff will make the quality of the product in 2019-2020 even better than the last few years.