Sunday, May 11, 2008

OBR News-o-rama

OBR News-o-rama

Good Press Continues for GM Savage

Posted: 11 May 2008 01:20 PM CDT

Romeo Crennel has been around the NFL game a long time and knows how it works. When asked about his contract extension by the media at the recent NFL Owner's Meetings in Flint, Michigan*, Crennel said that the added years on his contract simply meant that he had to win next year. Same as always.

Gotta love RAC. He never gets too high or too low, believes his press clippings, or forgets for a minute exactly how expendable anyone is in the NFL.

One has to imagine that some of Crennel's humility has rubbed off on Phil Savage, or folks in the Browns training facility in Berea would be actively widening the doorways to allow his head to fit through.

He's getting some good press. Oh, yes.

Not only are the Browns suddenly darlings in the fleeting mercurial thoughts of the national media, but the Browns GM has been getting some amazingly positive stories written about him.

That these stories appear most prominently in papers outside the City of Cleveland shouldn't be a surprise. Out-of-towners are allowed to gush, of course. Here in town, we have to stay stern and objective at all times. Well, most of us do. Some of us. Me and this other guy. Well, he stays objective. Most of the time.

Anyhow, there's a great piece about Savage which we located for the OBR Newswire** this morning from the Chattanooga Times Free Press***. The article presents Savage as sort of a football prodigy, divining defensive plays before they happen and simply outworking his peers.

I have to admit that I always had a soft spot in my heart for Bill Belichick, believe it or don't, because the guy worked his butt off, and Savage appears to have been cut from similar cloth. It's surely not a coincidence that the two worked together on Belichick's staff prior to Art Modell's sudden 1995 decision to interface an ice pick with the hearts of Browns fans.

It's clear that a guy from Sewanee College must have had to work very hard to get noticed in the Big School world of college sports, and perspicacious behavior would have worked in his favor on Belichick's staff.

Then again, Savage's comments in the article are pretty darn humble, which might have made him seem a little weird in contrast with some members of that group.

If nothing else, the article confirms that Browns fans in the OBR forums had good judgment back in 2005 when they began flooding the Browns switchboard with calls and emails insisting that Randy Lerner hold onto Savage and dump that other guy who wore the expensive suits.

Savage also gets good mention in the Tiffin Advertiser-Tribune as he is speaking for the Don Hall Memorial.

When teams win, the press can be as positive as it is bad when they're losing. The league's long-term survivors, I guess, neither ride the emotional waves too high or too low. Right now, the love for the Browns and their GM is scattered all over newsprint. What a change from just a short time ago.

 

* Just kidding. They had gathered at the fanciest hotel in Palm Springs or some such place, conveniently sans Rust Belt economic angst.

** Open 24 hours, uncensored and frequently imitated. Since 1999.

*** Not a joke. That's the actual name. I guess there's been some consolidation in the Chattanooga newspaper business. Just don't let the folks at Channel Action 19 Headline Action Tabloid News find out someone's copped their branding techniques.
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