Who should the Browns pick for a coach?

I can answer simply:
The only available coach with 200 career wins; 13 playoff appearances in 21 seasons as a head coach; a head coach of the year award; nine current head coaches who have worked for him at one time or another; and five previous seasons (four of them full seasons) as Cleveland Browns head coach.
Marty Schottenheimer.
The hot coach for this off season is former Steelers' coach Bill Cowher. Bill Cowher is a Schottenheimer disciple. Why go after the disciple if you can get the original?
As a fan, I am sick and tired of the team hiring coaches and general managers with little or no experience doing the jobs they'd be doing with the Browns. This describes Chris Palmer, Butch Davis, Romeo Crennel and Phil Savage. Oh, wait — silly me. I have just named almost every head coach and general manager since the team came back in 1999.
Can it be that the Cleveland Browns have not hired anyone experienced in the new job they would be doing? No general managers who have been winning general managers before? No head coaches who have been winning head coaches before?
OK, there were two. Carmen Policy and Dwight Clark came from the same positions with the San Francisco 49ers. Policy was the president and Clark was the vice president and director of football operations. That's all. Clark was gone after two years, and Policy after five.
That's right: Other than Policy and Clark, none of the people the Browns have hired since their return in 1999 have any kind of proven record of success, just a good interview and the confidence they could do the job. And, more importantly for this argument, none of the head coaches had ever been head coaches before.
Scott Pioli, who has been discussed as a possible GM, is merely another Phil Savage, who has been second banana in a winning organization. All the coaches and personnel guys from the Patriots (including Eric Mangini and Josh McDaniels who have been mentioned as possible coaches) have benefited from having Bill Belichick as their head coach. If you want to re-invent the Pats, then bring in Belichick. He has the track record. If not, leave his lackeys alone.
Other coaches being mentioned, including Kirk Ferentz, Jason Garrett, Steve Spagnuolo, Jim Schwartz and Rex Ryan, have exactly zero games — and zero wins — among them as an NFL head coach.
Why not get a coach who has won everywhere he has gone?
Why not pick a coach who has turned around three franchises and led them to the playoffs multiple times?
Why not pick the last coach who actually was able to win in Cleveland?

From Wikipedia:
Schottenheimer became Cleveland's head coach midway through the 1984 season, replacing fired head coach Sam Rutigliano. Schottenheimer would remain with the Browns until 1988, amassing 44-27 (.620) regular-season record and a 2-4 (.333) mark in the playoffs, including four playoff appearances, three AFC Central Division titles, and two trips to the AFC Championship Game.

Remember those days, when we could almost count on seeing the Browns play in January in the wind and snow at the old stadium? (For my money, Schottenheimer shouldn't have been fired by the Browns in the first place, but that's an argument for another day.)
If he were the head coach, it's almost a guarantee the team would get better in the first year. It's almost a guarantee the team would make the playoffs in the first two years.
The team would have discipline, organization and a sense of identity. The players would have a unity of purpose and play aggressively. The defense and the running game would improve immediately. That's what his teams always do.
Just like everywhere else he has gone, we know from Schottenheimer's record that he would get the Browns into the playoffs, which is a heck of a lot more than we can say about any of the other candidates.
Who cares if Schottenheimer is 5-13 in the playoffs? The Browns have not been there but twice since he left in 1988, anyway.
Here's the blueprint I'd follow: The Browns should bring in an experienced general manager who has built winning teams in the NFL (Floyd Reese and Carl Peterson are glaringly available) and let them do their jobs.
Then, they should also pick a coach who has led winning teams in the NFL and let him do his job.
For my money, that man is one of the people in sports I admire most: Schottenheimer. He knows all about how to win, and, specifically, how to win in Cleveland.
If that blueprint doesn't work, then I'd say team owner Randy Lerner should cut his losses and move the team to Schenectady — there ain't nothing gonna fix these Browns.
But, remember when the Indians were trying to rebuild in the late 1980s? What did they do? They hired longtime general manager Hank Peters, who built a winning organization in Baltimore, and veteran manager John McNamara, who took the Boston Red Sox to the World Series just four years earlier.
When they got the ship headed in the right direction, they handed things over to their planned successors, John Hart and Mike Hargrove, and the Indians won lots of games in 1990s.
It worked then, and it would work now.
I promise.
Hire Marty, Randy Lerner.
Please.
We need him back.

Mooooooose

Regardless of your politics, that stupid moose cracks me up!

Gary Burbank, another year done gone

Gary Burbank has not been off the Cincinnati airwaves for more than a year. I still miss his show. If I turn on 700 WLW and listen to Eddie Fingers and Tracy Jones, it just isn't the same.
What I wouldn't give for one more "Sports or Consequences."
Here's my blog entry from about a year ago when Gary signed off for the final time, if you'd like to go re-read it.

Dexter the Credit Debt Badger

Here's another classic Christmas character, crated, of course, by our pals Paul and Storm. Meet Dexter the Credit Debt Badger.
I was a little late in posting this a few days after Christmas, but consider it either an early warning for next year, or a late I-told-you-so for this year.

Mike Kunkel and the magic of SHAZAM!

Mike Kunkel may be one of the greatest creators working in comics today. I say this after reading the first few issues of "Billy Batson and the Magic of SHAZAM." The third issue came out this week, and here I have found a preview of a few pages from it.
Kunkel's writing is clever, funny and easy to read. (Granted, "Billy Batson" is a comic aimed at a young market, but it is easily read and enjoyed by adults.) Doing both writing and art, he combines them seamlessly, and even has found some unique ways to move the story along.
His art is expressive, and with it he manipulates time and pacing interestingly. Take a look at the preview page three, panel ... uhhh, depends on how you count ... well, the second tier from the bottom. There's technically only one panel, but to show movement and time elapsing, there's three figures of Captain Marvel and two of Mary Marvel. Kunkel shows in one panel what other writer/artists may take three. The other key point is that it's very clear what you are supposed to see and read first and second and so on. That's good storytelling.
Enjoy the preview. You may find some other interesting things in there I didn't.

Serial cereal blogging

I could not resist linking to this: 100 old cereal box covers.
How many do you remember?

(P.S. The image to the side is only a small sample to get you started. Click on the link in the text to see the whole thing.)

Moose and Zee for me (and you, too)

Children's programming can be entertaining for adults, too. I have had this song from the Noggin network in my head all day. Perhaps now you will, too. Misery loves company. Or something like that, anyway.

There's too many Mistercellaneouses out there

Get a load of all these. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to something more unique. Perhaps "kdhfksdjgh." Do a Google search for that!

He'll pay the fine after the Christmas rush

Santa gets parking ticket while delivering toys

So, what's ol' Roger Stern up to these days?

Why, he's writing "Amazing Spider-Man." It's almost enough to get me to buy the comic again. I swore it off after the "Brand New Day" storyline, but if Roger Stern is on board, maybe I should re-think that.
Here's what Stern had to say about it:
“I'm happy to say that feeling isn't there any more. I haven't missed an issue of ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ since the Brand New Day storyline began. For my money, Pete, Spider-Man, and the whole cast are finally acting like themselves again.”
Other than Stan Lee, I think Stern may well be the best writer Spider-Man has ever had. His stories from the 1980s with artist John Romita Jr. remain the standard by which I judge all Spider-Man comics today. When a writer of his accomplishments says "Brand New Day" is OK, it makes me think I ought to re-evaluate my own thinking.
Plus, he helped me win "Comic Book Squares" at the Mid-Ohio Con a few years ago. That ought to count for something.

Dear DC: Why do I care?

Posted to Comicbookresources.com

And while Egghead made a cameo appearance way back in 1992 in “Shadow of the Bat” #2-3, King Tut – who was the main villain on “Batman” five times, more than any other villain created specifically for the show -- has never appeared in comics. But that all changes on February 11, 2009 when the regal rogue makes his DC Comics debut in “Batman Confidential” #26.

Have we reached a point in comics that we have to reach back to a 1960s TV show for inspiration? I suppose this is a small symptom of the problem that caused me to stop reading almost all Batman comics.

That said, it's gonna have be-yew-tiful art:

Written by the dynamic duo of Christina Weir and Nunzio DeFilippis, the issue featues artwork by industry legends Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan, and kicks off a three-part arc telling the tale of King Tut’s first visit to Gotham.

Paul and Storm keep playing Randy Newman

Here's the site where Paul and Storm are making up Randy Newman theme songs for movies that didn't have them. If you do not laugh, you are ... well, I don't know what you are, because you should.

Serial Cereal blogging

They don't seem to sell Coco Wheats in Virginia. I wonder why?
I may have to use "Cream of Wheat" and "Hershey's" chocolate sauce.

Stan and Sergio went to Madrid

The Usagi Yojimbo portion of the Dark Horse Comics Web site has posted this picture of the wonderfully talented Stan Sakai and the legendary Sergio Aragones from 2006. (For some reason, it won't post right so I can embed it to this blog.)
And, here's a preview of Usagi #116, for those of you who like previews.

She Hulk: Gone, gone gone again

Well, here we go again. For the fourth time a monthly She Hulk comic has been cancelled.
From Marvel Comics release about the last issue of the current series:
She's been savage. She's been sensational. She's been an avenger. She's been a lawyer. She's been a bounty-hunter. But there's one thing She-Hulk has always been, in all of her many series... cancelled. But it hasn't stopped her yet! In this oversized final issue, Peter David brings his run on the Jade Giantess to a close... but can Jen use her last remaining pages to save her friends from a truly mammoth threat? Catch her now, before someone turns her red!
The sad truth is that since Dan Slott left the book a couple years ago, Peter David has written some pretty crappy stories. He tried to take She Hulk from being a fun character to something almost grim and gritty. I haven't enjoyed it.
David is great writer, but his take on She Hulk was just uninteresting.
He jumped the story from where Slott left off to something completely different. Eventually, he wound his way back to tell us what happened, but by then it had been so long I didn't really care.
In addition, "She Hulk" also has been plagued by having truly awful artists since Rick Burchett left at the same time Slott did.
Maybe She Hulk will return someday for another series.
I am still hoping for an entire issue of She Hulk drawn by Frank Cho. Maybe I'll never see it.

Where has XTC gone?

Ahhhh, XTC.
Perhaps my favorite band really has forever gone the way of the dodo. That said, they did still produce some wonderful moments in pop music, and college music as well.
Here's an ember of the first XTC video I ever saw. I was 17 and a senior in high school.
I was amazed at how profound the lyrics were, especially compared to much of the top 40's vapid offerings.
I think I read a church bulletin once saying the Catholic Church encouraged people not to buy any of XTCs albums after this song and accompanying video came out, seeing as how it's about the denial of organized religion.
Naturally, I ignored that and bought all of them.
Regardless of what a person believes, I think the song holds up well as being very intelligent. I don't think you have to agree with the singer to appreciate the skill with which he has crafted this song.
There's irony in lyrics that deny God's existence while all the while having a conversation with Him. I think it expresses the frustration of human problems more than it actually endorses atheism.
(Cue Casey Kasem.)Here's XTC's "Dear God."