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Since there was so much trouble over even having one this year, may as well make the effort to comment on the NFL season at least one more time.

Here in Cleveland, the Browns are the subject of a sorta-kinda quarterback controversy this week, at least among armchair quarterbacks. My man Seneca Wallace, fellow graduate of dear auld ISU, started on Sunday and showed some exciting flashes of athleticism before the whole team just kind of ran out of gas and Arizona completed a creeping comeback victory in overtime.

So right now we have a range of opinions just among the relatively small number of football pundits I keep up with. Peter King is on record strongly advocating that the Browns should stick with Colt McCoy, and focus on upgrading his supporting cast, as their best route to success. While a Canton reporter has suggested that, when you look at their records, Wallace has proven at least as effective as McCoy; combined with Wallace’s history with football czar Mike Holmgren, this could mean that Wallace starts in 2012, at least while yet another quarterback-of-the-future takes practice reps as his understudy.

Up here in Cleveland, though, one of the local hacks has declared today that Wallace and McCoy are both mediocre, and the Browns need to go back to the well for a savior at center yet again.

Personally, I don’t know; I find it more and more difficult to refute the “career back-up” label which more than one observer has applied to Colt McCoy. Just because someone was supposed to be a stud, just because we would really like it if he turned out to be a stud, doesn’t mean that he is. And I think there’s a lot of truth to the argument that a truly awesome quarterback can perform magic, even with a flawed team around him. Look at how the Colts imploded without Manning, and how Aaron Rodgers kept Green Bay undefeated for a year in spite of glaring weaknesses on the rest of the team. (Acknowledging the exception of the past weekend, in both cases, a turn of events to which I shall return shortly.)

Still, even if this is the case… so what? Despite Indy not quite managing to “suck for Luck” all season long, we don’t have a shot at drafting the guy. I kind of wonder if there’s an NFL equivalent of the “middle income trap,” where a team can remain stuck in the bottom third without ever being quite bad enough to draft the one key talent capable of turning things around.

Except, I think the Browns have actually gotten top picks, and they just haven’t worked out; this is the NFL, after all, and ultimately there’s so much talent, and money*, available that I think every team really has legitimate opportunities to be a contender, over time.

So what do we make of the fact that the Cleveland Browns just seem hopeless, year after year after year? Personally I suspect that maybe this “featured comment” from cleveland.com really sums up the reality of our situation:

Wallace looked about the same as McCoy who looked like Quinn who looked like Frye who looked like Couch. They have all looked like guys playing quarterback for a lousy football team.

Yeah, haven’t they? Maybe, at the end of the day, the problem is that the Browns just suck? In some inherent way which, though it may be possible to change, is so deeply rooted that it just isn’t going to change, any time soon, and meanwhile what talent we do recruit is going to be dragged down to our level, rather than raising us up? Of course, none of the aforementioned quarterbacks has really gone on to excel, elsewhere, but how many frogs do we think it’s going to take before we find a princess? And of course, we brought in Mike Holmgren, presumably for just the sort of internal, structural change we seem to need… and we still suck; Peter King has even suggested that Mike may give up before long, here, finding the futility of Browns football too much for even him to overcome.

Whether he does or not, meanwhile, it’s worth going back to Sunday and the Green Bay Packers’ first loss in a year. Notice who ended their streak, who finally slew the mighty dragon? None other than the Kansas City Chiefs, in their first outing under just-appointed interim head coach Romeo Crennel. Yeah, the same Crennel who was dropped by Cleveland, appearing just as ineffective as everyone else the Browns have brought in to turn things around. And yet, it now looks very possible that futility in Cleveland during Crennel’s years had very little to do with a lack of turnaround aptitude on his part. Sure, it was just one game, but one Hell of an impressive one-game turnaround under the circumstances.

Meanwhile… meh. It would be great to see the Browns turn things around, and it would be awesome to see them turn things around with Seneca Wallace starting… but that points to the reality that as a sports fan, I major in “ISU,” with a minor in “Cleveland” at best. If I had to pick one team to succeed, it would always be my beloved Cyclones; fortunately I don’t have such a choice but, given that I’m currently only enjoying success for one set of teams anyway… I’m glad it’s the cardinal and gold.

* One footnote regarding the NFL and money: if you don’t regularly read Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback column, do check out this week’s section on the new television deal. Apparently it’s just about SIX BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR. Says King, “Think of that. In 2004, the NFL’s total gross revenue was $6 billion. A decade later, they’ll get that in one year, in stormy economic times, from TV alone.” Does our economy make any sense (assuming you aren’t on the receiving end of a deal like this)? How? Yeah, I’m not seeing it either.