Cleveland Browns fan in Toronto overseer of Browns fan clubs worldwide

Bryan Loberg can’t find a thumbtack that has gone incognito on the dark wooden floor. Moments later, he finds it, and pins a new Cleveland Browns flag to the wall. He looks at it with pride and goes about setting up for the fans to arrive.

It’s Football Sunday at midtown’s Sport Centre Café, moments before the Browns take on the Bengals who have lost only two games this NFL season. Loberg is cautiously optimistic the Browns can take the points, but he’s not holding his breath. Cleveland are 2-9. By halftime the large white bus-sized projector screen shows the Browns are down 20-3 but you wouldn’t know it.

The 30-odd fans who are sitting in the custom-made bleachers in their jerseys are yelling as if they are the ones winning 20-3, cheering every first down with “1-2-3! First-down-Browns!” and even when an error occurs, the chant “1-2-3! Let’s-Go-Browns!” would erupt. It’s like we’re sitting in a Cleveland pub watching the game, but we’re five hours north in a city that prides itself on hockey.

“We’re constant losers. We haven’t won since 1964. We’ve made the playoffs once in the last 17 years. It’s about commiserating together,” said Loberg. “It’s misery loves company. They still show up even though we’re bad.”

Loberg went to his first Cleveland Browns game at 10-years-old. Living in Niagara, he saw them play on T.V. all the time and grew up to bleed orange. It also helped his father, Norm, was a Cleveland Browns die-hard. Through his high-school years, he played quarterback for a Mississauga football team. And since he can remember, he’s attended more than 35 Browns games. It was a perfect fit then, when Loberg searched and found the Toronto Browns Backers on Facebook, got in touch with the outgoing president and became the new president of a club that had 35 members in it.

Fast forward one year and Loberg has grown the Toronto Browns Backers to 300 members and was just recently voted in as chairman of the Browns Backers Worldwide Leadership Council who oversees the entire 382 Browns fans clubs scattered across the world. He’s the first Canadian to ever hold the position.

“I just looked for people on Facebook and other places. I knew they were there, it was just a matter of finding them,” said the 45-year old. “It spread like a virus and snowballed. We have a very unique group. There’s nothing like it in Canada.”

The Toronto Browns Backers is made up of a 60-40 split of Canadians to Americans and boasts an eclectic mix of fans: a guy who built 100 houses in Thailand, the Skydome Jumbotron guy, directors of music labels, entrepreneurs, comedians, journalists and a nuclear scientist. The numbers this season has been consistent: 50 fans attended Draft Day, 65 showed up for the Season Opener and each week they average 50 to 60. For a city that doesn’t boast an NFL team, the Browns fan club seems like the closest thing to having one. There are other NFL fan clubs in the city - a group of Steelers fans on Eglinton, Patriots fans in Georgetown and a Bills collective in Brampton - but none of them come close to the scale and sick irony of being a Browns fan in Toronto.

Megan Rock, coordinator of Browns Backers Worldwide and Cleveland Browns fan events said the Browns represent a hard working gritty, blue collar fan base of 36,000 members worldwide across 22 countries and every U.S. city.

“It’s interesting to see that when people move away from Cleveland they still keep that dedication for the Browns,” she said. “It’s a unique situation. We have the most dedicated fans.”

While Rock couldn’t pinpoint why fan clubs like Toronto’s Brown Backers exist, she did say the popularity of the Cleveland Browns most likely spawned from winning three NFL Championships in six years throughout the 1950s, which meant anyone’s Dad who followed the Browns during that period became a Browns fan. Outside of the U.S. and Canada fan clubs exist in Taiwan, Australia and even far-flung Antarctica. Rock said the newly implemented Backer Tracker allows fans to find a Browns club whenever they are out of town so they can watch the game with other fans; Toronto has the fourth largest chapter out of the 382 clubs. 

The reasons, when told, seemed feasible as to why a core group of Torontonians would follow such a putrid team. But if any city understands a championship drought it’s Torontonians. Marco Mascherin,38, who is a nuclear mechanic and stand-up comic started following the Browns at nine-years old, when his uncle took him to his first game.

“I found the club last year, and before that, I used to hold Browns parties at home with my friends and my cousins,” he said. “It’s been such a great experience.”

Andrea Morris, who was born in Ohio, moved to Toronto in 1999 and joined the Browns Backers for the sense of community and slice of Cleveland. “We come here and watch and hope each year is the year that things will happen,” she said. “It’s like living the Charlie Brown life.” 

Other fans who have joined were dragged along to come and watch a game and have now become part of the furniture and stay for the comradeship.

Steve Knoch, a Browns fan of 53 years, had to chose between the Detroit Lions, New York Jets and Cleveland Browns, as those were the games televised when he started to have an interest in the NFL. He chose Cleveland and has stuck with them ever since.

“I love my Browns and being around a bunch of people that have similar passions. We’re growing a community here,” he said. “When we’re good, when we finally get good, this place will rock.”