The "banners were back" at Cleveland Browns Stadium on
Sunday after team ownership "relented and lifted" the sign
and banner ban of the first half of the season, according to
Jesse Tinsley of the Cleveland PLAIN DEALER. But "at least
one of the signs hung up by Browns fans did not measure up
to the 'good taste' standard imposed by the team's owners,"
as Cleveland police confiscated the sign which read, "Yuppie
Scum Go Back to the Jake." Tinsley: "The message was an
apparent attack on affluent Browns fans and the new
Cleveland Browns organization, which some fans believe is
driven by too much commercialization and glamour." The
banner ban was lifted "with the understanding that fans
would not hang crude and vulgar signs." Among other signs
Sunday: "Get Loud Or Go Home" (PLAIN DEALER, 11/22). In
Akron, Patrick McManamon wrote that "fans complained that
the lack of banners made the new place sterile." McManamon:
"From the ads on the scoreboard to the official cookies to
the club lounges that draw spectators out of their seats in
blowout losses to the sterile feeling (they even have
'instant hand sanitizer' -- provided by an official sponsor,
of course -- throughout the place) to the perception that
security will eject folks for spilling stadium mustard,
things are different this season. The new dawg by the lake
is not the old dawg" (AKRON BEACON JOURNAL, 11/22).
