Masters of the Terrible

When I was four, I thought the absolute epitome of cool was the Chicago Bears in “The Super Bowl Shuffle” video. I know it is cheesy, dated, and embarrassing. In my defense, I can only say that I was four, lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, knew nothing of cool, and, finally, screw you, Jim McMahon wore his sunglasses, even inside. That’s cool. This is where I considered noting that “The Super Bowl Shuffle” was nominated for a Grammy, but I fear that speaks more to the quality of the Grammies than “The Super Bowl Shuffle”.

For a brief period in the mid 80’s, people, not only four year-old military brats, actually thought football players fumbling through a simple rap beat in a gauzily produced video seemed cool. Making poorly produced videos became the cool thing to do. Other teams jumped on the bandwagon. The New England Patriots – the Bears’ eventual Super Bowl opponents – produced their own response, which quickly became lost to history. This happens when you lose the Super Bowl by roughly 700 points. Eventually teams such as the Miami Dolphins and the (then) LA Raiders put out their own music videos. Even the NHL was not immune from the allure of making its very own music video.

By far the most bizarre of the sports related videos released in the wake of “The Super Bowl Shuffle” is Masters of the Gridiron featuring the Cleveland Browns. Masters of the Gridiron is the product of lunatic ambition. While most of these sports videos were content to produce a crappy song and point a camera at the team swaying off-tempo in a studio, the producers of Masters of the Gridiron were thinking on a much grander scale. It was as though someone in the Browns organization thought, “A music video? A Music Video?! We’re the MF’ing Cleveland Browns. We’re better than any MF’ing music video. Screw the music. I’m going epic. I want to make the Citizen Kane of poorly produced sports team videos.” And that’s exactly what happened.





Masters of the Gridiron casts the Cleveland Browns in a full fantasy epic. You can tell it’s a fantasy because it features wizards, swords, and the Browns winning a Championship. It speaks volumes about Masters of the Gridiron that casting the Browns as a band of quasi-Medieval warriors is not even the most insane part of the video. The producers – after wracking their brains for what could have been weeks – finally found the perfect actor to portray the video’s villain, the evil wizard the Lord of the League. That’s right. The only actor who could lend this role the proper weight is Tiny Tim. Tiny freakin’ Tim. Somehow I assumed Tiny Tim must have been a Cleveland native and longtime Browns fan. This is not the case. Someone surveyed the entire galaxy of B-list celebrities, and said, “Bring me Tiny Tim.” As for why Tiny Tim agreed to do it, I guess playing “Tip Toe Through the Tulips” wasn’t exactly bringing in the cash.

Masters of the Gridiron is a master class in terrible 80’s video production. It’s hazy, out of focus, and shoehorns in a terrible music video for good measure. That’s Cleveland’s own Michael Stanley rocking it out in an empty Municipal Stadium while the rest of the Browns pretend to be barbarians, knights, and wizards in a battle with evil Tiny Tim. Somehow that description does not do justice to the final product.

While I do not remember knowing anything about Masters of the Gridiron growing up (not surprising since I did not live in Cleveland), obviously God, or fate, or whatever omniscient being in charge of the outcome of football games was watching. So great was the Brown’s affront to taste that Cleveland fans were not only exposed to losing, they were exposed to two of the most gut-wrenching losses in sports history in the two following seasons. Masters of the Gridiron is so bad only The Drive followed by The Fumble followed by years of losing and even enduring moving the franchise could appease the football gods. Based on watching Masters of the Gridiron, the people of Cleveland may have gotten off easy.

Shalom