While there are extraordinary students on campus, there are many more that are nothing special. Since this fact is not exactly promoted by the admissions department, research has been conducted on why such mediocrity is so prevalent on campus.
The surprising cause for one student? Being a fan of the Cleveland Browns.
Junior Adam Warnock is not actually as bad at everything as he claims to be, but can still trace his mediocrity back to decisions he made as a child.
“I got my first Browns jersey when I was in third grade,” Warnock told the Funion, “… the player whose jersey I had was traded just a couple of months after I got his jersey.”
This was the first of many disappointments that Warnock believes have caused him to underachieve. As long as he has been a fan, the Browns have only had one winning year, the 2007 season in which they finished with a 10-6 record and still somehow missed the playoffs.
“[The Browns] have just enough success to make it interesting…just enough to bait me into wasting my Sunday afternoons watching them lose,” Warnock said. “… I’m really beginning to think it has stunted my growth.”
This decision has had an effect on other spheres of Warnock’s life as well. He cannot sing, contrary to the widely-held belief that everyone can sing if they practice enough. Despite encouragement, he would not demonstrate his singing voice, commenting that it sounded like the late Scott Weiland of the Stone Temple Pilots setting something heavy on his foot.
“I’ll occasionally sing in the car, and I mumble along with the hymns in church, but that’s pretty much my limit,” Warnock said. “… I’m bad at a lot of things, but singing is right up there with hitting a baseball and talking to girls.”
When asked to expand on the remark he made about hitting a baseball, Warnock explained that athleticism was not his strong suit. Even when the fact that he was a reasonably strong distance runner, Warnock denied that he was athletic.
“All you have to do when you run is put one foot ahead of the other and keep doing that…you keep running, and when it feels like you need to stop, you keep running,” Warnock said.
He added that “there will always be someone out there that’s faster than you.”
Again, it is believed that Warnock’s average performance throughout his athletic endeavors can be traced back to his dedication to the Browns.
In the future, Warnock hopes to see the Browns improve, but also wants more attention drawn to the negative effects of rooting for such a bad football team.
“The Surgeon General requires a warning label on cigarettes, the entire nation is in an uproar about how to approach guns and gun violence,” Warnock said, “but nothing is being done to shield the populace from the harmful effects of rooting for the Browns.”
