Almost every day, assuming First Energy sees fit to keep the power on at OBR World Headquarters, I will post a poll on the VIP Insider Discussion board. There aren’t a lot of respondents yet, as people haven’t made it a habit to drop by daily, but we usually get a dozen or two votes on it and some comments. Sometimes the polls are silly, like the recent poll about the biggest Steelers Twerp in recent memory, and sometimes they’re a little more of a serious attempt to gauge fan’s feelings on actual topics.

In the latter camp comes a poll I posted yesterday afternoon, asking if fans’ opinions about a dome had changed after the Thursday night “snow globe” game against the Steelers. So far, out of the handful of respondents, only about ten percent say they now favor an open-air stadium rather than a dome. The majority were and are for a domed stadium. Jump in and vote if you’re a VIP member, or get in our contest by Monday at Noon to win a free membership.

Not voting in our poll, I’m guessing, is retired Plain Dealer editorial director Brent Larkin, who Cleveland.com trotted out to write a blistering editorial blasting Haslam’s request for $1 billion in public money to pay for their JimmyWorld dreams. Why this editorial didn’t come from a current employee is an open question for which I won’t propose an answer. Larkin also leans on a retired professor from Ohio State to build his case.

I guess the fact that writing this editorial requires people who are currently retired to do it should indicate something.

Larkin, oddly, doesn’t mention the OBR’s Team Spreadsheet in his editorial, joining 99.999999999% of the entire planet’s population in denying our very existence. This is probably wise because we don’t meet, offer only token resistance, and exist only as an ephemeral notion in these bloviations, but demand to be taken seriously nonetheless.

Furthermore, Larkin doesn’t take Team Spreadsheet’s raison d’etre very seriously. We exist to give the Haslams a chance to prove that the development would pay for its public funding, although we are very skeptical that it will. Larkin dismisses this notion in a single sentence: “Never mind that anyone with a modicum of common sense knows the suggestion this project would pay for itself is utter nonsense.”

Well, then. I’ll just close up that spreadsheet and go home. Take that, Jimmy.

But Larkin doesn’t stop there, suggesting that the Haslams are leveraging a corrupt state government with their generosity and “spending on state government candidates and causes” to purchase the needed support for their facility.

I don’t think you should blame me for this. Blame Larkin. I try to keep politics off these pages, but when you’re talking billions of dollars and public funding, politics raises its ugly head.

Sigh. Read the entire thing if you want. It’s merciless.

I shouldn’t even play in these shark-filled waters. I don’t see other Browns sites even touch this third rail. Most of them stick to just repeating whatever other people say that they think will get them clicks. I’m not Cleveland.com or the Plain Dealer – just a little guy who can get run over by a Zamboni with little fuss for fussing about things beyond my station.

But I’m compelled. 1995 still burns in my heart and the reasons I railed against Art Modell stealing a team and ripping off Baltimore echo here. I need proof that Jimmy Haslam is doing what’s suitable for himself and what’s right for Browns fans, the region I grew up in, and the place I love.

I’ll want to believe he is until I don’t. But he’s done little to reassure me.