Football without cable will test limits

This is going to come as a shock to some people, but I can be stubborn.

I know — who would have guessed?

It might be a Cleveland thing. Spend three decades waiting for next year and you’re bound to start thinking that elusive title is just one season, one draft, one trade or one elite QB away.

No titles? No worries. No way I’m switching allegiances or spending my Sundays doing yard work or reading books. There’s a time for those things and this isn’t it.

How stubborn? The air conditioning in my car died at some point between the end of the summer of 2013 and this past spring. Sure, this summer was cooler than normal but I refused to give in and get it fixed — or even to fix it myself. (That’s more about me being a hopeless failure with cars.)

I became determined to get through the summer without AC because I could. Or at least because I thought I could.

Yes, there were a couple of days when I arrived at the office looking like I’d just done the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

It was just wishful thinking and sweat, but I refused to give in, even on the summer’s hottest days. This was personal.

But I’m not a masochist. With temperatures near 90 on Friday, I borrowed my wife’s car for the drive to Columbiana’s Firestone Park for WFMJ’s Football Night in the Valley live shot before the Leetonia-Columbiana game.

My reasoning? It was 40 minutes to Columbiana for me in her rolling refrigerator vs. five minutes for her in the Saunamobile from her office to a house I made sure would feel like a meat locker when she got home. I’m thoughtful like that.

But the limits of my stubborness are about to be tested like never before.

It’s football season and I’m without cable television. And today — forget that Thursday night game last week — the NFL season begins when the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers meet at Heinz Field.

I’m without cable by choice, even if I’m starting to waver. Netflix can give me “Breaking Bad” and “BoJack Horseman,” but it won’t give me the Buckeyes and Browns.

I’ve missed one Browns game since the team “returned” — see what I did there? — in 1999 and it was Cleveland’s 51-45 win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept, 16, 2007. You see, my daughter was a Howland Little Tigers cheerleader that year and what kind of father would I be if I stayed home to watch the Browns?

Never mind that there have been entire seasons in which the Browns didn’t score that much. (A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but not as much as you’d think.)

But I digress. To reiterate: No cable TV and football is under way in earnest. We’re at critical mass here.

It’s one thing to miss “The Big Bang Theory” (the least humorous sitcom ever to attain its level of popularity) or ESPN’s “First Take” (I wouldn’t watch Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith unless they were involved in a duel and someone wasn’t getting out alive).

I didn’t watch either of those shows when I paid ridiculous prices for a gazillion channels I never saw.

But this is different. The last time I went a year without watching football, my favorite shows were “Speed Racer” and “Super Friends.”

I guess we’ll find out just how stubborn I really am.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.