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NFL headlines: Browns end league’s longest playoff drought with victory over Steelers
The Browns, who scored a playoff spot for the first time since 2002, highlighted the earlier game on the last Sunday of the regular season.
USA TODAY
The claim: Crowds celebrated Cleveland Browns’ victory in the streets on January 3rd
On Sunday, the Cleveland Browns reached the NFL playoffs for the first time since 2002 in a win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. That night, confusion about how fans celebrated came across Facebook.
“Cleveland fans took to the streets after the Browns dropped their 18-year-old playoffs!” read a mem posted by the NFL Memes Facebook community on January 3rd.
The accompanying image showed a large crowd gathering in the streets, with a sign for Euclid Avenue visible.
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NFL Memes did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment on the meme, which received 3,500 responses, nearly 600 comments and nearly 750 shares.
Meme comes from the parody page
NFL Memes Facebook community describes its content as the “funniest PARODY NFL memes on the net” on its Facebook page “About”. The page has previously posted many comic memes about NFL games, teams and players earning it more than 2 million followers.
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Some Facebook users realized that the dated photo was used satirically, while others expressed their confusion in the comments.
“This is definitely not a picture of Cleveland today,” one user said.
“It’s true that I was there and got some pictures!” A Facebook user commented and posted a picture of what appears to be a Brazilian Gay Pride Parade.
‘Not a closed man at all, but come on. It’s just dumb, ”wrote another.
Photo from the 2016 NBA Victory Parade
Several details in the photo indicate that it was not taken recently, such as the leaves on the trees and a sunny sky. But the appearance of the photo in a Cleveland running coach’s 2016 blog certainly proves it was not taken after the Browns’ recent victory.
The blogger named Rachel Frutkin Beachler told USA TODAY that she drew the image of a local news website when she wrote her blog on June 23, 2016 about the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA Championship Parade in downtown Cleveland.
The parade, which took place on June 22, 2016, celebrated the city’s first championship in 52 years.
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USA TODAY compared the image to Google Earth images of the area and found that the original photo was probably taken at the intersection of Euclid Avenue and Ninth Street East. USA TODAY reports that the Cavaliers parade crossed that intersection in 2016.
NBA parade photos have been misrepresented before
One Facebook user mistakenly thought the photo showed the crowd for a recent Trump rally held in Washington, DC
‘Wait. “It was not a Trump rally in DC,” he said.
He was not the only one who made this mistake. On Nov. 17, the U.S. today unveiled similar reports claiming that photos of the Cavaliers parade in 2016 depicted the rise of the “Stop the Steal” march in Washington on Nov. 14.
Our rating: Satire
We review the claim that a picture in a popular meme shows how fans of Cleveland Browns celebrate their victory on January 3 in downtown SATIRE streets because it was posted by a Facebook parody page. The photo that appears in the meme actually comes from the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers NBA Championship Parade. While many of the page’s fans seem to understand the joke, those who do not follow the NFL or are unfamiliar with the satirical content of the page can easily be confused.
Our sources for fact checking:
- USA TODAY, January 3, “Cleveland Browns Ends NFL’s Longest Draw with a Victory over Pittsburgh Steelers”
- NFL Memes, January 3, Facebook Post
- NFL Memes, Visited January 6, Facebook Page “Photos”
- GayPrideBrazil.org, January 6, Consulted, “Sao Paulo Brazil Gay Pride Parade 2016 – May 29 – 19th Edition”
- Joseph Ross, January 3, Facebook Post
- NFL Memes, accessed January 6, Facebook ‘About’ page
- Run on Happy, June 23, 2016, “Cleveland Cavaliers Championship Parade”
- Running on Happy, visit on January 6, “About”
- USA TODAY, June 22, 2016, “Best Moments of the Cavaliers’ NBA Championship Parade”
- Google Earth, “Euclid Ave Cleveland, Ohio”
- USA TODAY, November 17, 2020, “Fact check: images claiming to show a pro-Trump rally are from 2016 in Cleveland, 2018 in London”
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