A Good Day in Cleveland: Mark Fleege’s Recent NFL Road Trip

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Erik Daniel Drost

For anyone who watches NFL football on a regular basis, you’re probably familiar with the the in-state rivalry between the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals.  It’s always a pretty fierce head to head match up both on the field and off.  Cleveland fans take their football very seriously … to the extent that a portion of the seating in the stadium is commonly referred to as the Dawg Pound.  According to Wikipedia: “The Dawg Pound is the name of the bleacher section behind the east end zone in Cleveland Browns Stadium.  It is known for its extremely zealous fan base.”  Fans in that section used to shower the visiting teams with milk bone biscuits (and they would always double up on their supply of dog biscuit projectiles whenever the Bengals came to town) until the NFL banned the bringing of dog food to NFL games.  Needless to say it’s still filled to capacity every game with many overly-passionate Browns fans, so if you’re wearing a Bengal jersey or doing the Ickey Shuffle, you’d definitely want to steer clear of the Pound.

Well the Bengals came to Cleveland this past Sunday and things had become pretty desperate as the Browns hadn’t won in their last 11 NFL games dating back to last season.  By the time the Bengals left town, the Browns and their fans were riding high on their new 1 game winning streak as they were able to turn things around with a 34-24 victory.

Cleveland was a’rockin and Browns rookie linebacker L.J. Fort was flying doubly high because he was looking forward to walking to the stadium parking garage afterwards and driving away in his new vehicle that he just purchased from Runde Chevrolet.  His new ride, a Mercedes ML350 Four-Matic, is a far cry from the old high-mile car that got him through his college days so it goes without saying that he was stoked to get out and hit the town in this stylin’ Benz.

L.J. Fort with Mark Fleege, Craig Robertson & Thaddeus Lewis

The 6 foot, 230 lb. linebacker purchased the vehicle from Runde’s last week and his salesman, Mark Fleege, was kind enough to drive it down and deliver it to his doorstep in Cleveland over the weekend.  Mark dropped off L.J.’s new ride on Saturday evening and then stayed overnight and went to the Browns-Bengals game the next day.    He was also able to hang out with L.J. for awhile and got to meet some of his Browns teammates (Craig Robertson and Thaddeus Lewis) as they went out together for a steak dinner at a local restaurant.

Mark described L.J. as a very nice and personable guy who hasn’t let success or the NFL go to his head.   He’s originally from Granite City, IL and Iowa natives will probably remember L.J. from his collegiate days at the University of Northern Iowa where he was a stand-out starting linebacker for the Panthers.  He definitely has a bright future ahead of him with the Browns organization and now he has an awesome new set of wheels from Runde Chevrolet.  We’d like to thank L.J. for purchasing his vehicle from us and we wish him the best in his NFL career.