SO SOCAL: The Best...The Beautiful...And The Bizarre : HOT DAWGS! : Turn on the Fans, Cleveland’s Back

On a Monday evening last month at the Brig, a gritty Venice bar, the whooping of football fans once again rattled the beer bottles. No, the Raiders weren’t back in town. To the “Dawg Pound’s” Southern California chapter, the rebirth of its beloved Browns in Cleveland as an expansion team was reason enough to celebrate. (The old team moved to Baltimore--where they were renamed the Ravens, no less.)

That the Browns quickly struck for a touchdown during the exhibition game against the Dallas Cowboys didn’t put a damper on festivities, either. “It’s like Mardi Gras,” says Barrey Davis as he nurses a Rolling Rock. A 50-year-old banker and displaced Clevelander, Davis “stopped watching football” when the team uprooted to Baltimore.

So did Jeff Wagner, who co-founded the club in 1985 and oversaw its expansion to 2,200 members by 1995--the largest Browns fan club of the 140 in existence, including Cleveland’s. “We’re starting over,” he says. “But just seeing the team come out again, nothing beats that.”

Colleen Kelly-Jensen, a 28-year-old Orange County stock trader, will visit each of the 26 bars and restaurants from San Diego to Santa Barbara that have agreed to feature Browns telecasts. At the start of this game, club membership is 800; by the fourth quarter, 806. “I’m working it,” she says.

In overtime, a dramatic field goal will win it for the Browns, and the 25 members of the Southern California Browns Backers Assn. will give themselves a standing ovation. But for now, in the heat of battle, the Dawg Pound barks and woofs, their emotions as up in the air as the pigskin in flight. “Come on, Couch,” a Browns backer yelps, as excited as if someone’s just stepped on his tail, as Cleveland’s rookie quarterback Tim Couch drops back in the pocket. “You’ve got to make that pass!”

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The Browns play their first regular season game today at 5 p.m on ESPN against the Pittsburgh Steelers.