National Football League

Browns head coach Pettine right for not wanting 'Hard Knocks' attention

Published Mar. 24, 2015 3:33 p.m. ET

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If the Cleveland Browns end up being this year's featured team on the HBO reality series "Hard Knocks," Browns coach Mike Pettine will be the star of the show.

Candid, commanding and funny, Pettine is made for the spotlight the Hard Knocks platform brings. That he was raised in football, by a high school coaching legend, and gave up his own high school coaching job for a big pay cut and a low-level NFL job makes that story better. That Pettine seems to get where he is and where his team is in the NFL landscape makes it better.

Pettine would make a lot of fans via Hard Knocks. It's not even crazy to think he could help himself get his next head coaching job, just by being himself in his current one.

Such has been the state of affairs with the ever-changing Browns.

That Pettine told reporters Tuesday at the NFL owner's meetings that his team won't volunteer for the show speaks to the state of affairs with the Browns, too.

"We discussed everything that would be involved with it," Pettine said.

The sizzle of last year's drafting of Johnny Manziel has faded. Manziel is currently in rehab for undisclosed reasons, and the Browns haven't said when but have said they expect him back sometime this spring or summer.

The cameras love Manziel, who's certainly used to the cameras being around. Pettine doesn't have to say it directly to say that both the Browns and Manziel have enough to work through without Manziel being subject to extra attention for what he did away from the field in his first NFL season.

There's also the situation with last year's other first-round pick, Justin Gilbert. Both Pettine and Browns general manager Ray Farmer have said Gilbert is dealing with some sort of issue without saying what it is. Now, it's none of our business what Manziel is working through, and it's none of our business what Gilbert is working through.

It's HBO's business to bring the best training camp stories to life.

It's Pettine's business to win games. To make this team less of a mess. To be the guy to do what so many others haven't or couldn't in a series of events, changes and losses that would make a soap-opera writer think came off as a little over the top.

"You just weigh everything in," said Pettine, who was with the Jets as an assistant coach when the show was filmed there. "Because being a part of Hard Knocks, having been there...they're going to look to cover the team's biggest current storylines (and) it's obvious that (Manziel) would be a point of attention."

It's not just about Manziel and Gilbert. The Browns have been the subject of many offseason stories that paint the organization as disjointed at the top -- and on down. And it's not up to the people at the top, either. Per NFL rules, the Browns could be forced into the Hard Knocks cameras and producers inside their walls.

If it happens, life will go on. The show has never cost a team a game. It has given fans a glimpse at places they'd never otherwise see and access to the often colorful, often powerful moments that happen in a few weeks of trying to shape a multi-million dollar football team into a winner while some personal dreams end and others are realized. The Browns don't have to give full access to every meeting and every situation, but anyone who's ever seen the show knows that what makes Hard Knocks so great is the way it's here, there, everywhere.

The Browns would be better off with it being somewhere else.