CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Jimmy Haslam has sat in the Dawg Pound with Browns fans, stood on the field with coaches and met with team executives in their offices to gain a better understanding of the organization and what ails it.
But before setting foot in a Browns facility, he had first-hand knowledge of the team's sorry history against its chief rivals. He helped contribute to it as a minority owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. 
So when Haslam was asked recently if he knew how badly the Browns had been dominated by his former club, the truck stop magnate leaned across a boardroom table and quoted a statistic from his memory bank.
"Twenty-two [wins] out of the last 24 games," he said.
A captain of industry who does his own homework, Haslam is aware of the Browns' epic struggles within the AFC North Division. Cleveland has the worst record (22-68) of any NFL team since 1999 in intra-division play, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The Browns ride a 10-game losing streak against AFC North opponents as they travel to Cincinnati on Sunday to face the Bengals. They are 3-21 in the division since 2008.
The reasons for futility are many and include poor drafting, organizational instability, the failure to adapt to the playing styles of the top teams, and the misfortune of rejoining the division just as Pittsburgh and Baltimore were rising to the status of conference elite.
How tough has it been for the Browns and Bengals? According to a Columbus Dispatch report two years ago, Cleveland and Cincinnati each had won a game on the same day just 13 times since 1999.
Two years later, that stat remains unchanged.
Haslam doesn't need to talk to fans and media personalities in Pittsburgh and Baltimore to appreciate the state of the rivalries with the Browns. As a minority owner of the Steelers, he said that franchise's focus was the Ravens and the New England Patriots.
Among the divisional lowlights since the Browns' 1999 return:
• The offensively-challenged Browns scored 48 points in a 2004 game against the Bengals and lost by 10;
• Former Browns quarterback Tim Couch fought back tears as he spoke of hearing cheers from Cleveland fans as he was replaced by Kelly Holcomb after sustaining a concussion at the hands of the Ravens in a 2002 game; and
• The Browns were hammered so badly by the Steelers in a 2005 game on Christmas Eve -- one that featured James Harrison body-slamming a drunk Cleveland fan -- it prompted the Akron Beacon Journal to run the headline: "Season's Beatings."
While several players in the Browns' locker room say they don't put much stock into division rivalries, it's clear the new owner does. Haslam understands how playing well against the teams they meet twice a season translates. In the past 13 years, the teams with the top five intra-division records -- Indianapolis, Green Bay, New England, Pittsburgh and Baltimore -- have combined to win eight Super Bowls and 12 conference titles.
"If we can compete in our division we can win the Super Bowl," Haslam said. "That's the way we felt in Pittsburgh. If we can win the division, which means beating the Ravens and Steelers, then we are probably as good as any team in the AFC or NFC."
Lofty goals for a franchise that's never had a winning record within the AFC North.
Browns defensive end Frostee Rucker, who played his previous five seasons in Cincinnati, marveled at the change he witnessed in the Ravens during their 44-13 win over his former team Monday night.
The sight of quarterback Joe Flacco running a no-huddle offense surprised him. It was David Letterman doing the Late Show without a Top-10 List; the cast of Jersey Shore appearing in public bereft of spray-on tans.
"It's the first time I can remember them changing something up a bit," Rucker said. "We need to get something, run with it and perfect it. Both the Ravens and the Steelers have been doing it for years."
Since Flacco took the first snap of the 2008 season, the Browns have had five opening-day starting quarterbacks. If it always seems like the Browns are slow to react to what the Ravens and Steelers have been doing for a decade, it's because the organization is forever turning over rosters and coaching staffs.
Offensive tackle Joe Thomas stood in the locker room Thursday and recalled the 2009 arrival of coach Eric Mangini, who added about a half-dozen former New York Jets to the roster. They're all gone, including Mangini.
While the Browns unearth foundations and tear down walls, the Steelers and Ravens simply replace loose mortar. Running back Jamaal Lewis leaves Baltimore after the 2006 season and Ray Rice emerges two seasons later. Pittsburgh waves goodbye to outside linebacker Joey Porter in 2007 and plugs in Harrison.
"With new coaches and front office come new ideas and new players, which is fine," Thomas said. "But if you do that every couple years pretty soon you don't have any guys left that you really want."
Ravens safety Bernard Pollard is more succinct: "Cleveland hasn't been able to develop an identity." The Browns enter Sunday's game with the youngest roster in the AFC (25.55 years).
The Bengals' approach is somewhere between the Browns and the divisional powers. Marvin Lewis became the first coach in NFL history to enter his 10th season with the same franchise despite having a losing record (69-74-1). And yet, the Bengals have won two division titles and last year qualified as a wild card, giving the division three playoff teams.
In a league where patience has gone the way of the straight-ahead kicker, the Browns have been unable to fuse coach with talent and success. Perhaps the Browns are onto something defensively with professorial coordinator Dick Jauron and a unit that is young, aggressive and quicker than in seasons past.
But if Haslam makes substantial changes in the off-season, will Jauron be around to build on his progress?
"Continuity helps, but you have to be on an upward track and be steady with it," linebacker Scott Fujita said. "When you start to get players and coaching staffs on an upward trajectory that's when you start to get your continuity."
View from afar
Longtime Pittsburgh sportscaster Stan Savran grew up in Cleveland and was introduced to alcohol at old Muncipal Stadium in the form of two inebriated Steelers fans wobbling in the seats next to him.
Savran remembers when Browns-Steelers was among the NFL's fiercest rivals. He still sees Joe "Turkey" Jones planting Terry Bradshaw in the turf like a lawn dart. He recalls Jack Lambert saying "quarterbacks should wear dresses" after hitting Brian Sipe out of bounds.
As the Browns returned in 1999, fans on both sides assumed the rivalry would come back with them. Instead, the Steelers whipped the Browns, 43-0, in the opener and have been beating Cleveland lopsided ever since.
"It's like when Art Modell took the Browns to Baltimore the rivalry went with him," Pittsburgh sports radio personality Mark Madden said. "The Ravens got good and that became the team Steelers fans anticipated playing."
Savran said an entire generation of Steelers fans know the Browns as nothing but a rebuilding franchise. Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisbeger is 14-1 against Cleveland.
"It's a walk-over win in their eyes," Savran said. "They don't see the Browns as a threat."
The view from the shores of the Chesapeake Bay is similar. Cleveland got to keep the colors but not Ozzie Newsome, the former Browns tight end who, as Ravens general manager, turned them into a perennial contender.
"Ravens-Browns had all the makings of a great rivalry, but you have to be competitive," Baltimore sports talk host Vinny Cerrato said. "When the schedule comes out Ravens fans want to know, 'When do we play the Steelers?' They just don't care about Cleveland."
Browns linebacker D'Qwell Jackson knows there's only one way to change opinion.
"We haven't earned that respect," Jackson said. "In order to get that respect we have to go out and play great football against these teams."
Kicker Phil Dawson, an original member of the expansion Browns, correctly observes that the losing hasn't been limited to the AFC North. But their winning percentage outside the division (.361) is 117 points higher.
Seven times, the Browns have won only one or zero divisional games in a season since their return.
"The passion isn't the same," Madden said. "I can't remember the last time I went to Heinz Field and heard a Steelers fan yell: 'Browns suck.'"
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