CLEVELAND, Ohio -- First of all, Jimmy Haslam doesn't write the checks.

He cashes them.

Owning an NFL team is not a charitable endeavor. It is not an up-by-the-bootstraps small business. It's a pile of money.

Jimmy and Dee Haslam sit on the money and parcel it out to players and coaches and staff. But every time they give a bundle of cash away, the pile grows. They purchased the Browns for $987 million in 2012. The franchise, according to Forbes, now has an estimated worth of $1.95 billion.

Since officially taking over a 1-6 team in October of 2012, they are 21-75-1 as owners. They have hired five front-office decision makers and fired four. They have hired three coaches and fired four (after inheriting Pat Shurmur).

They have picked the wrong people, handled them the wrong way, set up an organizational structure doomed to fail and sowed dysfunction. And their investment has doubled in value. Six years of failure made them a billion dollars.

So don't give them credit for writing the checks, when the Haslam family in the end is going to cash one giant check and profit from the pain of Browns fans.

"He pays the bills," GM John Dorsey, seated next to Jimmy Haslam, said at Monday's news conference to announce the firing of Hue Jackson.

It was said as if making a ton of money for doing nothing, and then handing out some of it, is a skill. Haslam is Dorsey's boss, so of course he's going to say that. But no one else has to.

The Haslams are the problem with the Browns.

That doesn't exclude Jackson from being a problem or players on the field from being a problem or some bad moves by past and current GMs from being problems. More than one person can be bad at their job at the same time.

There's no point in asking the Haslams to sell. Remember the part about the pile of money that magically grows no matter how many bad decisions you make?

So, in the name of doing right by Browns fans, we can ask the Haslams to do this, at least for a year or two:

Go away.

Jimmy Haslam said Monday he's around the Browns about half the time.

"When I am here," he said, "I am involved with the football and business people."

Let's make that none of the time.

Haslam repeatedly has hired a coach and a GM and made both of them report to the owner separately. In your "How to Create a Power Struggle" manual, that's Step One. Heck, it's practically the only step.

Jackson and offensive coordinator Todd Haley were both fired because Haslam said the Browns wouldn't tolerate internal discord. When asked why that discord keeps occurring in Bera, Haslam said it's on him.

"I will accept the blame because ultimately, it is the person at the head of the ship. I will take the blame as ownership," Haslam said. "I can't explain it more than that. We have had different situations with different people. I know that it is something that we are not going to tolerate moving forward."

OK, then. So this time, instead of just firing the people below you, fire yourself.

Keep the money. Lose the control.

Haslam's insistence on sitting not only on the pile of money but at the top of the power structure has set up the Browns to repeat their losing and their in-fighting. Now, if he has a GM in Dorsey that he trusts, he must put Dorsey in charge of the coaching search and in charge of every aspect of the football operation.

Go visit your friends in Tennessee, play golf with Peyton Manning and read cleveland.com. We'll keep you updated on your team.

Here's a solid bet -- the Browns will work better while you're gone.

Give it at least two full seasons. Check back at the end of 2020.

At the news conference to introduce Dorsey a year ago, I asked Haslam what he would do if he realized ownership was the real problem.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Haslam said then.

Let that bridge take you to the muni lot for the next 26 months. Act like a fan, not like an owner. But let's be clear about one thing.

No one is asking Haslam to sacrifice. The argument for overly involved or disruptive owners is always the idea that it's their team, and they can do what they want. Don't give them that much credit or empathy.

Owning an NFL team is a privilege. Being an NFL fan is a birthright.

Fans get nothing out of this other than what their team gives them. Haslam gets the pile of money regardless.

If you think asking a billionaire to back off is too much of a sacrifice for the guy who pays the bills, think about what the fans have already sacrificed.

On the other side, there have been plenty of complaints from sports fans across the country about absentee owners who don't seem to care about their teams. Sometimes, we object to an investment of only money that isn't accompanied by any time or care.

But things have gone wrong for long enough under Haslam that absentee ownership is worth a shot. Remember that he's not really paying for anything. The Browns have been making money for the Haslams every day, while the Haslams have been making the Browns lose.

Keep the money. Don't sell, but pretend that you did.

Leave for now, and finally, give your team a chance to win.