Are Bengals Fans Quiting Their Jobs

I still have hope because I know I’ll outlive Mike Brown.

I’m also 27, but still in the military and it was so refreshing to watch the bengals on AFN winning the few games I could watch last year while I was deployed. Now that I can watch all the games they’re losing, go figure.

Bengals fo life…ho hum. Ill always be a fan. As to the letters, I wrote one addressed to Brown and he sent one in return. He thanked me for my support, apologized for the terrible season, and told me that more assesment is needed before changes Will be made. His letter referred to specifics in my letter and I find it to be from him. Well…that was nice.

I was eight years old when I first noticed football and the Bengals (not always synonymous with one another as evidenced by the 2010 version), which puts me in at thirty-two years. I grew up in Dayton among a family of Cincinnati Reds fans. I was the lone football and Bengals fan in the family.

I remember my dad working at Coca-Cola and bringing me back a Mean Joe Greene autographed football (he was a baseball guy what did he know); and, although I wanted the football, I could not bear to have a Steelers’ football, so I went to the sidewalk and scraped his name off the ball and used it for years in neighborhood pickup games. I remember going to a Sunday night game against those same dreaded Steelers when our punter took a snap and ran end around the dazed Pittsburgh special teams unit for a fifty yard plus touchdown that eventually won the game. I was so excited I knocked the hot chocolate from by brother’s hand into some poor sap’s lap.

I vividly remember both losses to the Niners in the Super Bowls (and now I live in the Bay Area) – one at the Milton Athletic Club where I cried watching four futile attempts to score from the one yard line and one at the Elks Lodge when a dropped interception lost us the game.

I remember my time in the Navy spending Sundays in the intelligence center of the aircraft carrier for the minute to minute updates on the AP Wire. …Klingler back to pass… and sacked… Bienemy draw up the middle for a two yard loss…

I remember my first live game versus Lynn Dickey’s Packers on a brisk afternoon game .

I remember all of Collinsworth’s amazing over the shoulder catches – always getting knocked so hard and not understanding how on earth he could make it back to the huddle.

I remember the visits to the Bay Area where I can see them live again and each and every time a loss, once to the Niners and twice to the Raiders… and all the while just being glad I get to see my team in the flesh. What low expectations, eh?

I have not missed a game on television since around 2000. Every Sunday morning a 10:00a I trudge to the pub to watch my team. Every Sunday morning, I am the lone Bengals fan surrounded by hostiles. Every Sunday follows the same… one coffee, two to three pints of a beer and a loss.

I have a son now (eleven months old) and I don’t want him to experience the pain of cheering on a perennial loser. I will try to push him to the Niners, Patriots or Packers if he shows any interest in the NFL in the coming years.

As for me, I want to quit. I really do. But, I am too damned loyal and the attachment too emotional, too near and dear to my childhood and development into adulthood… the one common link between my past and present. And, if any of you think it noble to be loyal to a franchise like the Bengals – it’s not, it’s a fool’s errand. This is a business. It’s Mike Brown’s business; the Bengals are a business… they know no matter the result 45% will never leave and 35% will always come back after a hiatus. We’re stuck and they don’t care. They know if you stop coming they can move the team to a city like Los Angeles. They know Cincinnati will never glimpse a franchise again if the Bengals leave town.

So, although I want to quit, I can’t, I won’t… not until they fold as a franchise or leave town and the link to my past is truly and permanently severed.

I just feel so sad, so hopeless and so tired that Mike Brown doesn’t seem to care more about his team more than I do. What more is there to say? Nothing will change.

Maybe when I reach sixty I’ll say “fuck it,” too. Perhaps they will spare me and become the new Los Angeles Pumas before I reach that age, so I can spend my Sundays riding my Ducati or playing tennis…

Assuming that he does pass the franchise down to her and her husband. I don’t know how much better, but I think she could change, while Mike Brown will not.

At this point, I’m resigned to the team’s irrelevance as long as Mike Brown owns the team, and trying to see the positive. At the very least, it’s important to remember that Mike Brown is not the worst owner in sports. He is a good man; Donald Sterling’s Clippers are just as bad, and the man is reprehensible.

…but as to my son. He’s young enough that all he’s ever seen is Mike’s version of the Bengals, not Paul’s. We live up in New England and you’d think the Pats would be the logical choice, or Rex Ryan’s Jets, but maybe he’s a bit of a glutton for punishment. He chose the Falcons.

Instead of rooting FOR the Bengals, root AGAINST the Steelers, Ravens and Browns.
That’s what I’ve been doing since about week 6. Still hasn’t worked out that great.

is in a business that doesn’t punish failure and discourages innovation. The NFL is a pure 100% monopoly with incredible high costs to enter the business. He has a market in southern Ohio that will never let in competition. So what motivations does he have to change? The NFL also sweetens his life with at least $4 million/year in TV revenues plus his team is valued at over $700 million. Annual revenue is at least $170 million.

With so much riches showered on the Brown family running a monopoly business why exactly should Mike exert himself to try new business practices?

Why? If you need to know go back in time and read about the “robber barons” of the early 1900’s. He is behaving like them or any businessman that has no competition for a product that hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, demand to have.

He could have half the fans he has now and still probably be profitable enough for his family.