The New-Age Cincinnati Bengals
I am a 30 year old guy that was born & raised, in my mind, the greatest sports town in the United States of America…..Cincinnati, OH. We are home of the first and most storied MLB franchise….the Cincinnati Reds, we are the center of a the best NCAA college basketball programs in the US….Xavier, UC, UK, Dayton, Ohio State, Louisville, Indiana, Butler, Miami (OH), NKU all within 100 miles, we are the nations best hotbed of high school athletics, the home of minor league hockey’s best franchise…the Cincinnati Cyclones, and last but not least…..home of the NFL doormat Cincinnati Bengals.
Of all the sports, teams, & schools to follow in this town….there is only one team that I can say I am as big of a fan as anyone in town and that is the Cincinnati Bengals. I know! I know! Tough to understand but I am the forever optimist when it comes to my beloved Bengals. I was 6 months old when the Bengals played in Super Bowl XVI in 1982, I was 7 when they played in Super Bowl XXIII in1989 and since they have been the worst Professional Sports Franchise in the USA! But that has not turned me away! I was the kid who would take tickets when no one else wanted them when it was 10 degress and 6″ of snow on the ground when the Bengals were 2-13 playing their final, meaningless game of the season. I was and am still to today a crazy, insane, ridiculous, die hard Bengals fan…….and proud the hell of it!
A year ago the Bengals finished 4-12 with a team full of pre-madonna Wide Receivers, a Quarterback who did NOT want to be here, a coaching staff that had no control over its team, and the list goes on and on and on. The offseason was led by a franchise quarterback who said he will retire before he plays another snap for my team. But something happened during the NFL Lockout and the NFL Draft that woke a sleeping Bengal giant! The riff raff is gone, we had our single greatest day as a franchsie with the 2011 Draft, and a new group of young, hungry players reported to camp to absorb like sponges everything the new and improved coaching staff had to give them. The so-called experts gave this young team of “no namers” a chance to win 3-4 games MAX!
This year’s Cincinnati Bengals team is the type of team us starving-for-a-winner Bengal fans have been wanting to cheer for for the past 24 years! Andy Dalton, our young, rookie QB; AJ Green, our 1st round, all-world WR, and our young, relentless, top 5 in the NFL defense has led this team somewhere that no one has believed we would ever be. 11games into the season and we are 7-4 and right in the middle of the AFC Playoff picture with 5 games to play. This team is young, hungry, humble, fundamentally sound, and just a blast to watch and root for.
The greatest lesson that this team, at least so far, should teach us all is that on every team…whether its a sports team or your work team….you got to have the right people. The Cincinnati Bengals have been known for their losing but also been known to have problems with their personnel. They haven’t had the right people in there for 24 years. This year is different…they got rid of the guys who did not want to be their and got a group of guys that love being around each other and have the same goal in mind……winning football games! It’s amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit. My college Basketball coach, Ken Shields, always said…”everyone is needed but no one is necessary”.
It is going to be extremely fun for myself and hundreds of thousands of other Bengals fans not only over the next 5-6 weeks as the 2011 playoffs approach but what the next 10 years have in store for us with these NEW Age Cincinnati Bengals. It is not going to be like it has the past 24 years and for that I am very grateful. Man…..what a convenient year to have the Super Bowl in Indianapolis. How nice would it be drive 90 miles up I74 West and watch my Bengals play in Super Bowl XLVI? Like I said…I am the forever Bengals optimist and I am nuts! Who am I kidding though? If this Super Bowl was in Baghdad and the Bengals were playing in it, I would walk there! Who Dey! Walt
A great article from USA Today on the New-Age Cincinnati Bengals:
http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=cincinnati&sParam=50971660.story
0 comment(s) so far on The New-Age Cincinnati Bengals