01-30-2023, 01:37 AM
There are 2 things I think the Bengals have stacked against them as a franchise, which makes it extra difficult to overcome for Super Bowl success:
1) Paul Brown, for as much as he is revered for his football innovation and acumen, I truly believe pissed off the original owners by being who he was: a former coach/employee saying, "you know what, you want to fire me when I make things actually happen with the product on the field, I'm going to scrimp and sacrifice and go all in on just owning my own team in an upstart league, and then you can't fire me." Anyone who's had any experience with power dynamics knows that doesn't often sit well with the good old boys at the top, and people/institutions hold grudges.
That only exacerbated once the upstart league merged with the fuddy-duddy old owners club. Combine that with an ultra-traditional son who inherits the franchise, who until this year refused to name the stadium after anything other than said former employee dad, and it's not that hard to believe that as a league and growing global business, the literal son and pop business of the Bengals is a sideshow at best to the tycoons who like to invest in the returns and trappings of owning a sports franchise through their own exclusive wealth network and who would never even share a breakfast order with the likes of Mike Brown.
2) The current enforcer of these corporate-first other owners is someone who was unabashedly hand-selected by the ownership group of our biggest rival, the Shittsburgh Stealers. The Gooney family whipped the votes for Roger and when they had enough, Dan Gooney strolled down the hallway to the waiting Goodell's hotel room, and slapped him on the back while stuffing his bank accounts with tens of millions for going on 2 decades now. The announcing article about the day he was elected had zero comments for years after it was published, but the bias for knowing who butters your bread has been visible in plain sight from jump street.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/news/story?id=2543783
There's simply no way a reasonable, rationale, logical, and any synonym you want to chuck in here, person can look at those 2 foundational facts: Old Money owners HATE the idea of a former employee joining their club and showing them up, and the hand-selected judge, jury and executioner of the Old Money families will do their bidding every single time.
Outright scripting/throwing games? It could come to that. Using the existing convoluted rules and formatting to put some gorilla thumbs on the scales, of course. You can call holding on every play. Why's it called when it is, and to who's benefit when looked at over time more often than not? Why laugh off the old, 'they always get the second guy' for a personal foul/taunting situation? If getting the call right and calling a clean game is the priority, there's certainly enough tech and money to make that happen. But it won't because it'll take away the ability to tilt the balance to the outcomes that serve the 'most important ownership families', as that article goes on to say.
Want one screamingly obvious way the League can give a leg up to these Goons? Go back and look at the league-wide schedules for every team during the Marvin Lewis era. Do a tally on how many times the Bengals played the last game of the year against the Ravens, and therefore how many times the Steelers played the Browns. Then compare it to the variety of every other division in football for their final games over like 16 years. The AFC North is so well beyond an outlier in who the season finale almost never altered, that it can't be concluded to be anything but giving the Steelers a cupcake scheduling advantage to play a piss poor Cleveland team for an easy win and what would amount to an extra bye week at the end of every season heading to the playoffs during the Pig Ben years. Gross.
Exhibit 666 was Joey Porter's smug ass in the huddle with the Bengals in the 2015 Wild Card game with zero contemplation from the refs to flag him.
Can a non-preferred team rise above? Sure. Old Money is often last to react to new trends and they can't account for the wider appeal of someone like Joe Burrow, nor his or Ja'marr's generational talent. If Patrick Mahomes would have fumbled that ball before he headed out of bounds, maybe there's no way to help direct the more desired outcome in the league's eyes. We've all seen the 24hr news media whip up talking points that both sides of the political aisle cling to in cult-like unison. The commentators employed by the league and their multi-billion dollar broadcasters participate in the exact same thing to drive a narrative.
Take a look at what happens come tonight/tomorrow and afterward: It was, 'if Joe Burrow beats Mahomes again, the argument should be he's the best QB.'. Watch now as everything swings back to not being who we thought he was, and so...what - Allen/Herbert/Lawrence are better? In the same conversation? What have they done? But the Bengals must not be allowed to ascend. "Do it, Cincinnati. Pay Joe Stadium. Destroy your cap. Keep him, respect him, or you're a shit franchise if you don't guarantee every penny. Limit your ability to get back." "League owners, you're crazy for not hiring Lou to be a head coach!" "Make the Bengals worse by poaching him NOW." Where is there ever talk of, "This Cincinnati team is great for the league, and let's hope they can keep it together for the entertainment and competitive spirit of us all." Never will happen. To them, the Bengals are either a fraud, lucky, too arrogant, dirty, or must be dismantled before ushering in a new era of loyalists decidedly disloyal to the old world brand.
1) Paul Brown, for as much as he is revered for his football innovation and acumen, I truly believe pissed off the original owners by being who he was: a former coach/employee saying, "you know what, you want to fire me when I make things actually happen with the product on the field, I'm going to scrimp and sacrifice and go all in on just owning my own team in an upstart league, and then you can't fire me." Anyone who's had any experience with power dynamics knows that doesn't often sit well with the good old boys at the top, and people/institutions hold grudges.
That only exacerbated once the upstart league merged with the fuddy-duddy old owners club. Combine that with an ultra-traditional son who inherits the franchise, who until this year refused to name the stadium after anything other than said former employee dad, and it's not that hard to believe that as a league and growing global business, the literal son and pop business of the Bengals is a sideshow at best to the tycoons who like to invest in the returns and trappings of owning a sports franchise through their own exclusive wealth network and who would never even share a breakfast order with the likes of Mike Brown.
2) The current enforcer of these corporate-first other owners is someone who was unabashedly hand-selected by the ownership group of our biggest rival, the Shittsburgh Stealers. The Gooney family whipped the votes for Roger and when they had enough, Dan Gooney strolled down the hallway to the waiting Goodell's hotel room, and slapped him on the back while stuffing his bank accounts with tens of millions for going on 2 decades now. The announcing article about the day he was elected had zero comments for years after it was published, but the bias for knowing who butters your bread has been visible in plain sight from jump street.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/news/story?id=2543783
There's simply no way a reasonable, rationale, logical, and any synonym you want to chuck in here, person can look at those 2 foundational facts: Old Money owners HATE the idea of a former employee joining their club and showing them up, and the hand-selected judge, jury and executioner of the Old Money families will do their bidding every single time.
Outright scripting/throwing games? It could come to that. Using the existing convoluted rules and formatting to put some gorilla thumbs on the scales, of course. You can call holding on every play. Why's it called when it is, and to who's benefit when looked at over time more often than not? Why laugh off the old, 'they always get the second guy' for a personal foul/taunting situation? If getting the call right and calling a clean game is the priority, there's certainly enough tech and money to make that happen. But it won't because it'll take away the ability to tilt the balance to the outcomes that serve the 'most important ownership families', as that article goes on to say.
Want one screamingly obvious way the League can give a leg up to these Goons? Go back and look at the league-wide schedules for every team during the Marvin Lewis era. Do a tally on how many times the Bengals played the last game of the year against the Ravens, and therefore how many times the Steelers played the Browns. Then compare it to the variety of every other division in football for their final games over like 16 years. The AFC North is so well beyond an outlier in who the season finale almost never altered, that it can't be concluded to be anything but giving the Steelers a cupcake scheduling advantage to play a piss poor Cleveland team for an easy win and what would amount to an extra bye week at the end of every season heading to the playoffs during the Pig Ben years. Gross.
Exhibit 666 was Joey Porter's smug ass in the huddle with the Bengals in the 2015 Wild Card game with zero contemplation from the refs to flag him.
Can a non-preferred team rise above? Sure. Old Money is often last to react to new trends and they can't account for the wider appeal of someone like Joe Burrow, nor his or Ja'marr's generational talent. If Patrick Mahomes would have fumbled that ball before he headed out of bounds, maybe there's no way to help direct the more desired outcome in the league's eyes. We've all seen the 24hr news media whip up talking points that both sides of the political aisle cling to in cult-like unison. The commentators employed by the league and their multi-billion dollar broadcasters participate in the exact same thing to drive a narrative.
Take a look at what happens come tonight/tomorrow and afterward: It was, 'if Joe Burrow beats Mahomes again, the argument should be he's the best QB.'. Watch now as everything swings back to not being who we thought he was, and so...what - Allen/Herbert/Lawrence are better? In the same conversation? What have they done? But the Bengals must not be allowed to ascend. "Do it, Cincinnati. Pay Joe Stadium. Destroy your cap. Keep him, respect him, or you're a shit franchise if you don't guarantee every penny. Limit your ability to get back." "League owners, you're crazy for not hiring Lou to be a head coach!" "Make the Bengals worse by poaching him NOW." Where is there ever talk of, "This Cincinnati team is great for the league, and let's hope they can keep it together for the entertainment and competitive spirit of us all." Never will happen. To them, the Bengals are either a fraud, lucky, too arrogant, dirty, or must be dismantled before ushering in a new era of loyalists decidedly disloyal to the old world brand.
