The Letter..

[Essex Johnson]

I have met Mike's wife a couple times on Bengal tailgate trips and I do feel the Brown's family roots are planted in Cincinnati and they are a very supportive family to the community which I hope is why the Bengals are now and hopefully in the future will be a Cincinnati football franchise. You look around and see what has been happening to small market teams and I hate to think about losing our home team. Sure you can criticize Mike for FO decisions under his tenure and yes as a businessman he was able to negotiate great deal with the stadium but you can;t tell me some big shot little roots to the city owner would probably have been able to move to a bigger market by now. It still could happen down the road and we could end up being the next St. Louis but I give us a better fighting chance with the Browns owning the franchise than many other possible owners .