Sunday, May 24, 2009

Boycott Mike Brown's Bengals

Boycott Mike Brown's Bengals

by Mark Luedtke

The Cincinnati Bengals that Paul Brown co-founded, shepherded, and loved until the day he died celebrated his 100th birthday on Sept. 7th by being manhandled by a Baltimore Raven's team plagued by an aging defense and led by a rookie quarterback from a division 1AA school. Saying they lost would be an understatement. They made mediocre Baltimore look like Super Bowl contenders, and they made rookie
quarterback Joe Flacco look like a Pro Bowler. That's what Mike Brown has done to his father's legacy.

Bengals fans are the laughingstock of the NFL. No self-respecting free agents will come to Cincinnati. We should consider ourselves lucky that Chris Henry gave the Bengals a second chance, not vice-versa. Henry's only been in trouble with the law 8 times. Mike Brown failed to have a winning season 16 out of 17 seasons.

That's just one measurement of the Bengals dysfunction under Mike Brown. The Bengals
have 0 playoff wins under Mike Brown. Their winning percentage is 356. Sports Illustrated ranked Mike Brown 32nd out of 32 NFL owners. ESPN ranked the Bengals 118th out of 118 professional
sports franchises. Mike Brown has turned his dad's pride and joy, a team that went to the Super Bowl twice in the '80s (curse Joe Montana and his 49ers), into the biggest joke in professional sports.

The only reasonable explanation for this record is Mike Brown doesn't want to win. How he runs the team provides more proof. 

In the last 5 years, the Bengals have been 27th or worse in defense 4 times. We were 19th in 2004. You don't have to be Vince Lombardi to recognize that the single biggest need the Bengals have is a big, run-stuffing defensive tackle to make our defense better. We've needed that since before Marvin Lewis came here in 2003, but during defensive genius Lewis's tenure, the Bengals haven't drafted anybody to fill that role.

Even casual football fans know that improving the defensive line improves linebacker and defensive back play by making the game easier for those units. The New York Giants shocked the undefeated New England Patriots and their record setting passing game in last season's Super Bowl despite a secondary depleted by injury. They did it by pounding Patriots quarterback Tom Brady into the ground with their defensive front four. That's how you win championships. The Bengals defensive line gave up 229 yards rushing to lowly Baltimore and didn't get near Flacco.

The second biggest need of the Bengals is to improve their offensive line. Improving the offensive line improves both your running and passing game by making the game easier for skill players. It doesn't matter how good your skill players are when the opposing defense is knocking the crap out of them in your
backfield. Just ask Carson Palmer and his broken nose.

But Mike Brown keeps drafting linebackers and receivers. The Bengals need a lot of good players to become contenders, but Brown never trades down in the draft to get more players. Mike Brown makes
all these decisions himself because he won't hire a general manager. In fact, the Bengals organization is a model of nepotism and incompetence. The payroll is littered with Brown's children and in-laws and sorely lacking in football experts.

Mike Brown's sons Pete and Paul run the Bengals Player Personnel department. They obviously didn't get those jobs because of their successful player personnel decisions. The personnel department has
exactly one scout. That's it. Whodey Revolution, an informative website unfortunately sporting a Che Guevara and Soviet communism motif – nobody should celebrate mass murderers, even in jest – compares that scouting department to the Indianapolis Colts player personnel department with 9 scouts.The Colts have more area scouts, six, than the Bengals have full time player personnel not named Brown, four including the
secretary.

Starving for a winner, Cincinnati fans delude themselves into thinking Mike Brown will deliver one. We're masochists who pay Mike Brown to abuse us every year. Brown's abuses of ticket holders and the stadium deal are legend. Marvin Lewis was supposed to be the savior, but Brown controls the team, not Lewis. Bengals fans talk about the offense like it was one of the league's elite, but it never has been. In
2005, when we played a generously weak schedule, the Bengals offense was 6th in the league. Even playing that easy schedule and receiving the gift of numerous turnovers, our offense couldn't break the top 5. Against Baltimore, that over-hyped offense scored three points. It was out-scored by our terrible defense.

Mike Brown is laughing at us all the way to the bank. According to Forbes magazine, in 2006 the Bengals turned a $20.9 million profit on revenues of $175 million. Granted, that was the year after the Bengals only winning record in 17 years because of that easy schedule, but that's still a lot of money handed over by Bengals fans.

I can't help but  wonder if Mike Brown has daddy issues - maybe he thinks his dad loved football more than him. Mike Brown knows he's making bad football decisions. He reportedly refused to trade disgruntled Chad Johnson for 1st and 3rd round draft choices. He knows his record, so he knows he has the worst organization in sports. He must be doing it on purpose. Its like he's punishing his dad, Bengals fans and Cincinnati for some perceived slight. It's like Brown intentionally fields the worst team possible as long as he keeps the seats filled and his money coming in.

How long will Bengals fans enable Mike Brown to make fools of us? Mike Brown owns the Bengals, so he can run the organization any way he likes. But Bengals fans are free people, and we don't have to buy his crappy product. We have all the power. Bengals fans should boycott the Bengals until Mike Brown makes the changes we demand.

Bengals fans should demand that Mike Brown hire a General Manager to make all football decisions or sell the team. Until he meets that demand, buy no tickets and buy no merchandise. I'm sure some fans fear that Brown would move the Bengals instead of giving into demands. We should be so lucky. Cincinnati's great fans could attract a competitive team instead. Unfortunately, I doubt any major city would take the most dysfunctional franchise in professional sports off our hands.

Bengals fans should end this abusive relationship by exerting our own power. Mike Brown won't field a
competitive team on his own, but he'll do it if we hit him in the pocketbook with a boycott.

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