Hugs, smiling, and interactive Twitter accounts, don't mean winning baseball. Until this community understands that we are cursed to relive the madness.
The Reds and their 70 or 80 million payroll, are being pitted against the Yankees Angels etc and their 200+ million payroll.
The Reds are forced to play the GM game on "expert" while teams like the Yankees get to play the game on "easy."
The fact that the reds have made the playoffs 2 of the past 3 years speaks volumes to the effort and qualifications of the entire Reds Front Office.
Meanwhile, the Bengals, in the Socialist NFL where "everyone gets the same chance" haven't managed to win a playoff game since Mike Brown took over 23 years ago.
That's just the on-field evidence.
Now lets talk about fan experience. Mike Brown does the absolute BARE MINIMUM and man does it show. I got a free ticket to a Bengals preseason game last season. I hadn't been in years because I decided to give all of my sports money to the Reds instead of the Bengals.
So I walk in to PBS. Same tired animation on the same tired screen from the 1990s I guess, judging by the graphics. Cedric Peerman runs for 5 yards... "5 yard run by Cedric Benson." Hey the guy in front of me is ordering a couple beers. 25 bucks?!?! Oh well, let's see what they have going on for the fans during the TV Timeouts. Nothing except Hip-Hop music from 10 years ago. Not even a guy in a Bengal suit running around posing with kids? Oh well, I wonder what the halftime show will be?
Nothing. That's what the halftime show was. Yeah its only a preseason game but what, they couldn't find a high school choir or band? Something...anything...
Then go to a Reds game. Everywhere you go, it just REEKS effort. 3 different mascots running around at once, schmoozing with the fans. Scoreboard interaction, better music, stuff always going on before and after, etc etc etc. And the Reds have 81 games a year to host. The Bengals have 8. The Bengals pull in WAY more profit too.
Mike Brown is indefensible. Is he as blatant with his scam as he was in the 1990s? Of course not. Now, it's more like he is on some minimalist Auto-Pilot, as opposed to actively seeking new ways to handicap his own franchise to maximize profit like he did in the 1990s.
But when you have teams like the Ravens and Steelers that are doing EVERYTHING and ANYTHING in their power to win championships... well, even in an "every team is equal" league like the NFL, you can bet that stumbling backwards into the playoffs, only to be shoo'ed away by teams who are actually doing whatever it takes to win championships... that will be the Bengals High-Water mark.
And why? Because Bob knows if he doesn't cultivate interest in the Reds, the franchise will die.
Mike knows that whatever poop sandwich he serves, there will always be a line of fans bent over, wallets in hand, thirsty for more. And even if there isn't...he still gets 1/32 of the NFL Owners cut, every year, every time.
tl:dr
Bob C
Mike B
Last edited by Bob Sheed; 04-11-2013 at 03:45 PM.
"Lemonade requires a significant amount of sugar. Otherwise, you've just made lemon juice."
If I'm going to a NFL game, I'm going to see football. If I want to see impressive graphics, I'll take the kids to see Wreck It Ralph. I've been a Bengals fan since the 1970s, so I've seen some good football and some bad football. Right now the Bengals seem to be headed in the right direction and it seems like the Brown family members have deferred to the coaching staff for player decisions. At least now I have hope that the Bengals will do well. Complaining about the scoreboard graphics and the halftime show seems silly. Last time I was at a Browns-Bengals game they just had kids play peewee football at halftime and in Pittsburgh the most interesting thing was the pair of stupid Heinz ketchup bottles that tilted and poured ketchup on the scoreboard when the Steelers entered the Heinz Red Zone. The Bengals don't still use those embarrasing Bootsie Collins videos, do they.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
Poop sandwich. That made me laugh.
If I recall, Katie inherits total control after Mike goes to the big owners box in the sky, correct? I hope she didn't inherit his ego.
Witty signature.
I understand that some rankings have him very highly rated but my point is why overpay for him? Is he worth the risk while we have others who'll need the $$ in the next yr or two? I'd argue that although he wasn't the best RT, he did play his best when in a contract yr. If we guarantee him $20mill and he breaks another foot cause he came to camp at 370, we're in serious trouble.
I don't think the dropoff from Dre to Collins is that much. I could be wrong. This isn't a Jon Joseph situation where the Bengals are lowballing a pro Bowler in demand. Every GM in the league has reservations about sinking big money into this guy. It's not just Mike Brown
Don't know. It may not pass directly to Katie depending on what kind of estate taxes would be incurred by doing so, possibly up to 40% of the value of the team. Paul Brown avoided it by working out a deal to sell the team to another investor on the condition that Mike could buy those shares back after a certain amount of time passed after Paul's death.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
I will agree with Bob Sheed and Todd Gack to a point. While you may not personally care about the amenities, the Bengals lack of amenities is most likely not due to careful consideration about how to make the fan's game day experience as positive as possible.
While the football's the thing that matters most, when an organization is serious about making the fan's experience as positive as possible(outside of the game competition) they tend to also be good at the on-field experience.
It's not as if enhancing every aspect of the fan's game day experience will take away attention from the on-field product.
That said, I don't think it's fair to whitewash the Red's efforts as going up against the Yankees and Red Sox or denigrate the Bengals' efforts in an "Everyone gets a chance" NFL. The quality of actual opponents plays a role.
The Reds may be decided underdogs if they played in the AL East, but in the NL Central, they've had the ability to put payroll close to their competitors, and the top spending team has decades of futility in doing it.
And while the Bengals may have the same chance as everyone else in terms of payroll, the fact of the matter is that even with the best EFFORTS, the fact that the Steelers and Ravens have been so good has limited opportunities at success compared to if they played in say the AFC West. And even with that, the Bengals have won a division twice and made the playoffs two more times in the last 10 years.
A couple of things about the non football aspect of PBS. The Bengals are horrible at it, absolutely horrible. A couple of years ago the Reds bought a new scoreboard, a new HD scoreboard. The Bengals went after the taxpayers to provide that. When the technology is available to enhance the replay aspect of the NFL then the Bengals should provide it.
The entertainment actually got better last season. The music went from Ozzie to actually stuff that is relevant in today's music world. Granted Fun's Some Nights is overplayed, its at least nice to hear something that is current. The graphics are pretty bad. It looks like something that a high schooler threw together. The Dalton Gang is something we look forward to and laugh at every time.
The concessions are pretty poor. Hot Pretzels are cold pretzels as the season goes along. Only a few beer taps work at each station.
All that said I really don't care about what happens aside from the game. You win a game and I will go home happy. I would like to see a clear replay, but in the end, after a few minutes of analyzing the game goes on. I want them to win on the field, not what happens off the field.
I've always liked the Bengal prowling through the jungle animation at the beginning but the ending where it tears the opponent's flag always was a bit flat. Always felt it would be much more climactic to have the Bengal get cornered, back and just as it's lunging the video should cut to a ferocious linebacker hit.
Anything the Bengals do couldn't be worse than the season the Browns had G. E. Smith of SNL and Hall and Oates fame as the leader of their "house band". They actually had a small stage behind the Browns' bench and they would play this lame "This is a Browns town" song after touchdowns. It was pretty embarrassing during Pittsburgh games when half the stadium was filled with Steelers fans.
Of all the NFL games I've been to, the scoreboard graphics tend to lag behind the stuff you see at MLB games. The highlight seems to be showing the cheerleaders on the screen (or for teams with no cheerleaders like the Browns and Steelers, shots of drunken fans). Food options pretty much stink too. Better food is to be had at pre-game tailgates outside the stadium. The NFL seems to put more efforts into TV production than they do for the in stadium experience.
One Browns game was so bad, we actually paid more attention to the guy in the row in front of us hitting on the girl next to me while her boyfriend was passed out drunk on the other side of her. Poor boyfriend didn't wake up until after his girl snuck down to have sex in the family restroom with the guy in the row in front of us.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
Rappaport thinks a Harrison deal may get done by the end of the weekend. Personally I would take the cash saved for Smith and put it towards Harrison, Dansby, and Rhodes. Wharton or Collins can play RT, and be pretty cost effective.
If you have a losing record at Reds games, please stop going.
Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please. |