Oozing failure

Sporting News, The, Nov 22, 1993 by Paul Daugherty, Jack Brennan

The Bengals are paying the price for not having paid what it takes

There are some things to remember when you're talking about the Cincinnati Bengals:

* In the years when they win more than they lose, they are not "cheap." They are "frugal." In the Super Bowl year of 1988, the Bengals soared all the way to "thrifty."

*The milky, white stuff oozing from pores in the ancient viaduct that hovers over the team's practice field has never been analyzed. Probably, it is no more lethal than the air, which has such a tang, it is listed in the local "Dining Out" guide.

* If you visit Riverfront Stadium, don't eat the Ultimate Death Dogs in the press dining area. Don't try to decipher the team's media guide or the weekly press notes that once paid tribute to the fine Buffalo Bills head coach "Carv" Levy. Don't sit in the first row of the overflow press box without a parachute; the floor is plywood.

* And, absolutely, positively do not marvel at the carpet in the Spinney Field dressing room or the honest-to-gosh color TV in the lounge.

While welcoming me to Cincinnati in the spring of 1988, Bengals founder Paul Brown offered a tour of the Spinney Field facility. A $1 million refurbishing had just been completed. Though Spinney remained the Bates Motel with a weight room, Brown wasn't happy. "I don't know why we need all this carpeting," he said. "And why do we need TV? We're here to work."

Brown was satisfied with the fresh paint covering the chain-link locker stalls and that enough new stalls had been built that every single player would actually get his own chain-link habitat. But he had a really hard time with the new rug.

"New carpet," Brown said, "never won a damned football game."

That's pretty much where we are with the Bengals, now and forever. New carpet never won a damned football game.

These days, when the Bengals jam their leather helmets into their back pockets and head for home, a few questions remain. Fans wonder if the organization will compete in this new era of kind-of-free free agency.

History says no. The Bengals ignored the Plan B system until its final season. In the first winter of free agency, the Bengals walked lightly. They signed three unrestricted free agents: quarterback Jay Schroeder and cornerbacks Mike Brim and Sheldon White. None made the team significantly better.

The team's grand plan, as outlined by General Manager Mike Brown, was to slash the payroll in '93. Then, when the salary cap arrives in '94 and teams discover themselves uncomfortably above it, the Bengals would swoop in, checkbooks in hand, offering 50 cents on the dollar.

"If there is an opportunity for us, it's next year," Brown said last spring. "We're going to be sitting there, vulture-like. The worm will turn."

As the talent-poor Bengals have slipped to 0-9, fans in Cincinnati have not been willing to let the G.M. slide on that statement.

You could question Brown's willingness to buy big-time talent. You could say, as former Bengals tight end Bob Trumpy, now an NBC analyst, has, that the Bengals' perfect season will always be 8-8: Good enough to keep the stadium filled, not so good that salaries will soar.

You could even say that Brown is cheap and greedy and terribly afraid that the NFL's new method for re-routing its mountains of swag will cut sharply into his own considerable cash pile.

That is a vicious lie. Mike Brown is not cheap and greedy.

One thing is certain: The Bengals have never embraced change, unless it made them money. Free agency won't do that. It's sort of the '90s version of new, damned carpet.

Cris Collinsworth is a former Bengals All-Pro who hosts a sports talk show in Cincinnati. He has been in town since 1981. He says, "That franchise started to go down with the advent of Plan B (in February 1989). Now that free agency is here, they haven't won a game."

The loss of free agents "has been a constant drain on them," Collinsworth says. "They've never gotten back more than they've lost."

There is no denying that this year. Free-agent defections and questionable personnel moves, especially on the offensive line, have hurt the Bengals. At various points in this Hindenburg season, the offensive line has been manned by three free agents (two of them rookies) and one veteran, Joe Walter, playing out of position.

Fans have questioned the futures of Coach Dave Shula and second-year quarterback David Klingler. Shula is 5-20 as Cincinnati's coach; Klingler is 0-11 as a starter. Suggestions have been made that neither will ever be successful. A better question might be: How can you tell?

Because of the bad line and mediocre receivers, it's no longer a question of which quarterback - Klingler or Schroeder - gives Cincinnati a better chance to win. It is deciding which guy is better able to take the pounding.

Klingler admitted as much after the Schroeder-led Bengals lost to Pittsburgh November 7. "It doesn't matter who's back there," he said. "If we play like we did today, Clark Kent couldn't quarterback this football team." Shula says, "I couldn't say right now that (Klingler) has had a square deal with the people we have."