Why Your Team Sucks 2012: Cincinnati Bengals

Some people are fans of the Cincinnati Bengals. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Cincinnati Bengals. This 2012 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read the other Why Your Team Sucks 2012 previews here. 1. Coach for life. The Bengals quietly gave head coach Marvin Lewis a two-year extension two weeks ago. Normally, a contract extension means nothing in the coaching world, since shitty coaches with contract extensions get fired all the time (Brad Childress being a prime recent example). But that's not the case when you're dealing with Bengals owner Mike Brown. Mike Brown would rather watch his own children die than eat a contract, and so you Bengals fans are in for at least three more years of Lewis, a coach who is exceedingly professional yet is also a notoriously incompetent game manager. I, for one, am excited to see just how Marvin plans on sabotaging one of the most talented young rosters in football. There are so many ill-fated red challenge flags in your future, Andy Dalton. YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET. 2. Let's talk a little bit more about how awful Mike Brown is. Because Mike Brown is the fucking worst. This is a man who, according to author Kevin Delaney, once threatened to move the Bengals to Cleveland (!!!) if the people of Hamilton County didn't give him the stadium he wanted. Then, after getting his outrageously lopsided stadium deal, he gave the county commissioner in charge a cushy front office job as the director of business development. NOT SHADY AT ALL. It seems that the only time Mike Brown exhibits any type of shrewdness is when he's fucking taxpayers in the ass. Since the opening of Paul Brown Stadium in 2000, the Bengals have had just three winning seasons and Brown remains one of the most parsimonious owners in all of sports: Bengals fans love swapping stories about Mike Brown's stinginess: He flies free agents in on coach and puts them up in hotel rooms without minibars; he employs four ticket reps for every one scout; and so on. Now, fans could see Brown's penny-pinching in spreadsheet form. Expenses were broken down by category, and the Bengals often ranked lowest in the league—and sometimes absurdly low. When it came to "team expenses"—football costs not related to player salaries, such as coaches, trainers, scouts—the Bengals spent millions less than many teams. He should rename the team the Marlins just to drive the point home. Paul Brown Stadium remains perhaps the ultimate example of a pro sports team building a metaphorical slant drilling company that drinks the milkshake of public schools, parks departments, fire departments, teacher salaries … anything useful, really. What little county money there is to spend in an economic crisis has been diverted to the absolute LEAST DESERVING HUMAN BEING ALIVE, a man who can't even be bothered to try to field a winning team after being gifted a fucking mint by public officials. Any success the Bengals experience, be it right now or in the future, is almost comically incidental. If anything, success brings Brown unwanted attention. Much easier to fuck people over in the relative anonymity of a losing season. The more indifferent people are to a team, the less inclined they are to look at just how shady its operations are. Drew Magary writes for Deadspin and Gawker. He's also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at [email protected]. That's why the remarkable draft that the Bengals staged a year ago will ultimately prove fruitless. Brown drafted Andy Dalton only because so many other teams were too stupid to take him. Three years from now, he'll have found a way to ruin both Dalton and A.J. Green forever. How? Because he's Mike Brown and he's the fucking worst. And you Cincy folk deserve him. I went to camp with kids from Cincinnati and they were racist as shit. When it comes to Cleveland versus Cincinnati, America sides with poor Cleveland every time. 3. Even their cheerleaders get arrested. While wholly inappropriate, I'd like to salute the young man who slept with Bengals cheerleader Sarah Jones. Sleeping with your teacher AND a professional cheerleader all in one? That's like winning the teenage fap lottery. STRONG HUSTLE. 4. CHUH CHUH! Do you realize that Pacman Jones is still on this roster? O HELLZ YEZ. Pacman gon shine. And Pacman gon drank. O HE GON DRANK. The best part is that Pacman lectured rookies at this year's rookie symposium, and he'll be arrested in six weeks for shooting a stripper in the pussy. His cornermate is Terence Newman. As someone who had to cover the Cowboys for NBC last season, I can tell you that Terence Newman is a fucking bowling pin. 5. Hear it from Bengals fans! Gregg: It seems like Mike Brown is putting all his efforts into killing the fans this year. Exhibit A: Not agreeing to follow the NFL's changed guidelines for TV blackout policy Exhibit B: Charging for a pep rally? Who does that? Oh wait, we do. Jon: THEY WILL STILL FIND A WAY TO SUCK. Their defense, despite being loaded with talent, will continue to struggle against the Browns. Some mongoloid fuck on the Steelers will decapitate dear Andy Dalton. Even A.J. Green (oh, A.J.) will disappoint somehow. Why? Because they're the Bengals, and they exist only to bring pain. Oh, and Mike Brown's solution in the run game is the "Law Firm" Ben-Jarvis-Green-Ellis-Nunn-Johnson-Whoreface. JJ: If it weren't for Donald Sterling we would have the worst owner in sports. Plus I believe we are snakebit. 1st round pick Ki-Jana Carter breaks his leg his league rookie year, never the same again. 1st round pick David Pollack breaks his fucking neck in the first game of the year, out of football. 2nd round pick Odell Thurman has a stellar rookie year then proceeds to drink himself out of the league but not before being filmed by a cop car in a DUI arrest with our slot receiver Chris Henry puking out of the rear window. Henry straightens his life up only to fucking DIE falling out of the back of a truck. Going way back, our secret Super Bowl weapon proceeds to coke himself into insanity the eve of the big game. Oh, and this year, our 1st round pick breaks his fucking kneebone before training camp. Not to mention that our star former QB was never the same after the fucking Steelers deliberately crushed his knee into a thousand pieces and then he decided to retire rather than be a Bengal again. WHO DEY Tully Blanchard Express: Mike Brown will outlive us all. After that, it's still in the damn family as Katie will take the reins and rumor has it she's teaching her kids the business by denying them food, water and love. Historically, our owner has the cheapness of Jack Benny, our offensive playbook was written by the Three Stooges and our players have had the anarchistic streak of the Marx Brothers but part of that has turned around. Hopes are high, mostly because we've had a season with a non-high school offensive coordinator, hired a scout and doubled the Gatorade rations—I can only assume Brown upped to the "Executive" Costco membership with the extra playoff money. JP: This is far and away the most excited we've had any right to be about the franchise since the late 1980s, and people who claim to be Bengals' fans but still want to hate on the current situation are missing the point of being a fan. GO BENGALS! /A.J. Green's ACL explodes
//Carlos Dunlap's stomach bursts
///Andy Dalton rapes a seven-year-old pitbull
////Marvin Lewis found to pay bonuses for every concussion handed out by one of his players
/////BenJarvus Green-Ellis fumbles on first carry
//////Jay Gruden leaves midseason for head coaching position with Montreal Allouettes
///////Mike Brown appoints high school dropout nephew head coach and offensive coordinator
////////Ohio river floods its banks Paul: You may have seen that the Cleveland Browns were recently sold for $1 billion. This proves that the NFL is an unstoppable money making juggernaut where moribund franchises increase in value independent of record, right? According to Forbes, the Bengals value has DECREASED by 4% over the last 5 years. Andy: Mike Brown, you are festering sore upon humanity. You are a pus-filled boil that has humiliated my beloved (and boring) hometown for over 20 years. There's never a move too cheap, too petty for you to make. You extorted the worst stadium deal in the country out of the county, and for good measure you hired one of the county commissioners who voted for that robbery as your director of business development. Because of you, the county is selling hospitals so that they can pay for HD screens in your stadium that, while you do not pay for ANYTHING, you reap ALL of the rewards. I want you to know that whenever you pass away, there will be massive celebrations on the streets of Cincinnati. You will not be missed. Fuck you. Dave: Watching this cumstain of a franchise is more painful than a blowtorch to the testicles. John: The last quality team the Bengals beat was in 2003 against the 9-0 Chiefs. Peter Warrick took a punt to the house. Peter. Fucking. Warrick. FUCK! I hope this team sucks again so I can go to a game in peace like back in the day when Jeff "Shake n" Blake was tossing deep balls to Darnay Scott. The days when Ian Eagle and Beasley Reece were calling the game and you knew exactly where you stood. At the bottom. At least the fans didn't have an inflated sense of self. Nathan: Mike Brown looks like a cross between second-term Dwight Eisenhower and the swollen, rosy tip of my penis. Chris: The Bengals just cannot deal with more than one winning season in a row. It just isn't in their nature. It is entirely possible and necessary to follow a 10-6 season with a 4-12 one. 9 -7 last year? If I'm feeling charitable, and I usually am as it is my hometown, I say 5-11 this year. And, as a fan, if two of those wins come from beating Cleveland, well then GREAT SUCCESS! Playing for Cincinnati generally turns good players to shit and drives possible franchise players away, frustrated and ruined. There are exactly two Bengals in the Hall of Fame. One, Anthony Munoz, played out his career for the Bengals. Why he stayed, I'll never know as we certainly didn't deserve him. Rod: The Bengals just established a scouting department THIS SEASON. What did they do prior to that? Mike Brown was the scouting department. Mike Brown. The owner. Hence, the Bengals wiffing on every draft in the '90's, which included 6 top 10 picks and 2 number 1 overall picks. They should have had a dynasty after that kind of draft position. Really it boils down to this: Mike Brown is a spoiled, selfish little prick who inherited an NFL franchise from his father, has zero football acumen, watched the NFL grow into a revenue juggernaut no thanks to him, and uses the team to keep him and his family members wealthy while putting the absolute minimum product out on the field year after year. But hey, at least we've made it to 2 Super Bowls, that's more than you can say about Cleveland. Steve: A Bengals fan's viewpoint is strikingly similar to the worldview of an atheist. The future is a bleak unknown where most likely horrible shit will happen, but even when something good happens it sure as hell isn't due to any higher power. Wanna be part of the Deadspin NFL previews? It's simple. Just email me and give me ample evidence of why your team sucks. I'll throw any good material into the post and give you proper credit. Next team up: THE RAVENS.