Bengals Beat Podcast: Bengals 2025 Schedule
Bengals Beat Reporter Kelsey Conway discusses the upcoming 2025 Bengals schedule.
Ask columnist Jason Williams anything − sports or non-sports – and he’ll pick some of your questions and comments from his inbox and respond on Cincinnati.com. Email: [email protected]
Subject: Mike Brown, Cincinnati Bengals heading toward a sale?
Message: The Bengals have now seen the light (on the stadium issue), and it’s a train headed right their way. The taxpayer gravy train has ended. Add to this Mike Brown’s age and the fact that NFL franchises are more valuable than ever before, it is time for the Brown family to get out. My prediction is they will simply extend the current lease by two years. This will give them time to find a buyer and cash in. That buyer may or may not relocate the team.
Reply: If the Bengals are going to move out of Greater Cincinnati, this would be the likely scenario – the family of the late, great Paul Brown would sell the team and the new owner could take it someplace else.
Don’t worry, though. The Bengals aren’t going anywhere as long as the Brown/Blackburn family owns the team.
Couple reasons why:
∎ The Bengals aren’t going to get a better stadium deal anywhere else. No municipality is going to allow the Bengals to get away with paying so little money toward building/upgrading a new stadium and then have almost complete control of the facility year-round. Bengals executives and lawyers are the only people still stuck in the 1990s and think there’s nothing wrong with the current, lopsided deal, which expires next year.
I suppose Hamilton County taxpayers generally would be willing to give the Bengals a pass on that deal if they’d do everything possible to field a Super Bowl contender each year and made any effort to invest in the community the way the Reds have with the Reds Community Fund and the P&G Cincinnati MLB Youth Academy. But the Bengals do neither, so they forfeit the benefit of the doubt of the community.
∎ I’m not picking on Reds executive Phil Castellini, but his infamous line could very much apply to the Bengals: Where you gonna go?
Columbus? Lol. This has been talked about before. Ohio State, its powerful influencers and the state legislature would never allow for an NFL team to compete with the Buckeyes in that market. Every other major U.S. market either already has an NFL franchise (or two) or is too close to another city that has a team. And the NFL wouldn’t be interested in moving the Bengals from one small TV market to another such as San Antonio or Salt Lake City.
What about Mexico City? Intriguing location, but that’d only be on the table as a possibility with a new owner. Don’t forget, any relocation effort would require a vote of NFL owners and a move to another region would probably require the complex process of reworking divisions. Good luck with that.
So, can we stop with the “Bengals could move” talk? It really hasn’t started yet, but it could be coming as Hamilton County and the team lock horns on stadium negotiations. Prediction: The county and team will agree to extend the current lease for another two years, per the contract. That’ll give more time. No need to rush here.
Meantime, public sentiment isn’t on the Bengals side. Let negotiations get nasty if they have to. Intense debate is a good thing when taxpayer money is on the line. Let some of the players at the negotiating table change. Let the Bengals send more, ahem, love letters to the county. Let the Bengals threaten to leave.
Because hopefully that’d all mean a better deal for the taxpayers in the end.
And guess what, Cincinnati? You’ll still have the Bengals for decades to come.
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