There were some additional twists in the history of the Cincinnati Bengals franchise.
In 1967 a Cincinnati-based ownership group led by Paul Brown was granted a franchise in the American Football League.
By 1966, Paul Brown wanted to become involved in professional football again. James A. Rhodes, then the governor of Ohio, convinced Brown that Ohio needed a second team. Cincinnati was deemed the logical choice, in essence, splitting the state.
However, Brown was not a supporter of the rival American Football League, stating that "I didn't pay 10 million dollars to be in the AFL," He only acquiesced to joining the AFL when he was guaranteed that the team would become an NFL franchise after the impending merger of the two leagues.
There was also a complication: the Major League Baseball Cincinnati Reds were in need of a facility to replace the antiquated, obsolete Crosley Field, which they had used since 1912. Parking nightmares had plagued the city as far back as the 1950s, the little park lacked modern amenities, and New York City, which in 1956 had lost both their National League teams, the Dodgers and the Giants to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, were actively courting Powel Crosley. However, Crosley was adamant that the Reds remain in Cincinnati and tolerated worsening problems with the Crosley Field location, which were increased with the Millcreek Expressway (I-75) project that ran alongside the park.
With assistance from Ohio governor James A. Rhodes, Hamilton County and the Cincinnati city council agreed to build a single multi-purpose facility on the dilapidated riverfront section of the city. The new facility had to be ready by the opening of the 1970 NFL season and was officially named Riverfront Stadium, which was its working title.
Here is another take:
Planning for the Cincinnati Bengals franchise began three full years before the team began playing in the American Football League in 1968. Paul Brown, who had enjoyed exceptional success as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns for 17 seasons before departing in 1962, had the urge to get back into pro football. In 1965, he met with then-Governor Jim Rhodes and the two agreed the state could accommodate a second pro football team. A year later in 1966, Cincinnati's city council approved the construction of 60,389-seat Riverfront Stadium, which was scheduled for completion by 1970. The next year, a group headed by Brown was awarded an American Football League franchise that would begin play in 1968. Brown named his team the Bengals in recognition of previous Cincinnati pro football franchises with the same name in the 1930s and 1940s.
And then there's this monkey business that tells of the original ownership group, and a little of how Mike Brown gained control of the franchise.
During the dance to keep the Cincinnati Bengals from moving to Baltimore, team president Mike Brown was asked in 1995 if he could help fund a new stadium in Cincinnati.
During the dance to keep the Cincinnati Bengals from moving to Baltimore, team president Mike Brown was asked in 1995 if he could help fund a new stadium in Cincinnati.
He's right. He didn't. Twelve years earlier, his father, Paul Brown, the legendary NFL coach and founder of the Bengals, signed away the family's profits so that one day 10 years down the road, his son Mike could own and control the team.
From 1984 to 1993, the Bengals paid out every penny of profit — $66 million — to shareholders. Nearly all of that money was paid to John Sawyer and Austin Knowlton, the men whose money brought the new franchise to Cincinnati in 1968.
And some more:
Upset at losing control of and being fired as coach of the team that bears his name by the Cleveland Browns upstart owner Art Modell, football pioneer Paul Brown rebounded by planning to bring a professional team to Cincinnati.
Brown sought the political clout of Ohio Gov. James Rhodes but needed money. He turned to John Sawyer, owner of a farm management and estate brokerage firm, and a Columbus-area construction company owner named Austin E. Knowlton, known to all as "Dutch."
Before the Bengals were born in 1967, Knowlton already was a wealthy construction company owner interested in professional athletics. In addition to helping form the Bengals, over his lifetime Knowlton also was the majority owner of the Cincinnati Reds and was active in the horse racing industry, serving as a trustee of the Brown Jug Society, which runs the Triple Crown for standard bred pacing horses, as well as a breeder of show horses at his Emerald Farm outside Columbus.
As owner of 236 of the 586 shares of Bengals stock, Knowlton controlled the largest block of shares, something Chesley believes irked Mike Brown, current team president and son of Paul Brown.
That, Chesley suggested, was the driving force behind the Brown family's eventual purchase of 60 of Knowlton's Bengals shares that gave the Browns control of the team. Brown and Knowlton signed a controversial 1983 document that gave the Brown family the option to buy those 60 shares for $6 million, or $100,000 per share, a shockingly low price, Chesley maintains.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Bengals History: It was 40 Years Ago Today
Bengals History:
I saw this today on the NFL website:
NFL History
September 27, 1967
A group with Paul Brown as part owner, general manager, and head coach, was awarded the Cincinnati franchise.
Growing up in Cincy, I was a fan. All my life.
I looked up some history of the franchise. I found some on some interesting websites.
In 1965 Paul Brown and Ohio governor James Rhodes met with Cincinnati civic leaders about bringing a pro football team to the city. In 1966 Cincinnati city council set aside a 48 acre site that later would be used to construct a stadium that would house the Reds and a pro football team. With the promise of a new stadium Brown was awarded an AFL expansion team on September 27, 1967. Although many names were suggested the most popular being the Buckeyes, Brown rejected it to avoid confusion with Ohio State University and name the team the Bengals in honor of an earlier Cincinnati AFL football team of the late 30's and early 40's.
This was a recently published article that I thought was very well done:
Brown signed Stofa, the ex-Miami Dolphin, as the first Bengal on Dec. 27, 1967. Now the team needed a center. So Brown tapped Bob Johnson, an All-America from Tennessee, as his top draft pick on Jan. 30, 1968, and immediately installed him as the captain.
"I was the first guy drafted, so for an expansion team it was like I was one of the few guys that probably knew he was going to make the team," Johnson said. "You walked in and Coach Brown made me the captain, but you were the captain of sort of a strange, unusual collection of people.
"If you look back at that group, there were some good players, but as you would expect, there was no really good players in the prime of their career. They were either at the tail end or were viewed to be marginal."
Johnson played 12 seasons (1968-79), and his number — 54 — is the only one retired in club history.
Here is how the Bengals website has the history:
The Bengals arrive on Sept. 26, 1967 in a birth announcement at a packed house in the Sheraton Gibson Hotel as the newest member of the American Football League.
But the labor pains begin long before on the back porch of Paul Brown's home in exile in La Jolla, Calif., where one of his former Ohio State players, Bill Hackett, a London, Ohio veterinarian, urges him to be NFL commissioner when the job opens up again.
Brown tells Hackett what he really wants to do is own a team and the comments spark a Dec. 14, 1965 meeting of 125 Cincinnati businessmen listening to Brown make the irresistible pitch to bring an American Football League franchise to Cincinnati with local entrepreneur John Sawyer as a critical go-between.
The city and the sport are meeting in just that right intersection of opportunity and luck. Professional football is about to explode on the American scene and overtake baseball as the national pasttime, and even though Brown has been out of the game more than two years he remains one of its most recognizable faces and names.
Mike Brown, Paul's son and a Cleveland attorney, has surveyed potential cities for pro football expansion and recommends Cincinnati because of its market size and his father's Ohio ties.
The road is arduous. There must be a stadium built and there must be an accommodation with baseball's Reds, one of the country's most treasured civic prizes.
Plus, amid the NFL and AFL's trench warfare, there are peace talks about a merger, and Brown's group has to negotiate through the political minefields of not one, but two leagues.
They have help.
Ohio governor James Rhodes takes a break this night from the introductory news conference outside the hotel and recalls how he made "22 trips outside of Ohio just on this." NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, who owes his position in some measure to the day in 1960 Brown turned down the job, is a key ally. Cincinnati city officials like mayor Gene Ruehlmann roll up their sleeves in brokering a deal with the Reds and Bengals for one multipurpose stadium on the riverfront.
"When I assured (Rhodes) that I was serious enough to invest a sizable amount of my own money, he began setting up a series of meetings that really started the franchise on its way," Brown later writes in his autobiography with Jack Clary.
"It wasn't too long before I was commuting often between California and Cincinnati in 1966, meeting prospective members of our ownership group and working on the details that attach themselves to such a massive venture. When I wasn't in Ohio, I was being awakened nearly every morning in La Jolla by Bill Hackett's phone calls giving me the latest news."
But it is the sheer force of Brown's personality and accomplishments that drive it. A legendary high school coach in Massillon, Ohio. Coach of a national champion at Ohio State. One of the founders and coach of a Cleveland Browns franchise that became the NFL's first dynasty.
Since Brown's firing at the end of the 1962 season by Browns owner Art Modell, all eyes have been on his return to pro football and five years later the microphones and cameras find him in Cincinnati as owner, general manager and, everyone assumes, head coach.
"This is like coming home," Brown says, barely a month removed from his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction. "I'm living again. It's a happy day for me and I hope it turns out to be a happy day for Cincinnati and its environs."
There are plenty of details still dangling.
Two of the sites mentioned as possible venues for the two seasons before the stadium is finished are the University of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium and the Reds' Crosley Field.
And there is the matter of a name, although no doubt the name of Cincinnati's pro team in the late '30s, the Bengals, will resonate with Brown.
Even the coaching job has yet to be hammered down definitely. Brown, who'll turn 60 the day after his team's first game in September of 1968, admits he'll probably coach at least that first season and "take the bumps."
But two things are certain.
Cincinnati is a two-sport town on the pro scene and Paul Brown is back.
"I'm breathing again," he says on a September night the Bengals take their first breath.
I saw this today on the NFL website:
NFL History
September 27, 1967
A group with Paul Brown as part owner, general manager, and head coach, was awarded the Cincinnati franchise.
Growing up in Cincy, I was a fan. All my life.
I looked up some history of the franchise. I found some on some interesting websites.
In 1965 Paul Brown and Ohio governor James Rhodes met with Cincinnati civic leaders about bringing a pro football team to the city. In 1966 Cincinnati city council set aside a 48 acre site that later would be used to construct a stadium that would house the Reds and a pro football team. With the promise of a new stadium Brown was awarded an AFL expansion team on September 27, 1967. Although many names were suggested the most popular being the Buckeyes, Brown rejected it to avoid confusion with Ohio State University and name the team the Bengals in honor of an earlier Cincinnati AFL football team of the late 30's and early 40's.
This was a recently published article that I thought was very well done:
Brown signed Stofa, the ex-Miami Dolphin, as the first Bengal on Dec. 27, 1967. Now the team needed a center. So Brown tapped Bob Johnson, an All-America from Tennessee, as his top draft pick on Jan. 30, 1968, and immediately installed him as the captain.
"I was the first guy drafted, so for an expansion team it was like I was one of the few guys that probably knew he was going to make the team," Johnson said. "You walked in and Coach Brown made me the captain, but you were the captain of sort of a strange, unusual collection of people.
"If you look back at that group, there were some good players, but as you would expect, there was no really good players in the prime of their career. They were either at the tail end or were viewed to be marginal."
Johnson played 12 seasons (1968-79), and his number — 54 — is the only one retired in club history.
Here is how the Bengals website has the history:
The Bengals arrive on Sept. 26, 1967 in a birth announcement at a packed house in the Sheraton Gibson Hotel as the newest member of the American Football League.
But the labor pains begin long before on the back porch of Paul Brown's home in exile in La Jolla, Calif., where one of his former Ohio State players, Bill Hackett, a London, Ohio veterinarian, urges him to be NFL commissioner when the job opens up again.
Brown tells Hackett what he really wants to do is own a team and the comments spark a Dec. 14, 1965 meeting of 125 Cincinnati businessmen listening to Brown make the irresistible pitch to bring an American Football League franchise to Cincinnati with local entrepreneur John Sawyer as a critical go-between.
The city and the sport are meeting in just that right intersection of opportunity and luck. Professional football is about to explode on the American scene and overtake baseball as the national pasttime, and even though Brown has been out of the game more than two years he remains one of its most recognizable faces and names.
Mike Brown, Paul's son and a Cleveland attorney, has surveyed potential cities for pro football expansion and recommends Cincinnati because of its market size and his father's Ohio ties.
The road is arduous. There must be a stadium built and there must be an accommodation with baseball's Reds, one of the country's most treasured civic prizes.
Plus, amid the NFL and AFL's trench warfare, there are peace talks about a merger, and Brown's group has to negotiate through the political minefields of not one, but two leagues.
They have help.
Ohio governor James Rhodes takes a break this night from the introductory news conference outside the hotel and recalls how he made "22 trips outside of Ohio just on this." NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, who owes his position in some measure to the day in 1960 Brown turned down the job, is a key ally. Cincinnati city officials like mayor Gene Ruehlmann roll up their sleeves in brokering a deal with the Reds and Bengals for one multipurpose stadium on the riverfront.
"When I assured (Rhodes) that I was serious enough to invest a sizable amount of my own money, he began setting up a series of meetings that really started the franchise on its way," Brown later writes in his autobiography with Jack Clary.
"It wasn't too long before I was commuting often between California and Cincinnati in 1966, meeting prospective members of our ownership group and working on the details that attach themselves to such a massive venture. When I wasn't in Ohio, I was being awakened nearly every morning in La Jolla by Bill Hackett's phone calls giving me the latest news."
But it is the sheer force of Brown's personality and accomplishments that drive it. A legendary high school coach in Massillon, Ohio. Coach of a national champion at Ohio State. One of the founders and coach of a Cleveland Browns franchise that became the NFL's first dynasty.
Since Brown's firing at the end of the 1962 season by Browns owner Art Modell, all eyes have been on his return to pro football and five years later the microphones and cameras find him in Cincinnati as owner, general manager and, everyone assumes, head coach.
"This is like coming home," Brown says, barely a month removed from his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction. "I'm living again. It's a happy day for me and I hope it turns out to be a happy day for Cincinnati and its environs."
There are plenty of details still dangling.
Two of the sites mentioned as possible venues for the two seasons before the stadium is finished are the University of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium and the Reds' Crosley Field.
And there is the matter of a name, although no doubt the name of Cincinnati's pro team in the late '30s, the Bengals, will resonate with Brown.
Even the coaching job has yet to be hammered down definitely. Brown, who'll turn 60 the day after his team's first game in September of 1968, admits he'll probably coach at least that first season and "take the bumps."
But two things are certain.
Cincinnati is a two-sport town on the pro scene and Paul Brown is back.
"I'm breathing again," he says on a September night the Bengals take their first breath.
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