Bengals History: Additional Twists

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.

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.

Hank Stram died on July 4, 2005

Hank Stram died on July 4, 2005.

Just recently, I remember watching an NFL Films documentary called "The Original Six Days to Sunday." Stram of course let NFL Films get complete access to the Saints in 1976 as they prepared for a division game against the Falcons. Stram was fired before they did all the production work on the film, so they let it sit in the vaults for years before finishing it.

It was a great film. It showed Stram working with Bobby Douglass to break down game film and to become a finished product as an NFL quarterback.

Hopefully, the NFL Network or ESPN Classic will replay the film in the next few days or weeks.

Here are some other interesting things I found out about Coach Stram.

Stram won the 1948 Big Ten Medal for combining athletics and academics.

From some additional research, I found out that John Wooden won the award at Purdue in 1932.

I've linked to some of the better obits that I've found. And I pulled some quotes that interested me. I will say that I've read several columns by Jerry Magee and I love his stuff.

Stram also has a reputation of being a innovator. There are three that I would like to investigate further. The full-time conditioning coach was credited to Stram in some of the obits. The use of the zone defense in the AFL, at least, if not the zone defense itself was credited to Stram. And, Lenny Dawson said that the Chiefs were running the West Coast offense before the West Coast offense. I don't know if these are accurate or not, but I'd like to find out.

Below please find the interesting quotes.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/nfl/20050705-9999-_1s5stram.html

By Jerry Magee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 5, 2005

Two
coaches arguably had more to do with American Football League teams achieving
permanence than any others. One was the Chargers' Sid Gillman, the other Stram.
Gillman, who died in January 2003 at age 91, respected Stram. "Good plays,"
Gillman would say. But he also felt he could read Stram. One of Gillman's
deductions was that when a Stram team would get behind, it would begin blitzing.

Joe Horrigan noted that under Stram, the Chiefs were among the first
professional teams to recognize the talent pool contained in historically black
schools.

Henry Louis Stram was the son of a professional wrestler from
Gary, Ind. At Purdue, he was a running back in 1942 and in 1946-47.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/3252592

By MICKEY HERSKOWITZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Stram fought
the battle of Dallas, where the Cowboys and Texans both drew so poorly that a
playoff was suggested, with the winning team getting to leave town.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/football/nfl/kansas_city_chiefs/12057041.htm

By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star

Stram was born Jan. 2, 1923, in
Chicago and grew up in Gary, Ind., where his Polish-born father was a tailor and
professional wrestler named Henry Wilszek, who performed for the Barnum &
Bailey circus. The circus changed his surname to Stram.

Although his
parents discouraged him from playing football, Hank Stram became a star athlete
in football, baseball, basketball and track at Lew Wallace High in Gary, earning
all-state honors as a halfback.

Stram enrolled at Purdue University on a
football scholarship in 1941 and enlisted in the Army reserve in 1943. He
remained in the service for three years, returning to Purdue in 1946 and earning
his degree in 1948. He lettered in football and baseball at Purdue, and as a
senior he received the Big Ten Medal, awarded to the conference athlete who best
combines athletics with academics.

Stram spent the next 12 seasons as an
assistant at Purdue, SMU, Notre Dame and Miami (Fla.) before Hunt hired him as
the head coach of the Dallas Texans of the fledgling AFL.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/12053348.htm

By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star

"I don't know if there is
anything ever new in football, but we were doing things in the `60s that teams
are doing now," said Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson. "Hank came up with so
many new twists and doesn't get the credit he deserves.

"He wasn't
afraid to try things. Back in those days, guys didn't try anything. They pretty
much stayed with what the Green Bay Packers or New York Giants were doing. Well,
Hank decided let's do some things different. We were playing the West Coast
offense before it was the West Coast offense."

And Stram deployed zone
defenses in the early 1960s as a way to combat the wide-open passing games of
the AFL when teams were loath to defend receivers in anything but man-to-man
coverage.

Stram attributed that defense to the Texans' intercepting five
passes in the 1962 AFL championship win over Houston.

http://www.nola.com/sports/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-19/1120543067262410.xml

The Times-Picayune
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Peter Finney

What
befell Coach Stram at the end of a long career, a two-year pit stop for John
Mecom's Saints, did nothing to tarnish the résumé of the most successful coach
in the history of the AFL.

Without a doubt, Hank's finest hour with the
Saints had more to do with the owner who fired him in Kansas City, Lamar Hunt,
than the man who brought him to the Big Easy.

Perhaps old-timers will
remember.

All the Saints had to do to sew up a 20-17 victory at
Arrowhead Stadium in 1976 was run out the clock. They were near the Kansas City
end zone with the final seconds ticking down when Stram called time. He told a
surprised Bobby Scott, his quarterback, "now we're going to shove it to 'em."

Scott threw a touchdown pass to tight end Henry Childs to make it 27-17.

"I wanted that last one," Hank said afterward. "Maybe these people will
learn to do their talking after the game, not before."

During the week,
Chiefs coach Paul Wiggin was quoted as saying, "I'd like to kick Stram's butt."
After the game, as Stram was being carried from the field, running back Chuck
Muncie ran over to Wiggin and handed him a poster-sized reproduction of his
words.

All and all, it was a strange setting. Stram had been best man at
Lamar Hunt's wedding. And that's not all. At the time, the coach and his former
boss were in the courts, trying to settle Hank's contract with Kansas City, a
10-year, $100,000-a-year deal terminated with seven years remaining.

So
it made for a memorable postgame scene, the Strams leaving Arrowhead Stadium
linked arm-in-arm, Hank, wife Phyllis, two sons, two daughters, all of them
singing, "When the Saints . . ."

It was right out of Dorothy and
friends, in the "Wizard of Oz," walking the Yellow Brick Road.

Hank had
found his Saints rainbow.

thankyouverymuch,

Old Cleat