IN THIS TIME of perpetual Cincinnati Bengals incompetence and futility, with zero playoff wins in the eighteen seasons since the WhoDeyRevolution Godfather, Paul Brown, passed away in 1991 and handed the team to his fortunate son, the Despot, Mike Brown;
Introduction
WE, the members of the Who Dey Revolution, in our fervent dedication to the Cincinnati Bengals and fanatical desire to transform our hometown team into perpetual Super Bowl contenders, call for a popular revolution of fans to demand comprehensive reform to the managerial decisions and approach of Cincinnati Bengals ownership, management, staff and players, and hereby call for the adoption of the following Who Dey Revolution Manifesto:
Manifesto Demands
THAT the Mike Brown, Katie Blackburn, Marvin Lewis, along with every other member of the Bengals management, staff and personnel, state publicly to all Bengals fans, “I will do everything in my power to help the Cincinnati Bengals win a Super Bowl;”
THAT Mike Brown will hire a general manager, drastically expand the scouting department and relinquish all control of player personnel;
THAT all training, rehabilitation and medical facilities are considered best-in-class compared to other NFL teams;
THAT the management fill the team only with players who fit the system, both mentally and physically, and are not reluctant to makes changes to player personnel when needed, regardless of cost or loyalty concerns;
THAT offensive and defensive line depth is considered the top priority for all player personnel decisions;
THAT all decisions made by ownership, management, staff and players, both on and off the field, are judged only by this criterion: “Does this help the Cincinnati Bengals win a Super Bowl?”
Because I can't do it any more justice, the full text of a post by JJ Cooper at FanHouse:
If the Bengals needed any more evidence that Mike Brown is lining his pockets at the expense of the team's success, here it is.
Mike Brown is one of the worst owners in the NFL. Dan Rooney is one of the best, but guess which one gets paid more?
As has been reported for a while, Mike Brown has made a bonus of at least $1 million in each of the past 18 years on top of his salary. Brown and four other members of his family earn salaries of at least $700,000 a year. Altogether the family received $50 million from 1994-2000.
Those salaries are for running one of the most inept franchises in football. The Bengals have had one winning season in Brown's 18 years of running the club. On the other hand, Rooney has made $2.2 million over the past year and a half, which became public when he accepted the ambassador post to Ireland. To break that into a yearly salary it's $1.5 million. He will get a little less than $1 million as severance as he heads overseas.
It's hard not to feel for Bengals' fans. They're stuck with an owner much more concerned with cashing checks and running a jobs program for his family than with winning football games. There are other Rooneys who work in the Steelers front office as well (Art Rooney II and Art Rooney Jr. both work on the staff), but the team's football operations are run by Kevin Colbert and contracts are negotiated by Omar Kahn. With the Bengals, most decisions are kept all in the family.
I know this will be shocking information to many of you. Our Mike Brown, more concerned about money than having a competent staff around him? No! And Dan Rooney, that rapscallion, doesn't make nearly as much? It must be a lie!
First, the Bengals announced they would be selling season tickets to the general public, for the first time since 2006. Then it was down to 4-game packs. When that didn't go well, the team offered 2 game packs to season ticket holders.
Now the Bengals have announced that 2 game packs will be sold to the general public.
They have packaged the Steelers game with the Texans game and put the Browns game with the season opener against the Broncos - the Bengals are clearly hoping that Steelers and Browns fans will be willing to buy the 2 game packs to see their team, probably with the hope to unload the extra game on StubHub or Ebay.
Based on the lack of excitement so far, I am not so sure that would be a wise investment.
Comrades, you must continue your boycott. Do NOT buy tickets. Bengals fans are recognizing that their hard earned money is better spent elsewhere. We will not see changes on the Bengals until we hit the team in the pocket. Keep up the pressure.
Welcome to the latest edition of "The Lost Generation," a new recurring comic strip you will only see on WDR that will focus on, you guessed it, the Bengals consistent failures to win football games. Click here to read the previous editions. "The Lost Generation" is the work of Dayton native Steve Spencer, an avid Bengals fan since 1973 and currently a freelance artist. You can view his recent work at http://www.stevespencerart.com.
Check out this gem coming across the interwebs from Baghdad Hob over at Bengals.com.
The feel-good article describes PGA Tour golfer Steve Flesch (Union, KY) coming back to Cincinnati to help out Channel 12 Sports Director (and Bengals play-by-play voice) Brad "So-Handsome" Johansen with his charity golf event. Mr. Hob also talks with Flesch about his love for the Reds and the Bengals...including:
"(Flesch) offering analysis from his seat about 10 rows below Johansen in Paul Brown Stadium after a touchdown for or against."
I think it's fair to say that the average person reading this quote would think that Flesch has season tickets with the Bengals, correct?
Well...
Continue reading "Baghdad Hob's Spin Zone Is Making Me Dizzy" »
WhoDeyRev passed the 1,000 posts mark last week. While that's probably not remarkable to all of you out there, it is to me so back off. If you could see the way Brosef Stalin talks to us in closed door meetings you would think, rightfully so, that we're the laziest bunch of bloggers that ever took off their sweatpants to sit down in front of a computer. To commemorate such an unlikely occassion, I sat down to have a chat with everyone's favorite protuberance.
Continue reading "1,000 Posts Celebrated With A Very Special Guest" »
To see how a real franchise conducts business, read this story from the IndyStar about the Colts and how they make an effort to always reach out to their fanbase (by visiting smaller Indiana towns and such). I will revisit and likely link to this article over and over again but for now let me just point out one passage that highlights a recent point I made. Namely: Mike Brown sucks as a businessman.
We are in the midst of the nastiest recession since the Great Depression, but you wouldn't know it if you owned the Colts:
That's precisely why, despite the fact the Colts are sold out for the 2009 season and have a waiting list of about 15,000 for season tickets, they still make an effort with summer community outreach programs such as the Fan Fest and Make It Personal tours.
Emphasis mine. As we know, the Bengals have gone from saying there's a waiting list, to offering 4 game packs, to offering 2 game packs. Their luxury suite and club seat sales may also be in trouble but that info remains harder to secure. Point is: Mike Brown struggles to sell an incredibly popular product on which he holds a monopoly.
I'm actually in awe of his incompetence.
Read the whole article and ask yourself why the Bengals under Carson Palmer couldn't have enjoyed the same popularity and prosperity that the Colts have during Peyton Manning's reign.
Chad Johnson is using Twitter at the same rate I used my Game Boy when I was 8 - the guy just will not put it down. He has compared Michael Jackson's death to 9/11, challenged Mike Golic to a fight, and punked the world with this fake facial tattoos.
He has also had a few conversations with WDR's own fake, satirical account @MikeyBoyBrown.
Last night Johnson made a joke about going on ESPN to host his own show. So @MikeyBoyBrown replied to Chad thusly:
@OGOchoCinco I am forbidding you from hosting a show at ESPN. I don't want you to know what a successful, well run organization looks like.
Here was Chad's response:
@MikeyBoyBrown, every time you write something its funny ass hell, but stop talking about my owner. i am going to host and take over!!!!
Chad - if you want to run the MikeBoyBrown Twitter account, the invitation is in the mail.
WDR has come a long way since our first post on Valentine's Day 2008. The 8 various Project Mayhem tasks helped bring local and national attention to our cause of bring about transformational change to the Bengals organizational structure so that maybe, someday we can see a Bengals Super Bowl Championship in our lifetimes. But our job is far from over.
Clearly, this is not the full time job for any of the writers on this site. Your Dear Leader is going back to school this fall and will have less time to dedicate to this site. Other writers are foreseeing similar issues that will preclude them from committing to the site enough during the upcoming season.
We need more writers.
So if your lifelong dream is to write for a Bengals blog for no pay, incentives or compensation of any kind, send us an email at whodeyrevolution@gmail.com and include a blog post of something that is worthy of going up on WDR. And an idea for a future Project Mayhem stunt would be favorably looked upon. Send more if you want. I have no idea how many writers we will need or how many will want to get involved. If you want to write, you are expected to write at least one blog post per week.
In this way, we are "preparing" for the upcoming season by putting people on the roster who fit our system. I did not learn this from the Bengals.
Again, if you want to contribute to WDR, send us an email at whodeyrevolution@gmail.com with a sample blog post that could go up on the site.
Several fellow revolutionaries have sent in emails today saying that the Bengals have sent an email to their season ticket holders making available the two-game ticket packs. They did this up until 2006 when they finally were able to garner season-ticket sellouts for all of the games like the other 31 NFL franchises are able to do.
The Bengals are not including the pre-season game like they have in season past. This is a smart move by the team. Forcing season-ticket holder to buy pre-season games is adding insult to the injury that is paying full price for a pre-season game to watch Carson, Chad, and the gang stand around in their jerseys for a few hours while a bunch of guys try to make the club.
Clearly the season tickets sales are not where the team needs them to be if they are making these tickets available for purchase (even if it is only to season-ticket holders). Maybe Mikey will figure out that winning four games the season before the economy tanks and changing nothing isn't exactly the best way to woo fans. The Bengals are obviously trying to sneakily get to a season sell-out and declare that all is well with the franchise. But WDR isn't letting news like this go by without showing the fans who want change in the team that they care about that the team is suffering.
Once again, no one person sent the email, it is generically signed by, "Cincinnati Bengals Ticket Office."
The email that was sent to the season ticket holders in available after the jump.
Continue reading "Mike Brown to Season-Ticket Holders: Good Seats Still Available" »
17 - Years since the Bengals have won a playoff game
0 - Total number of playoff wins in Mike Brown's tenure as owner
.348 - Bengals regular season winning percentage since Mike Brown took over as owner (97-181 in 17 seasons)
15-23 - Record since 2005 playoff game vs Steelers
6 - Seasons the Bengals have lost their first six games since 1991. No other team has more than two.
0 - Teams North of Cincinnati without an indoor practice facility
10 - Players arrested in a 14 month span from 2005-2006
32 - Mike Brown's ranking, out of 32, of the "Best Owners in the NFL" by Michael Silver of Sports Illustrated in 2007
458,000,000 - Amount, in dollars, that Hamilton County Taxpayers paid to build PBS
2032 - Year that Hamilton County will have finally paid off its debt on the stadium deal
6 3 - Total number of non-clerical employees employed in the Bengals scouting department, lowest in the league
747,000,000 - Amount, in dollars, paid in free agency by the Bengals from 1994 - 2005, second worst of all 28 teams in existence for the duration, behind only Arizona
118 – Ranking, out of 118 professional teams, of the “Worst Franchises” in professional sports, as ranked by ESPN the Magazine in 2003.
97 – Ranking, out of 98 general managers in all four major sports with three or more years of experience, of Mike Brown’s performance as a GM, as ranked by Forbes in 2007.
