The Cincinnati Bengals are cheap. There is a good chance you already know this, as it is a longstanding issue. When Takeo Spikes joined the team in 1998, the team gave players used jockstraps. As of a few years back, the organization had just six full-time scouts. “There’s a lot of overkill in scouting across the league,” one scout said. In 2022, players brought their own microwaves into the team facility to reheat their lunches. In 2024, the Bengals received an F-minus grade for food in ESPN’s anonymous player survey. The stuff the team served to the professional athletes they employed was so wretched that they got a grade that doesn’t exist.
Which brings us to Sunday’s game against the Ravens, a contest Baltimore won, 24-0. Pregame, The Athletic’s Paul Dehner noticed something very Bengals about the stadium. About two hours before kickoff, he posted, the entire lower level was still covered in ice and snow.
Only the Bengals know for sure whether this situation was borne out of stinginess or incompetence, but either way they had left the work of clearing the best seats in the stadium to the people who'd paid to sit in them. The team did release a statement: “Seat aisles were prioritized and are in good shape,” the team said in a statement. “Seats are easily wiped off and ushers are equipped to help there.” The NFL says Cincinnati didn’t break any NFL snow-removal rules by not removing all that snow, so it’s easy to imagine the team will continue this half-assed job after a snowstorm until there’s some sort of snowball incident. But c’mon! Just do the best job you can for your fans! Apparently that is too much work.
The Bengals were once a franchise that tried to keep payroll down, notably by taking chances on reclamation projects; they weren't the first NFL team to use police blotter appearances as roster-building arbitrage, but few did it better. But they’ve also handed out some big contracts in recent years, and presumably those contracts contain clauses that call for fresh jockstraps. “Strike another blow to the myth the Bengals are cheap,” wrote Coley Harvey in 2015, in a story touting that the Bengals ranked 126th of 333 pro sports teams in average player pay. But the Bengals still can’t shake the moniker, especially when stories like the half-assed snow clearing happen.
They’re even getting stingy with their own draft picks. This year’s first-round pick, DE Shemar Stewart, was the last pick to sign. The Bengals wanted a contract that would allow them to void his deal in certain situations. Mike Florio wrote that the Bengals didn’t put these default clauses in previous contracts. But Mike Brown gave a reason for this impasse: He was afraid Stewart might go to prison. “We’re not going to be paying someone who’s sitting in jail,” Brown said on July 21. “That’s not what we’re going to do.” Brown added that this scenario was a hypothetical. Five days after Brown worried publicly about his first-round pick going to jail, Stewart signed a fully guaranteed deal; Cincinnati gave him a more lucrative contract structure in exchange for accepting that the team might not have to pay him if he goes to prison. The Bengals also had a contract impasse with Trey Hendrickson, the franchise’s all-time leader in sacks, before giving him a raise in the final year of a deal.
These were not the only financial dust-ups the Bengals had this summer. The team held its annual Ring of Honor induction ceremony in October. Boomer Esiason, who played 10 seasons in Cincinnati and was the 1988 NFL MVP, had been inducted a few years prior. As Esiason told the story, he received an invite to this year's Ring of Honor game with a plus-one, and was told that he could buy discounted tickets for anyone else he wanted to bring. But, he added, those two free tickets to a game appeared to be the only thing Cincinnati would be giving him. He read this part on his daily Boomer and Gio radio show:
“If you are traveling in for the weekend from out of town, we have secured a block of rooms at the Renaissance Hotel at a preferred discounted rate. Rooms are limited, so please book directly for the early and the best rate. We look forward to hosting you in The Jungle for an unforgettable weekend. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me or another guy on the staff with any questions. Thank you. And Who Dey."
Fans can take solace in all this, I believe. The Bengals treat their all-time franchise greats only slightly better than they treat their fans.
