Gotta split the ticket this week, due to two stories that can’t be passed by. The Bengals’ season-long cratering is a gnat’s whisker from total collapse, and FC Cincinnati looks like an underdog to me in the most crucial battle of its young existence.
First the Bengals, and first a disclaimer. Though it has gone under-reported in the wake of Sunday’s blowout loss to 3-9 Chicago, Cincinnati as of Monday morning is not yet officially eliminated from the playoffs. The chance is about equivalent to one Powerball ticket — win three games when it seems much more likely you’ll lose all three, plus get massive, nearly unprecedented help in other results. Even with a win this week at Minnesota, which would be positively stunning, the Bengals could still be eliminated due to other events, possibly even before their own kickoff time.
So now that we’ve got that covered, let’s move on the post-mortem for the Marvin Lewis Era, because clearly the city is in no mood to wait for an official 2017 death notice from Elias Sports Bureau. The Bengals will extend their NFL-high streak for seasons without a playoff win to 27 (it was 1990, people) and the last 15 of those have been coached by Lewis.
As a Bengals employee for 23 seasons (1994-2016), working under Mike Brown (who hired me) for 14 years with Lewis, I didn’t want to have to write this. But the Bengals are not nearly as good as even their 5-8 record. Their wins have come against foes with a current aggregate mark of 14-51.
When we still had some leaves on the trees here, they were considered talented but profoundly underachieving. Now they are exposed as simply one of the NFL’s very worst teams. So their 50th anniversary season has become a grim wake, and count me among the many who believe their 51st campaign must begin with a radical turn toward something new.
Sure I can imagine Brown resisting — who couldn’t? — but I can also imagine about seven very prominent members of the front office arguing that conditions demand radical newness, with ticket sales and overall fan interest at critically low levels.
But the most radical thing that could happen in Mike-World is a new coaching staff, and it could be a staff not terribly flashy or even entirely new. That’s the internal debate as I see it. A Jon Gruden vs. a Paul Guenther, more or less, with plenty of possibilities in between.
What to say of Lewis? I admire “ML” in many ways, and he lifted the team from the pits to a five-season playoff run. But since I’m now employed to comment publicly on Cincinnati sports issues, I will question him for coddling too many players whose talent was enticing but whose behavior in my opinion eroded team chemistry. Think Corey Dillon, Chad Johnson, Terrell Owens, Jermaine Gresham, Adam Jones and Vontaze Burfict. I’d even throw in Geno Atkins, whose implacable resistance to media responsibilities has been completely tolerated, setting a bad example.
The above is not entirely on Lewis, as he may have been blocked in some disciplinary matters, and clearly the organization must be cited for 1) recent unproductive drafts and 2) the loss through free agency of excellent players not adequately replaced. Think Andrew Whitworth, Marvin Jones, Mohamed Sanu, Kevin Zeitler and Rex Burkhead, all of whom are thriving in new locales.
But coaches are first in line to get bopped when things become intolerable, and that’s where we are now.
And now on to FC Cincinnati. Decision Day for its future is upon us, as Major League Soccer says that on Dec. 18, or shortly thereafter, it will reveal its picks for two expansion franchises.
After digging around on this some, I put FC Cincinnati’s chances at an unscientific 43 percent. I hope I’m too low, as it’s scary to wonder what will happen to our soccer love affair if FCC falls short. And we’ll get back to that important issue in a minute. But for now, why only 43 percent?
As the finish line approaches, this is a three-team derby — Cincinnati, Nashville and Sacramento — for two spots. Detroit is also officially in the picture, but I don’t believe MLS takes the Motor City seriously with NFL facility Ford Field as its proposed home.
So, two spots and three cities. It looks very close.
But FC Cincinnati is a close third in my analysis, and we must hope like crazy that one particular argument against Sacramento carries the day.
That would be the idea that with Columbus apparently moving to Austin and a second Los Angeles franchise beginning play in 2018, a Sacramento pick would leave the MLS too geographically unbalanced toward the west. This is the only chink in the armor of a Sacramento bid that has been widely characterized as flawless, and if it doesn’t hold sway, there’s likely no stopping the California capital, which is the largest of the three competing TV markets.
And if Sacramento is in, leaving Queen City vs. Music City for one spot, I sadly am hearing a lot of steel guitar in my head.
I saw Nashville in action on a weekend trip last month. It’s booming, presenting the image of one of the hottest cities in the USA. Nashville has caught us as a two-sport pro town (NFL, NHL), and it otherwise dwarfs us as a prime destination. Its recently built high-rise residences are of a scale not known here, and its Saturday night crowds downtown are stupendous.
It’s the new Atlanta, and that’s why I don’t see FC Cincinnati’s No. 1 selling point — its huge popularity as a minor-league team — as sufficient to close the deal. Yes, we love pro soccer to death here all of a sudden, but MLS is on an ego-ride and thinks every new city will go immediately soccer-crazy just by getting its blessing. Atlanta did last season, going from no pro franchise at all to crowds in the 60,000s. MLS won’t worry at all about booming Nashville filling its already approved 27,000-seat soccer specific stadium.
I also see Nashville as benefitting from not having a major league baseball franchise. It has nothing much going in sports from roughly May through Labor Day, the gap between its NHL and NFL seasons, and thus “FC Nashville” could own the town for much of the MLS season.
FC Cincinnati’s inspired play against three MLS teams in the U.S. Open Cup last year? It was great fun, but it won’t mean a thing in this derby. MLS will figure Sacramento and Nashville to have the resources to quickly become competitive — just as Atlanta did — and if indeed it got noticed at all, FCC’s Open Cup run would be seen as a competitive aberration, given the team’s middle-of-the-pack finishes in the United Soccer League the last two seasons.
The game won’t be over if we lose out — MLS plans further expansion a few more years down the road — but a failure this year will bring up a question I first posed in this space last July:
How long can the amazing enthusiasm for a minor-league team here survive? At times it has seemed FCC fans didn’t care or even know they were in the second tier, but this is indeed a “major league town,” and the MLS bid has certainly driven home the point that the USL in comparison is a big nothing.
My hope is that we don’t have to find out how well the USL experience will wear for two or three more years. But if we do, my expectations are less than sanguine.
CONTACT JACK BRENNAN: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in Dec 6-13, 2017.