With everything going on during this crazy offseason, nothing compares to the fact that the Bengals could be considering relocation. What came as a shock to most and was on no one’s bingo card was that the Bengals are considering moving if negotiations do not work for their current home. Hamilton County is who the Bengals must negotiate with to get a deal done to keep them in Cincinnati, but they only have till June 30th of this year to wither notify the county in writing on if they want to extend for another two years or to come to the table with a new deal. However, it seems like the Bengals Executive Vice President Katie Blackburn has already started entertaining the idea of a new home. When talking to reporters about the lease issue she stated “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the option up.” She would continue on to say that they are still in discussions and hoping that Hamilton County is thinking about it a lot as well. With these statements though, it seems very stand offish. That does fit the trend because both parties have been pointing fingers at each other for supposedly holding up the negotiations.
With all this I now want to turn to some locations that could be viable and are the favorites for the team. Right now, according to the sports betting site Sportsbetting.ag, St. Louis sits at the top of the list with the best odds being 3/1. It is immediately followed by both Austin and San Antonia which are sitting at 7/2 odds. Some out of left field options though that people are speculating, especially with the NFL trying to go global, are Mexico City at 8/1, London at 20/1, or even branching out to Honolulu which sits at 75/1. With all these odds and possible locations no one truly knows where they may end up but it is fun to speculate.
Now, I want to give my opinion on the team, landing spot, and especially the idea of them possibly landing within the greater St. Louis area. St. Louis has shown over the past few years that we can sustain and support a football team with how the Battlehawks coming to town. One might argue that they are a spring team and that its vastly different from an NFL team and to that I completely agree. Spring football is very different from NFL, but St. Louis still shows up 30-40 thousand strong to a Spring league! St. Louis has been reeling from the loss of the Rams and the Battlehawks came in and showed that the city is dying to have that back and that we can, indeed, support a professional team.
I also have a controversial opinion in the way that if you are from St. Louis, you should be a Bengals fan regardless right now. This is because when we lost the Rams in 2014, only 2 of the 32 NFL teams voted for St. Louis to keep the Rams instead of having them go back to Los Angeles. One of the teams was the Arizona Cardinals, ironically, who they themselves left St. Louis in 1988. The other was the Cincinnati Bengals, where their owner Mike Brown stated “Shouldn’t we be supportive of the markets that have supported us for all these years?” Now this may be contradictory given the current situation, but I still believe there are more factors between the two parties that are not released.
Now I want to get into my personal opinion and almost plea to the Bengals to come to St. Louis and help restore the reputation that our city has had. While I would see the hypocrisy of supporting this organization and cursing Kroenke’s in the next, my hometown loyalty could carry me past that. I have been a Chiefs fan since they are the only Missouri team, but I have stood by the staunch philosophy that if St. Louis were to get another team tomorrow, I would drop the Chiefs in a heartbeat. I do understand the unfortunate situation this would put the city of Cincinnati in, but I have a solution from a fellow pro league. Adopt the practice of leaving the likeness and team future of the Bengals in Cincinnati, but move the personnel and executives to St. Louis. That way we could have a “St. Louis born” team and Cincinnati can keep their history with the Bengals. Both sides could benefit from a change of identity and continue having football at the highest level.
The negotiations are far from over and there is still a good possibility that they stay in Cincinnati, but I know being from the city that has been doubted by the NFL twice, it would be nice to see us get another chance to prove that we are not just some absentee fanbase that the Kroenke organization painted us as.
