Bengals Booth Podcast: When I'm Sixty-Four

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since Last Call Trivia. My wife Peg and I, along with our good friends Dave and NICKI, love to go out once a week to trivia nights at bars. And there's a company called Last Called Trivia that's got the concept down to a science. A host runs the show. You enter your answers on your phone, and the contest is designed to last for two hours, with prizes going to the top three teams. The only expense is whatever

you eat and drink. The company runs trivia games in a wide variety of cities, so if you're interested in trying it sometime, just go to last called Trivia dot com. And if you wind up playing in Cincinnati and run into a team named the Utopians, well you've been warned. Before I get to my guest, here's an invitation to grab your yoga mat and join Hoode on Saturday, June twenty fifth at nine am for NAMA's Day Yoga on the Field at Paul Brown Stadium. Register now at Bengals

dot com slash Yoga. It's presented by Nell in partnership with Kroger and Title Babe Period Bank. I moved to Cincinnati in nineteen ninety six, so for twenty six years now I've been reading the work of Cincinnati Inquirer sports columnist Paul Docherty. Like any great columnist, Paul is provocative and opinionated, and I frequently don't agree with him, but I'm always interested in what he has to say, and

I marvel at his ability to write. This week we talked about his career and is more than three decades of covering the Bengals. Doc. Let's start with your news. You are retiring at the end of the month. You still have your fastball. Why and why? Now that's a heck of a question, one that I never really had a satisfactory answer for. I will be sixty four and

a half. Dan. Within the past three four years, both of my parents have past, which got me to thinking that I'm still healthy, and I still have some time, and I still love things undone that don't involve the daily grind of inflicting my opinion on people. So it just seemed like it seemed like the right time, is all I can tell you, And I'm sure that's what everybody says, but it just it feels right. I appreciate that you say I still have my fastball. Sometimes I wonder.

I didn't used to wonder, and I always wanted to be able to call my own shot, and I'm going to be able to do that. So um yeah, yeah, end of my end of June. You've written books, including one with Chad Johnson several years ago. Will you write more books? That's somewhat up to me and somewhat up to my agent. Yes is the short answer, as everybody who writes for a living. I plan on writing a

great American novel. I'm not sure when, and I'm not sure about what, but I just I just know I'm going to get that done, you know, in my spare time. But if anybody needs a book written, give me a shout. I will definitely ponder. It'll be just finished a book on Nate Ebner. People might not know who Nate Ebner is, but Nate Edner is a guy from Springfield, Ohio who has three Super Bowl rings and played for the US in the two thousand and sixteen Olympics as a member

of the rugby team. Fantastic story. A guy who arose from from nothing, walked on at Ohio State having not played high school football, and ended up being a valued member of special team, so valued that he got drafted higher than Tom Brady by the way he yeared a year later, but higher, and his first love was rugby, had to ditch rugby to Good Ohio State to play football, came back to rugby six years after he uh After six years of not playing the sport, made the US

Olympic team in twenty sixteen. His father was a junkyard proprietor in Springfield and one of the one of the craziest people I've ever had the pleasure of writing about. His father was murdered in the junkyard by one of his supposed customers who thought that his father had done him wrong. And when that was when Nate was nineteen.

And the book is more about the relationship that Nate had with his dad than about sports, although a big chunk of it is sports, given that he played for the Buck Guys and Bill Belichick and was an Olympian. So anyway, that's a long, long answer to a short question. And that's the last book. The next book is is yet to be, but I'm looking forward to it. What was the most interesting thing you learned about Belichick from collaborating with Nate, Well, probably nothing that nobody else people

don't already know about Bill Belichick. Nate, Nate was pretty protective of Bill. Bill was totally supportive of Nate's Olympic effort. The US first game, in uh first match in the sixteen Olympics, they broadcast on the big screen at Gillette Stadium during practice so his teammates could see Nate play Bill.

Bill would a great student of American history, especially UH War type history, and would quiz his players on various aspects of you know, if it were if they were in OTAs on June six Bill would demand that they know the importance of June sixth, nineteen forty four, which was of course the d D Landings. So yeah, and but but by the same token, Bill kept his distance

with everyone. He had no favorites. He saved his harshest criticism for Tom Brady essentially to show the rest of the team that, you know, even this guy can be ripped, and I'm going to rip him. Kept his distance from from everybody, and I'm not sure any player on the team really knew Bill Belichick. And I got the impression from Nate that that's exactly how Bill wanted it. All right, this is a Bengals podcast, so let's get to some

Bengals topics. You started covering the Bengals in eighty eight, just in time for Super Bowl twenty three, a team that included Boomer Asias and Chris collins Worth, Anthony Millenio, Solomon Wilcotts and several other players who are would don't forget Icky Woods and others, famously talkative, famously colorful. Was that team a sportswriter's dream? Yes, m yeah, I have very fond memories of spinney Field, which sounds crazy if

anybody knows anything about spinney Field. I used to say that spinney Field was where the CIA would interrogate spies on weekends. But Um, boomer and and the entire offensive line occupied a corner of the spinney Field locker room, way way way far in the back, and we would they would let the media in at lunchtime, and those

guys would always be there. And if if you wanted your ego taken down, you paid a visit to the boys in the in the back corner of the locker room, because they'd be sure to do it and rip you for everything from what you dressed like to what you wrote, uh that that kind of thing, and also gave you great stories. Those guys were great. Um, the Icky story was great. Obviously, everybody knew that Paul Brown did the

shuffle at the Super Bowl. Um, and there were there were good just good people, not only good players, and fun to be around. But but good guys, I mean, I mean, Anthony Munios was on that team. Obviously, Boom Boomer himself was as chatty as as they came back then. It was a lot of fun then, And like every rookie, I thought, Hey, we're gonna do this every year. This is a young team. In fact, age wise, it resembled last year's Bengals team in terms of the ages of

the players. Um. Yeah, we're gonna do this a lot, and as we know, we didn't do it a lot. Is that a cautionary tale for how we feel about the current team? Um? It is for me. Um And I've been accused that once or twice over the years of being a debbie down or you might not know that, damn. I mean, but um, I yeah. It's very very hard to repeat to get back to the super Bowl the

next year. So much is working against you. This team is better on paper than last year's team was at this time, but last year had a certain magic to it that I don't know if they can duplicate. I hope they can schedules a lot harder. I mean, I was looking at it this morning. They play at Dallas, at New Orleans at Tennessee at Tampa Bay at New England, my goodness. And they've got the bills at home in Kansas City at home, so we'll see. They stayed relatively

injury free last year. They stayed COVID free, don't I don't know if any team could repeat that or that had that kind of chemistry or Zach loves to call it the culture, you know, the culture, And I kind of pooh pooed that for a few years, and I was wrong. Zach was right. The culture was important, The culture mattered. The culture helped them tremendously last year. Do they have the same culture this year? I don't know, So again, long answer, short question, we shall see. Paul

Dougherty is our guest. What do you remember about meeting Paul Brown? The first time I met Paul Brown was in April of nineteen eighty eight or was it eighty nine, eighty eight. He gave me a tourist Spinny Field, and

I understand Dan. Before that, my job from my previous two stops along the road in Dallas and in New York was covering college football national college football, and as such I made frequent visits to places like Oklahoma in Texas and UCLA in Ohio state where the players like in high school, I used to say that the players cars were nicer than the teachers, while the players car

or the students cars were nicer than the teachers. The players cars in college were nicer than the assistant coaches, and the weight rooms were massive because the whole idea was to impress recruits with all this stuff. Right, So with that in mind, I'm in Cincinnati and Paul Brown takes me into Spinny Field and they had indoor outdoor carpeting on the floor. It was invariably kind of wet

for some reason. They had those wire mesh lockers like you had in high school, so if you threw dirty socks in there that smelled, at least they could air out a little bit. And they had one twenty inch color television bolted to the back wall. And Peb could not get over the fact that they had a television in the locker room. He said, I've never known a foot a television to help a team win a football game. And I'm thinking, with my background, man, what what what

have I gotten myself into here? That said, I've been told that that Peb gave me his last interview. I don't recall that. I don't remember what we talked about, but he was always great to me, same as Mike has always been great to me. And I wish that I had gotten there a little earlier, you know, before he passed, and been able to appreciate him more and learn more from him than I did. He once referred to Mike as charming in an exasperating sort of way.

Explain why, Yeah, that still holds true. I mean, Mike, Mike is Mike, and Mike will never change, and that's one of one of the many things that I like about Mike. Um. Yeah, he never at least I don't think. I haven't asked him, and I planned to in the next couple of weeks. He never took personally the criticism and man, I leveled Mike over and over and over again. Never not took mine and never did not take my call,

never said no to an interview. When we had the interviews, he was He was pleasant, but on the other hand, intractable. For many years, Mike was Mike, and Mike was going to do it his way and if you didn't like that, well, he didn't really care. If he never took exception to something that you wrote. Was there a flip side to the coin? Did he ever pay you a compliment for something he wrote? Yes? Yes, I wrote a book about him, a memoir about raising my daughter Jillian, who has Down syndrome.

Mike read the book unbeknownst to me. I didn't send him a copy or anything, and I got, as is Mike style, I got a two page handwritten letter back from Mike essentially saying it was a wonderful book and that he learned a lot about well, obviously my family, but about raising a child with a disability, and how much he liked the book. And I still have that letter. In fact, for many many years, I had it under the glass on my desk in my office here at home,

and I glanced at it occasionally. A remarkable thing for him to do. What's the nastiest confrontation you ever had with a player coach? I don't, I don't know. There There aren't many of those. Um, Carl Pickens was a strange guy. I don't know if I had a nasty relationship with Carl, but he was just different, you know. I one year he gave me a really great interview right before the season, and I wrote a pretty complimentary column about him, not necessarily about football, but just about him.

And the next day after we had a probably half an hour interview where he was very cordial and gracious. The next day he acted as if he didn't even know who I was. You know, hey, Carl, how's it going? Walked right past me. I had Louis Billips, the old the old cornerback who was now deceased, who actually gave gave up a touchdown to John Taylor in the Super Bowl in eighty nine, threatened to kill me, and I believed him. He said, if you ever write another word

about me, I will kill you. And I never wrote another word of that. Uh. Mike brim another corner who was also deceased, UM, got in my face once about I'd written a tongue in cheek. I thought funny. He did not about how the Bengals were had a great win over by last week. They overcame all the odds and managed to beat By and Mike took exception of that and made an example of me in the in the locker room in Pittsburgh one time. UM. Other than that,

I athletes in general. Man, I just think if if if, if you write honestly about them and try to talk to them and show up after you write it, most of most of them over the years have been okay. Football, baseball. Whoever, How would you describe your relationship with Sam White? Mum, For the longest time I could, I could honestly say that Sam White was one of the few people in

the world that I didn't like. Um. When Sam was coaching here, he tried to coach the world instead of the football team, and I made note of that on several occasions, and we got into it once after a game in a press conference. He said, you can't keep your mouth shut, and I shot back, neither can you,

And went downhill from there. In later years as I did stuff about those teams, and I'm not sure why I did it, what the context was, but I had occasion to call Sam two or three times maybe in the ten years or so over for his death and we we we made amends, and he was great. He had some great stories, and he was another guy that was that was cut from different cloth. It was a lot more social than Carl Pickens was, but they both

had their their quirks. Um. I didn't I didn't like the fact that he made an example of Lisa Olson, the reporter in the Bengals locker room when they had that big controversy way back when or before that. Sam had been okay with any female in the locker room just about any time. There was a woman named Melanie Houser who wrote for the Houston Post way back in the day, and every time the Bengals would play the Oilers, Melanie would come up to Cincinnati for the week before

the game and write stories. And Sam couldn't have been nicer to her and made sure she got in the locker room I was taking care of and and all of a sudden he was anti Lisa Olson. But anyway, nobody cares about that. Sam was a good man. Um Like I said, his reach occasionally exceeded his grasp, and I disagree with that. And we had some run ins, but at the end we'd made peace, and I'm glad about that. The nineties were rough. You coined the expression

the Lost Decade. Then Marvin Lewis arrived in two thousand and three and turned things around pretty quickly. What's Marvin's legacy? Marvin's legacy is of a Sisyphus who actually wins. Who gets that damn boulder up the hill before it rolls back down on him. I hope and I think that people appreciate and respect the job that Marvin did here, because without Marvin there would be no Zach Taylor. Marvin was able to get some things done here that nobody

before him had gotten done. He was able to convince Mike that you know, hey, I actually know what I'm doing here. Please, you know, work with for me and let's not butt heads. Mike, to his credit, for whatever reason, was okay with that iman. Mike still called most of the shots, but Marvin got some concessions. He got enough that he was able to turn this thing around. I give Marvin all the credit in the world. He moved mountains here. He changing I mean turning about changing in culture. Marvin.

Marvin changed the culture, and it lagged at the end. I think with Marvin's interest in the gig, but his legacy should be that this is the guy that made everything else after it possible. Paul Dougherty is our guest. I mentioned earlier that you collaborated with Chad Johnson on a book following the two thousand and five season. What'd you learn from going back to his childhood haunts and

getting to know members of his inner circle. I learned that it had to be incredibly difficult for Chad to make his way in the world as a kid, not knowing who his father was and having his mother essentially leave him at her mother's doorstep his grandmother because she couldn't deal with him and Chad. I think I don't remember Dan, I think Chad was five. I mean, imagine that you've never known your father and your mom decides I'm moving to Los Angeles, Chad, but I'm not taking you.

I think that impacted every aspect of Chad's personality. Chad had a deep desire to be loved, not just by people close to him, by the world. I'm playing Freud here and I don't even have a degree in psychology, but this was a no brainer. I thought all of what Chad did, all the things that made Chadd, were a result of his mom dropping him off at grandmom's and never coming back. Well, if his objective in life was to be loved, he achieved it. I think so.

I I tired of Chad's andys. I got bored with him more than anything else because it was the same stuff over and over again, but interested White did it, And yeah, I think he's a fairly be loved figure around here and certainly, if not the best, one of the best receivers they've ever had. And that says a lot. The Bengals have had a lot of good receivers. There are a lot of what ifs in Bengal's history. Greg Cook's injury, Tim Cramri's injury, Jeremy Hill's fumble. The list

goes on and on. What if Kimo von Alhoffen never made contact with Carson Palmer's left knee. I think they definitely win that game, and after that it's the playoffs. Who knows, I Mike Crystal balls have been in the shop for thirty years and I have no idea. But but you're right, that was a game they were going to win. That team had the confidence that this past year's team had. The fact that it was Pittsburgh didn't

didn't phase them. You know, that team would never have lost in two thousand and fifteen to the Steelers the way that team did the same as that this this past year's Bengals team. Um, yeah, I mean the last past Carson threw was that bomb to Chris Henry, right, correct. I mean that was how many plays into the Bengals offense their their game that day, I don't know, two three? Yeah. I think they had the confidence. They knew they were gonna win, and they would have that day had had

Carson not been hurt. Are you sympathetic to Carson Palmer and his legacy of the Bengals? Yeah? Yes, and oh yeah I am, because he got over on Mike and I anybody that can do that, I don't know. His sympathy is the right word admiration, and he had a point and everybody took it well. It was well taken by everybody except probably Mike on the other hand. Enough already, I don't need to hear Carson anymore talking about how bad the Bengals were back then. I mean, they weren't right,

and the team did things that Carson wanted. They got him wide receivers, they had a good offensive line. You know, I don't know what I understood Carson's beef at the time, but at some point you just gotta let it go. Where is Andrew Whitworth on your Mount Rushmore of athletes that you've enjoyed talking to over the years. Oh, top ten five three. I don't know. He was just a

a rock. I mean it was the same way with the media that he was as a player, dependable on a solid you know, spokesman, senior senior I want to say senior citizen, but you know what I mean, elder statesman. Right. I loved Andrew Whitworth. I don't know anybody who didn't. Um, and letting him go was one of the bigger mistakes a franchises made in the last twenty years. Did you feel that way at the time or is it the hindsight of the draft picks that that failed. No I.

I was pretty sure they would do what they did. Um. It's it's always a business with the Brown family. Never forget that. It's a business with most everybody, but especially for them because it is their business. Um. No I. I thought it was a bad decision because even if he was not vintage Andrew Whitworth, he was a huge part of that team, of the character of the culture of that team, and to let him go like that was going to have an impact no matter who they drafted.

As it turned out, as we know that the picks to replace them weren't exactly. Stirling Paul Docherty is our guest. Let's get to the current Bengals. Have your feelings about Zach Taylor done a total one eighty over the course of three years. Yes, yes, I'm I'm not embarrassed or whatever to admit it. I believe it or not. I make a mistake every once in a while. My dad had a post in his office that I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong. That's kind of how I was

with Zach. Zach came in without big credentials. Dan, you know that he was not some hotshot NFL coordinator when the Bengals hired him. When he was coordinating the offense that you see, the offense that you see wasn't very good, and I thought he was in over his head. To his everlasting credit, he proved me wrong. And yeah, yeah, I could not have been more wrong about Zach Taylor than I was. He When he talked about culture in his first year and he and into his second year,

I thought it was a cop out. I thought, I understand the importance of culture, but it's sort of a nebulous thing. If you have it, you have it. If you don't, you don't. It disappears as quickly as it appears, and you never can really pinpoint why. I mean, you could say this guy left and that guy left and they were a big part of what we did, but okay,

I don't know, hard to define. And him using that fact that you know, we're not playing well right now because I'm building a culture, buying himself time with sort of a excuse in my book. But like I said, he was right. He got the guys in there that you wanted to get in there. Everybody meshed obviously, you know all this stuff. Everybody was cool with everybody else. They pulled for one another, they cared about one another, all the sports cliches, and it mattered. So bravo to Zach.

It certainly helps to have Joe Burrow. Of course you refer to him as Saint Joel. Yeah, aside from his play on the field, what has he done for this franchise? Legitimized it, made it, made it cool to be a Bengal. I've written that a few times. That still makes me laugh at having been here as long as I have. Anybody that told me twenty years ago that it would be cool to be a Bengal. I said, yeah, I'm

the fifth beatle Um. Yeah, and he is. Not only not only has his play elevated everything they do, but but his u rock solid belief in what Zach is doing is bringing others along, including all these offensive linemen. Right. I mean, did he rent space at the precinct that to get all those guys there, I don't know, or a his house at least got him to his house and preached the good word of the Reverend Zach and

that Obviously, the results speak for themselves. They retooled the offensive line this offseason without it didn't even seem like they were trying that hard to do it. Not to discredit the effort, obviously took a lot of effort, but those guys signed so quickly and so easily, you know, okay, all it seemed like all they were waiting for was somebody to ask him to play for the Bengals. And again, if you if you were around in the dark days in the Lost decade of the nineties, saying something like

that would have you committed. So yeah, he is the center of everything. As a sports fan, it's great when your team is great, goes to the super Bowl, plays in the World Series, whatever. But I've made the statement that I don't think there's anything better as a sports fan than when it's completely unexpected, like it was last year for the Bengals. Was that one of the more magical things that you've seen? Oh yeah, yeah, it's up

there with maybe the ninety Reds wire to wire. Back then, we thought they had a decent team and we thought that Lupinella would be a good manager. Nobody knew that they'd go wire to wire and sweep a heavily favored A's team in the World Series. It's it's like first love, right Dan, It's it's you get caught up. It's new, it's different. You get caught up in the magic, the romance of it all. And last year certainly was was

magical and romantic, no doubt. It's probably. Yeah. If I had a rate, um, that would be number be number one. Where they go from four to eleven and one to the Super Bowl. Come on, do you have a love hate relationship with football? Yeah? Yeah, I do. I it may be the best entertainment we have. And I'm not just talking sports, I'm talking everything, movies, television, whatever. The melodrama the real drama. Uh, not much on TV beats the NFL unless it's you know, Breaking Bad or The

Wire Right I watch. I watch a lot of it. I don't think it's as good as it used to be for a few reasons, but it's still the best. I don't like the NFL's hypocrisy. I don't like the way the NFL dealt with Colin Kaepernick. I don't like the way, in my opinion, the NFL seems to care about things only when it feels that if it didn't care, it would lose money. The whole image thing gets me a little bit, but there's no denying that as an

entertainment products, it's the best thing going. Got a couple of minutes left before I have to wrap this up. You've had opportunities to leave over the years for various media outlets. Why did you stay? That's a great question. And this is gonna sound hokey and corny and whatever, And I'm not saying it because I need to make friends, because it doesn't matter anymore. I stayed. He stayed for

primarily family reasons. I had a chance. I had two chances to go to the La Times in the early nineties, and I spent a lot of time out there with a real estate agent drive me all over Orange County. I didn't want to raise my kids in Los Angeles. I had no desire to to have them go to school out there. And that's gonna sound crazy because people think I'm some flaming liberal, which I am not, and that's a whole nother podcast, Dan, But I didn't. I

didn't want to raise them in Los Angeles. I hate traffic. I didn't want to get stuck in traffic my whole freaking life. I called Bob Verdi, who was a respected older columnist a Chicago Tribune years ago, and I asked him should I take this job? And he said, let me ask you something And I said, okay. He said, are you happy where you are? Yeah? Are you making reasonable money? Yeah? Do you get to cover almost everything that that the quote unquote big guys in Los Angeles,

New York, Chicago cover? I said yeah. He said do they treat you well? Yeah? Most of the time. And he said, what's your problem? And I you know, that's when it hit me. Along with the family stuff, that um, the only thing that I that would have made me want to move to Los Angeles to work for the Times. Was ego was to say, hey, I worked for the La Times. You don't, and that it didn't mean that

much to me, And so we decided to stay. And what I thought back in my youth would be a three to five year deal here when I signed on an eighty eight, I'm still here. They can't get rid of me, and now I get to walk away on my own, of my own volitions. So I guess it worked out. It sound a little like our mutual friend

Marty Brennaman. Yes, yeah, I think yeah. Marty felt the same way, and he took far less money to hang around with the Reds, and he could have gotten Eddie gone to Boston, for example, they wanted to hire him. I think Chicago the Cubs at some point had a flirtation with Marty. But yeah, pretty much the same. Doctor has been fun. Thank you for making me laugh, thank

you for making me think. Over the years, I think you know what I think of your work, and we are definitely going to miss you on a daily basis online and on a regular basis in the Enquirer. Well, thank you, Dan. I think you're the best I've told you so, and I've written that as well, so I'm glad you're not leaving either. That's going to do it for this episode of The Bengals Booth Podcast, presented by Ultimate Bengals. Download Ultimate Bengals ahead of the twenty twenty

two season. It's free to play next level fantasy football with fantastic Bengals prizes. Get it now the App Store and Google Play. And if you haven't done so already, please subscribe to this podcast and if you have a minute, give it a rating or share a comment that helps more Bengals fans find us. I'm Dan Horde and thanks for listening to The Bengals Booth Podcast