This is the view of the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals stadium for 6 out of the 8 home

games this year.

The Bengals improved by 5 wins this year, have been in playoff contention or in

the playoffs in the last week of the season 7 of head coach Marvin Lewis’ 9

seasons and overall the past decade minus last year and the ‘08 run have been

a pretty competitive team.

But Mike Brown, owner and CEO of the Bengals, had finally made fans reach

their breaking point this year.

Bengals fans were tired of the fact that they had paid for a stadium and Brown

did not give it his all to put a great team out there year after year.

There were guys with multiple arrests, locker room issues, etc.

It had finally eroded and while I personally will always be very thankful with

everything Chad OchoCinco did for the franchise and the city last year finally

reached a breaking point and Bengals fans said NO MORE!

No longer will we support you Mike Brown…

And for the whole season Bengals fans have held pretty true on this promise.

I was not one of those Bengals fans…I went to the Arizona game on X Mas

Eve and couldn’t believe how many open seats there were.

The problem was though Bengals fans picked the wrong year to boycott.

Not by Mike Brown’s doing necessarilly but the Bengals have a young, hungry,

fun, likable team that is doing everything they can on every snap to win

every time they step on the field.

Most picked them 32nd out of 32 in the league this year and some said they

would go 0-16.

Well….

It is the final week of the season and they are 9-6 and if they win Sunday

they make the playoffs!

Bengals Fans bought 18,000 tickets over 48 hours earlier this week thanks to

a promotion the Bengals front office did.

The point?

Bengals Fans made sure that Mike Brown knew all year long they weren’t going

to put up with his cheap crappy ways anymore.

And you know what?

I think they proved their point.  The Bengals were LAST in attendance this year

after selling out pretty much every game the past 10 years.

And I think if Mike Brown does stuff to get rid of or screw up this core group

of great young players, or not pay the money to keep coordinators like Zimmer

around and the team erodes again…then they will boycott again.

But sometimes you reach a breaking point…

And Bengals fans did this week.

They finally let their love of these young hungry players outweigh the hatred

toward the CEO who people have put up thousands of blogs asking him to just

quit being owner.

Sometimes an average or not good CEO can be outweighed by his employees.

In this case the employees are the players and the coaches who for 16 weeks

this year played in front of doubters and empty stadiums and never once

asked for anything from the fans.

They are going to be rewarded this Sunday, and these employees deserve this

reward.

This is a good football team that has potential to be great.

The JUNGLE will be rocking this Sunday at 415pm in a huge game against the

division rival Baltimore with a playoff bid on the line.

Mike Brown is still being boycotted by the fans.  The fans finally just decided

that if his company has so many great pieces below him that they can’t punish

all of those employees as well and not come out and support this product

any longer.

Good Luck Dalton, AJ, Marvin, Ced, Rey, Dunlap, etc…win one for the fans,

yourselves, the city, and we’ll just not worry about the CEO for a few weeks!

WHO DEY!

CARPE DIEM and HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!

Post comments on here or hit me up at mike@marketingfunwithmike.com

Follow all updates at http://twitter.com/marketingmiker

Facebook Fan Page “MarketingFunWithMike”