If you're a Bengal fan...YOU MUST READ THIS ARTICLE BY PAUL DAUGHERTY!

I am going to keep this simple, if you are a Bengal fan (which obviously you are considering you're here) you MUST read this article written by the Cincinnati Enquirer's Paul Daugherty. I believe this article is so spot on that I'm gonna post the entire article below.

Mike Brown: Wizard of Oz

HBO cameras pull back curtain on how the Bengals' boss operates

By Paul Daugherty
pdaugherty@enquirer.com

Bengals owner/coach/general manager Mike Brown had an idea. “A wild thought’’ he called it, as the HBO cameras whirred. Why don’t we move this kid Harrington from defensive end to tight end?

Why?

Because he’s fast. “He can run pretty well,” Brown said. “By tight end standards, he can run real well.”

Brown is sitting in front of a roomful of coaches. We don’t know what sort of meeting it is, specifically. Maybe it’s a regular gathering. Maybe it’s an occasional popcorn-and-Cokes get-together. HBO crews shot 400 hours of film for the first episode of "Hard Knocks." This scene lasted a minute. There is no context. There is only Mike Brown, the owner of the team, telling those he has hired to coach his team how to do their jobs.

They take notes. As Brown decides that moving second-year defensive end Chris Harrington to tight end would be a good thing, titular head coach Marvin Lewis rubs his hand across his face. “Watching Chris as a defensive player, he seems a little stiff,” says Jonathan Hayes, the tight ends coach.

Hayes’ brother Jay, the coach of the defensive line, allows that Harrington “can run.” Which apparently is good enough for Brown.

“Probably what it means is, we go with two fullbacks at the end, three tight ends instead of four. I think that’s where this takes us,” Brown decides.

To the national audience, this scene no doubt zoomed by, unremarkable. There were better stories: The striving, against-all-odds fullback Chris Pressley, the maligned rookie tight end Chase Coffman, the irrepressible Chad Child Please, brand new online star. The ham-handed release of J.D. Runnels. Talk about hard knocks.

But to those of us who have witnessed the madness firsthand for a long time, it was the most telling minute in the hour. We’ve always known, or at least suspected strongly, that Mike Brown runs the team by his own judgments, for his own ends.

Occasionally, the curtain opens so obviously wide, that notion can’t be denied.

Welcome back, Chris Henry. Hi there, I’m Mike Brown. I’m here to cash the checks I paid myself, to be the general manager I’ve always said the Bengals didn’t need.

Yet never before have the clouds surrounding this franchise parted so clearly, for so many to see.

There aren’t a lot of owners in the NFL who make a habit of telling their coaches what to do with their players. Jerry Jones soars to mind. Jones thought so highly of himself as a Football Man, he drove away a coach who won him two Super Bowls. Jimmy Johnson left after the ’93 season.

The Cowboys won another Super Bowl in ’95, for Barry Switzer, but the core of the team was Johnson’s players. With Jones calling lots of shots, the Cowboys haven’t won a playoff game since 1996.

Mike Brown doesn’t meddle. Meddling suggests an annoying butting-in from the outside. Brown’s is strictly an inside job. Do you think Bill Parcells or Bill Belichick would put up with an owner in their meeting rooms?

Even a former Bengal was taken aback. “To see that Mike Brown runs all the meetings and how the coaches were sitting there like students was a shock,’’ former defensive tackle John Thornton wrote in the Enquirer last week. I talked with several former players and current player-agents the past two days. Their reactions were universally the same as Thornton’s.

We’ll never know why Mike Brown still fashions himself a football man when the evidence against him is so spectacular. We’ll only surmise, same as we have the last 20 years, how he can continue to hold hostage a team and its fans to his own whims. “All that matters is, did you win or did you lose?” Brown says to his team early in the show.

That’s true. The Bengals have won once in the last 18 years.

The coaching staff has not yet moved Chris Harrington from defensive end to tight end. Given the competition, Harrington probably will be waived, anyway. Brown might have even been right about the move.

That sidesteps the point. The bigger lesson is in how the Bengals operate. In the first episode, the curtain was pulled back completely. And there he was, the Wizard of Oz.