Who needs SNL when you have NFL?

New York has Saturday Night Live and Chicago is home to The Second City, but I don’t envy them their sources of humor. I have the Cincinnati Bengals.

Easy for me to stick the tongue in the cheek because I’m not a sports fan. I don’t engage in endless and pointless arguments about things of little consequence, I don’t walk around with another man’s name on the back of my shirt and I sure don’t fritter away my life in the recliner watching images dance back and forth on a flat screen. But, you gotta love an organization run by a guy who whupped the IRS on their home court.

The performance schedule has been full the past couple weeks and the season hasn’t even started. First of all, the county commissioners asked that the Bengals renegotiate their stadium contract, an agreement that helped plunge the budget into a dark abyss and carries the distinction of the most one-sided and unconscionable pact in all of professional sports. The Bengals response was that you had your input, you negotiated it, you are stuck with it. Well played.

Except, I might take issue with the “you negotiated.” Bob Bedinghaus negotiated it. Bedinghaus is now a devoted employee of the Bengals. The question is, when did that loyalty commence. Only the Bengals would have the chutzpah to hire the commissioner who handed them a stadium on a silver platter.

Bad-boy wide receiver Terrell Owens has been flirting with the Bengals for months. He’d been trouble for a good selection of NFL teams. The Bengals signed him, not long after the echoes of their “character counts” speeches subsided in the wake of numerous player behavior issues. With this hypocritical backdrop, the CEO of the Bengals assured fans that he had met with and was impressed with the wide receiver. He’s got his act together.

So, with eager anticipation, the fans awaited the scheduled arrival and debut press conference this morning. He no-showed. Surprise! He missed his plane from Los Angeles. How hard is it to make a flight, especially when you have an entourage and other resources to accomplish that? On your first day of work and in the public eye? Oh, he has his act together and it fits right into the Bengals show.

But, my favorite sideshow was eclipsed by Owens’ failure to grasp the complexities of telling time. An article in today’s newspaper revealed that at least a half dozen Bengals have Segways (motorized personal transportation devices) at training camp to carry them between their dorm rooms and the practice field. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. It’s training camp. You sure don’t want to risk enhancing your physical condition by walking to the field and back. I would give a thousand bucks to reincarnate Vince Lombardi, take him down to the field and hear what he had to say about that. Heck, I’d settle for Mike Ditka.

Keep in mind, there’s all this and we’re not even in pre-season yet. I’m looking forward to some great entertainment this season.