CINCINNATI - The Cincinnati Bengals' 1-7 record this season is nothing new. They've started 1-7 or worse six times in the past 12 seasons.
But this year has been the worst in memory off the field for the franchise and its embattled patriarch, club president Mike Brown. Anger and resentment toward the Bengals in Cincinnati are at all-time highs, and most of it is directed at Brown.
The disgust has taken the forms of an online petition seeking to oust Brown as the team's de facto general manager, anti-Brown T-shirts, a long-shot breach-of-contract legal challenge to the Bengals' lease on Paul Brown Stadium and declining attendance at games.
The Bengals, who visit the Ravens tomorrow, have become the country's favorite punchline. Tonight Show host Jay Leno regularly hammers the Bengals in his monologue: "Did you know President Bush came to Cincinnati - to declare Paul Brown Stadium a disaster area?"
The Bengals are the exception to the NFL's parity policy. They are 54-130 since Brown assumed control of the franchise in August 1991 from his late father, Paul Brown. The playoff drought, going on 12 seasons, is twice as long as the next-longest such streak.
Bengals fan Greta Jordan, 31, of Ayden, N.C., formerly of Dayton, Ohio, had had enough. After watching the Bengals lose, 30-3, on Sunday night, Sept. 22, at Atlanta - their first prime-time TV game in four years - she wrote the petition asking NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue to remove Brown from day-to-day operations of the team.
"The people of Cincinnati and Bengals fans across the country, along with the NFL, deserve better," the Down with Mike Brown petition reads at www.PetitionOnline.com.
And though not all of the 12,600 signatures are legitimate, most appear to be and speak to fans' frustration.
Bengals fan Bob Dix signed the petition. "Everything else about the Bengals has changed except Mike Brown," said Dix, who attends two or three games a season. "I hold him personally responsible."
Tagliabue and league spokesmen have declined repeated interview requests from a Cincinnati newspaper to discuss the unprecedented state of the Bengals.
Brown gave a characteristic response to the petition drive.
"When you have a disappointing situation, fans react," Brown said. "This is a hard time for the team. It is natural for fans to show discontent. I accept it for what it is."
Brown and the rest of the front office had no comment a couple of weeks later when Hamilton County (Ohio) commissioners voted 3-0 to send the Bengals' stadium lease to the county prosecutor's office for a legal opinion on whether the Bengals had failed to live up to their end of the bargain.
Commissioner Todd Portune, who brought up the issue in a commission meeting, referred to a sentence in the lease that says the one-half percent increase in the county's sales tax was needed to "keep competitive and viable major-league football and baseball teams in Cincinnati by construction of a new football stadium in Hamilton County."
The Bengals are 11-29 since moving into the new stadium that they said was needed to create new revenue to be competitive in the NFL. They've sold out just seven of 20 games in the 65,600-seat stadium.
"Has the long losing record of poor performances on the field risen to violate the express or implied conditions of the agreement?" Portune said.
Even though that move might be a legal lark, it taps into the community's anger toward the Bengals. And it's anger that surfaces every time another local tax levy - such as light rail and Cincinnati public schools, both defeated Tuesday - goes down.
Commissioners have yet to receive a legal opinion back from Hamilton County prosecutor Michael Allen on the lease.
Brown purchased the rights to name the stadium after his father, but even that tribute is under fire.
Dozens of fans wore T-shirts to the Tennessee game, played four days before Halloween, that read, "The Nightmare on Elm Street," after the street that borders the stadium to the east. On the back, the shirts read, "Dear Mike. Please take my name off the stadium. Love, Dad."
Brown's general reaction to the criticism is, "We need to correct things here on the field. That is the answer."