There was a very interesting story on Grantland written by Rob Weintraub about the 1988 Cincinnati Bengals. The whole thing is very interesting and worth a read. One of the most interesting stories was how the team was galvanized by an incident involving the 1988 Cincinnati Bearcats football team. The incident allegedly took place on September 3, a week before the Bearcats started their season and a day before the Bengals opened the season against the Phoenix Cardinals.
Here are the key parts, as told by Reggie Williams:
"Also in the club that night was a large group of University of Cincinnati football players, one of whom blatantly propositioned the wife of a Bengals player. She walked away, but the Bearcat, backed by his teammates, followed her, repeating his lewd come-ons.
Then Ickey Woods stepped in.
Woods "physically impeded his progress, let's just say," laughs Williams. Some shoving ensued, but it wasn't until the Bengals left the club en masse and encountered the lingering Bearcat contingent that a donnybrook broke out. Club management arranged for the team to leave via a back exit, but the team, led by its city councilman, preferred a show of force.
As Williams waded into the crowd, it parted "like the waters of the Red Sea — it was like I had a force field around me," he recalls. Once he was through, however, the other Bengals were jumped by a couple dozen college players. A note of awe remains in Williams's voice as he remembers the moment. "I'm seeing all these haymakers getting thrown, guys protecting their wives, my teammates as vicious and angry as I've ever seen them — and I was totally untouched."
At one point, Williams got to his car and a teammate he won't name got in the back. The door was flung open, and the player was coldcocked right in the backseat. "He had a shiner the next day," Williams says. "Several players had scars or bruises."
"But we won the fight," he notes emphatically."
Only in Cincinnati. The article is from this piece by Rob Weintraub on Grantland.
The 1988 Bengals opened the season 6-0 and went to the Super Bowl. The 1988 Bearcats went 3-9, losing 41-7 against Boston College a week later. It did not galvanize them as much as the Bengals.
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