Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio presents a unique stadium scenario which he deems a win-win for the Cincinnati Bengals.
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk has the perfect answer to the Cincinnati Bengals dilemma regarding their contract with the Hamilton County and Paycor Stadium.
He believes the ideal option for the Bengals to exercise is to leave Cincinnati and go to a bigger market, to wit: Chicago.
He thinks the Bengals should not exercise the option for an extension with the county. Florio believes the Bengals should get together with the Chicago Bears, join forces on a new stadium, and move to the Windy City.
"Instantly, the inventory of games would double, from 10 to 20," Florio said. "It would become much easier for the Bears (and possibly the other team, unless it’s just a tenant) to pay for the building with minimal public assistance."
Florio cites there are several cities, like Los Angeles and New York that supports two teams. He even goes one step further and says if the NFL were ever to expand into London, it would have more than one franchise.
"Enter the Bengals. They’re less than three months away from the final countdown to the expiration of their lease at Paycor Stadium," Florio said. "During the league meetings this week, executive V.P. Katie Blackburn said the quiet thing out loud — after 2025, the Bengals can go wherever they want to go."
Forget the fact the Bengals have been in Cincinnati forever and a day, Florio said they should just pack up and move to "Chicagoland" as he calls it.
"It’s easy to come up with a list of cities that currently have no NFL teams. But the best outcome for the Bengals, and the Bears, could be to partner up in a new Chicagoland stadium," Florio said. "Lakefront or Arlington Heights. Wherever. The revenue from 20 NFL games each year, along with everything else that could be hosted in a fixed-roof building, should be able to pay for the building."
Florio admits the chances of this happening are quite low. However, he said, it's possible and "it might take brash creativity to solve the current situations for the Bears.
"And the Bengals."
The way he finished the story appears as though he is looking out for the interests of the Bears first, and then the Bengals. It seems like the Bengals were an afterthought in his mind to help the Bears get a new stadium.
Bottom line: Florio does a lot of typing here before he gets to his next-to-last paragraph in which he admits that this isn’t really going to happen …
Which causes a Bengals fan to wonder why he bothered writing all those other paragraphs.
