The Original Cincinnati Bengals

[|High School Harry|]

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/nfl/bengals/2024/11/23/remembering-first-bengals-franchise-only-lasted-4-years

 

Remembering the first Cincinnati Bengals franchise, the namesake of the current team

This season marks 87 years since the Cincinnati Bengals first took to the gridiron.

Not today’s Bengals, who date to the 1968 season. The original Bengals were a short-lived professional team from 1937 to 1941.

In the early days of football, upstart leagues competed for both the players and fans of the National Football League. Cincinnati fielded a couple pro football teams, but they couldn’t win games or fans.

Xavier University grad Hal Pennington coached a successful amateur team for the Model Shoe Co. in the Midwest League. In 1937, Queen City Athletics Inc. lured Pennington away from the Cincinnati Models to run its new franchise in the American Football League, one of several leagues to use that name.

 

 

Bengals nickname came from mom’s kitchen

Pennington gave slight variations of how he came up with the nickname Bengals.

“I was in my mom’s kitchen one day,” he told a reporter in 1967, “and on their stove there was a picture of this tiger with the name Bengal above it. I guess it was a trademark or something. Anyway, the tiger in the picture was so animated it inspired me. I figured Bengals would be a good name for the team.”

Football was a different game then, mostly running plays with some passing and no wide receivers. Any of a platoon of runners in the backfield could pass, run or kick. Field goals could be dropkicked or kicked from placement. And everyone played on both offense and defense.

Perhaps the most popular Bengal was William Henry Harrison “Tippy” Dye, a three-sport star who earned nine letters at Ohio State University. At 5-foot-7 and 140 pounds, the diminutive footballer was a “mighty mite” at left halfback, the position in the Bengals' game plan that got the most snaps.

 

Bengals start off with a victory

Postponed by a rainout, the Bengals’ debut was Tuesday, Oct. 5, 1937, against the Pittsburgh Americans. Some 7,500 attended the night game under the floodlights of Crosley Field, which only two years earlier had lit up the first night baseball game.

The Bengals started strong, blanking the Amerks, 21-0. Starting back Bob Wilke ran for large gains and threw for a score, while fullback Don Geyer rushed for a touchdown and kicked two extra points. Ben Ciccone returned an interception 58 yards for a touchdown.

The rest of the season didn’t live up to the promising start, as Cincinnati went 0-4-2 against the Rochester Tigers, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Bulldogs. They beat the Boston Shamrocks and then crushed the Atlanta Crackers, 36-7, in a nonleague game, for a fourth-place finish.

Even a charity game against the College All-Stars didn’t go their way as the pros lost 6-3 at snow-covered Nippert Stadium.

The seasons that followed

The league folded at the end of the season, but the Bengals continued as an independent team under Dana King after Pennington returned to the Models, which was then renamed the Blades.

The Bengals won six straight in 1938, even defeating a couple NFL teams. The next season they finished second before defecting to yet another AFL, where they won only twice in two years.

Their final game was a 13-7 loss to the New York Americans on Nov. 30, 1941. The following Sunday the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. By the next season, many players were out fighting a war, and the league closed up.

Several Bengals found success elsewhere. Pennington became a legendary coach of amateur baseball in Cincinnati, notching 1,500 wins and a record four National Amateur Baseball Federal World Series titles.

 

A tradition in stripes

Wiethe popped up in Bengals lore again in 1967, leading a group competing for the new football franchise in Cincinnati. Had Wiethe’s bid been chosen, the Cincinnati Romans, in white helmets with laurel wreaths, might have taken the field at Riverfront Stadium.

Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown was awarded the AFL expansion team instead. It joined the NFL in 1970 when the leagues merged.

Brown said he picked the name Bengals – over the more popular choice Buckeyes – to give the team a link with past professional football in Cincinnati. “If we can pick up a thread of tradition, we think it’s good,” Brown said at the time. “We feel at home with the name Bengals.”

 

Notable Cincinnati football teams

Cincinnati Celts (1908-23): The first professional football team in Cincinnati. Played the 1921 season in the American Professional Football Association, the year before it became the NFL.

Cincinnati Reds (1933-34): Set records for the lowest points scored in an NFL season. Shut out in 12 of their 18 games before being suspended for failure to pay league dues in the middle of the 1934 season.

Cincinnati Models/Blades (1934-38): Played at Northside Ball Park. Despite having the best record, lost two Midwest League championship games to the Louisville Tanks.

Cincinnati Bengals (1937-41): Played their first season at Crosley Field, then moved to Xavier University Stadium.

Cincinnati Bengals (1968-present): Played in Super Bowls 16, 23 and 56, losing to the San Francisco 49ers in the first two and the Los Angeles Rams in the latter.