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9 most likely future Cincinnati Bengals arrests
12/19/06
by Clay

I'm rooting for the Cincinnati Bengals to keep getting arrested. Provided they continue to only injure themselves, that is.

The Bengals are like a pitcher in the midst of a reverse perfect game. I almost feel like even writing a column about them dooms the team to become law-abiding. I'm not alone in this either. I think just about everyone my own age sort of takes a perverse pleasure and pride in the Bengals being so clutch when it comes to getting pinched.

When you hit the first, second and third arrests, people react with disdain. Sort of like if you're a pitcher, and you give up three home runs to consecutive batters. The crowd is jeering you, everyone wants a new pitcher, and you regret the day this pitcher ever began baseball. Then, another home run by the opposing team, and another, and pretty soon you start thinking, "Wow, they've really got something going here."

It's not good, but it's attention grabbing. And you kind of hate to see it end.

Right now the Bengals are like the shell-shocked pitcher who has been left on the mound for too long and has given up eight consecutive homers. I know the pitcher should be pulled, but I'm getting a perverse delight out of seeing how this is going to end. Again, provided no one gets hurt.

That's because this season there have already been eight Bengals arrested. Or, as Chad Johnson calls it, ocho. This is out of a 53 players. Or an arrest rate of about 15 percent. For comparison's sake, in Season 6 of The Sopranos the arrest rate for the main characters was 10 percent (Uncle June). It has gotten so bad that Portland Trail Blazers executives are telling Bengals jokes.

Matching the Bengals' lawlessness in almost any field of employment is difficult. Maybe prostitutes, low-level drug dealers, squeegee men and CEOs of major American companies have higher incidents of arrest, but outside of these fields, it's hard to find anyone to come even remotely close. For instance, 15 United States senators would have to be arrested to match the Bengals' arrest rate. Fifteen. If just three Senators were arrested, people on television would be screaming that we were in the midst of a Constitutional crisis.

You'd even need a little more than two NBA players on a 15-man roster to match the Bengals, proportion-wise. Wait, just two? Maybe the Bengals are getting a bad rap. There might not be a single NBA team without two players who've been arrested in the past year. Perhaps Marvin Lewis's new response when he's questioned about this should be: "If we were an NBA team, we'd be the best-behaved in the country." This seems like a winning strategy to me.

But what I love most of all about the Bengals' arrests is it makes me think about all the things the players must be getting away with. Despite what you hear from people when they get arrested, hardly anyone gets arrested the first time they stray off the straight and narrow.

Think about your own personal life, or that of your friends when you were in your 20s. If you've ever known anyone who has been arrested, you can think of about 10 things off the top of your head that they could have also been arrested for but weren't. Maybe 100. I guarantee it. If only we knew all the things the Bengals are getting away with. Sigh.

The Bengals' inability to keep their players out of jail is rapidly becoming the most interesting off-the-field issue in the NFL since the Minnesota Vikings took a boat cruise. And it couldn't happen in a more conservative city. Remember, Larry Flynt's cases for violating obscenity all spiraled out of the Cincinnati area. There's probably not an NFL city outside of Green Bay that can stomach these arrests any less. Prediction: If a Bengals sex tape gets released, it's going to end up at the Supreme Court somehow.

Since a future Bengals arrest is bound to happen, we decided to give you the nine most likely things that a Cincinnati player will be arrested for next.

1. Resisting arrest outside a Waffle House. Thus far, Waffle House has been glaringly absent from Bengals arrest details. This is shocking to me. Here in Nashville, it seems like Waffle House is mentioned in 75 percent of all arrests occurring after 3 in the morning. I've been to Cincinnati several times and there is no dearth of Waffle Houses in the community. So this is bound to happen soon.

Why would any Bengal want to disturb the peace of this place?

2. Trying to take a Taser on a team flight. I guarantee this is going to happen in athletics in the next year. Somehow the Bengals seem like the most likely violators.

Try taking THIS taser on a plane.

3. Laser pointers. When I was in college, one kid in my dorm at GW had a high-tech laser pointer (he was really cool) and he used to shine it out his window at people on the street, so they would think they were about to be shot by someone with a high-tech scope. This was pretty entertaining to watch. Especially if you had a couple of beers. People would hit the ground, roll, dive, you name it. Everyone thought they were about to die. Well, the fun ended for that guy when the Secret Service paid a visit to his dorm room. Yeah, going to school three blocks from the White House can do that for you. It wasn't nearly as bad as the kid who got busted by the Secret Service for selling fake IDs to other college kids. This was the rough equivalent of getting arrested by the SWAT team for jaywalking.

4. DWB (Driving While a Bengal). Pretty soon Cincinnati cops will be able to satisfy probable cause requirements by writing "Plays for Bengals" on their warrant requests.

Awww, cute kitty!

5. Failure to pay for Tickle Me Elmo dolls. Even though my friend Amir has assured me that the TME market is not that intense, no one wants to wait in those lines in department stores. But most people do. Bengals players won't.

Sometimes, Clay, I just don't get you.

6. Speeding in Kentucky. There is no state I would least rather drive in than Kentucky, where stopping people for speeding seems to be the entire purpose of state law enforcement. It's uncanny how many cops there are whose entire job seems to be waiting for me to make my once-every-four-months drive through their state. This is actually the legitimate reason my wife and I are flying to Michigan for the holidays. Because it's cheaper than having to pay the speeding tickets that will inevitably ensue once I dare to floor it and hit 75 mph through the state. Bengals players will break 100, trust me.

7. Breaking something with a Wii controller. This has evidently become an epidemic. Several readers have sent me links to people destroying their property and the property of others. According to wiihaveaproblem.com, the current tally for the new Nintendo controller is 13 television sets, three ceiling fans, two laptops and one window. If I were a Bengal, this would happen to me: I'd be playing Madden just when an officer walked by on patrol and got slammed by my controller flying through the shattered window. Bang, booked for assault and battery. And no one would believe me as to how it happened.

8. Paintball guns: Back in the days before everyone was presumed to be armed and dangerous or a terrorist, we used to shoot each other with paintball guns all the time in public. Admittedly this was stupid, but as long as you wore a mask, it was pretty entertaining. I'm betting paintball guns are popular with the Bengals, and I'm also betting that somehow this breaks the law.

On this wall is every dork's biggest dream.

9. Child support delinquency: Judges are really cracking down on this, and somehow I think there are probably quite a few players with support checks to take care of.

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