THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

I was thinking about this the other day, reading some of the quotes that Ocho Cinco had about how under appreciated he is here in our town. He’ll talk to anyone about it, stop him at the Kroger, he’ll talk to you, unless you work for the local media. Because apparently to him, we’re just pond scum.

But I was thinking about how all of this could backfire on Chad Johnson. He doesn’t have to go too far back in history to see what happens to a local sports hero who’ve done what he’s doing now. Carl Pickens comes to mind.

That guy was a great, great talent. Big, solidly built, hard to bring down, good speed. Hated playing here. Hated it. But he kept signing contracts.

Corey Dillon was a great, great talent. Big, solidly built, like Pickens, hard to bring down. Long about 1999, hated playing here. Absolutely hated it. The ‘flipping burgers’ thing was priceless. But he kept cashing the checks.

Now comes Johnson. He’s certainly not as bitter as Pickens and Dillon were. But maybe we should give him some time. Or more money.

But here’s the problem. Cincinnati, so far as I can tell, isn’t a super star town. Never has been, probably never will be. Cincinnati is a team town. Love the team, hate the supers star. We’ll take hustle and a dirty uniform over super star who behaves like one. It explains why we become so infatuated by Norris Hopper and Ryan Freel and so infuriated with Ken Griffey Junior. Freel can run into a wall, or the stands or Hopper’s elbow and miss half a season and we call it great hustle. Junior can dislocate a shouldar diving for a fly ball and we’ll get deluged with calls at this radio station about how he’s always hurt.

Super stars seem to have trouble here: Boomer, Eric Davis, Not all. Anthony Munoz and Chris Sabo come to mind. But a lot of them do.

Mostly, it’s about team in Cincinnati. The ’75 Reds had great individual players, hall of famers, but who was better? Rose or Morgan? Bench or Concepcion? We remember the 75 Reds, the 76 Reds, the 90 Reds. Team first, individual player after that. In the bigger towns, New York, Chicago, LA, it tends to be the opposite. It’s Reggie, Sammy, Roger, Pedro. Maybe it’s because bigger towns can afford bigger names and have more media outlets than we do in Cincinnati. But it seems like they love their super stars first, their teams second.

I like it the way it is here. Nothing, no one should be bigger than the team. If you make headlines, you should make them helping the team win.

Chad Johnson has made a lot headlines helping the Bengals win. Great touchdown catches, fun celebrations in the end zone, great quote machine in the locker room.

But it seems as though the minute an athlete in Cincinnati starts making headlines more about himself than about the team he plays for, that’s when the trouble begins. I sense that the trouble has already begun for Ocho Cinco. It’s not too late to fix it. I just wonder if he knows that, or if it matters to him.