THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

The Bengals are 0-5. No NFL team has started a season 0-5 and made the playoffs. So we can officially end that charade right now. Five games into this season, the Bengals are four games off the AFC North lead, in a one playoff team division at best. If you were one of those fans who watched the Bengals lose in overtime to the Giants and believed they were real close and showed a lot of improvement, welcome back to us who live in the real world.

This game with Dallas went about the way I thought it would. I predicted, on Sunday Morning Sports Talk on Cincinnati's 700 WLW that the game would be well within the 17 point spread. My theory, factually supported, is that and big underdog team that plays on the road in an opposite conference venue more often than not plays within the spread. The Bengals actually should have won the game.

And it wasn't as though the Cowboys aren't immune to losing back to back home games. It's happened several times in this decade. But it didn't happen Sunday.

NFL.com, incidentally, is reporting that Marvin Lewis has been told by Bengals owner, Mike Brown, that Lewis can remain with the Bengals as long as he wants. That should end speculation that Lewis is about to be fired. Of course, he could always quit. But don't count on that.

I watched, maybe like you did, the UC-Marshall game Friday night. It got me thinking about last season, and how the Bearcats were unbeaten, ranked in the top 25 and students were camping out over night to buy tickets. We called it Kelly-ville on channel 5. The head coach even delivered pizzas to the students waiting over night. I was thinking about this because there are still tickets available, not great seats but still tickets to most of the remaining home games at Nippert.

I think if you’re a UC fan, it’s time to step it up. I’ve conversed with a lot of you this week, by phone, email and in a chat room. I know you’re passionate about your football team. Light a fire under a friend, a neighbor, your brother in law. As good as that team was last season, Brian Kelly is doing, in my opinion, a better job this year than last. What is he down to on the depth chart, a fourth string quarterback. By the end of that game Friday night, Chazz Anderson looked like he got it. Anderson was more poised as the game wore on. He throws a nice ball.

But think of the work the coaching staff had to put in to get Anderson, a red shirt freshman, ready. Was the playbook pared down from the one Dustin Grutza or Tony Pike was using? Kelly says no. I believe him. Which means Anderson, who had a limited amount of practice time, if any, with the first team before the Akron game, made up a lot of ground inside of a short week. That’s coaching.

I admit, I’m ‘in the tank’ for Kelly. In over 30 years of covering sports, I’ve never seen a head coach work as hard on and off the field, as this guy does. He’s a born salesman. I wanted to throw a shoe trough the television set Friday night. The announcers who were doing the game wouldn’t shut up about how it’s only a matter of time before Kelly moves on to some big time program.

No. UC is a big time football program. But you have to behave that way too. Buy tickets. Don’t let an ESPN camera ever see an empty seat. Take Uncle Harry to the game this Saturday when they play Rutgers.