THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

Like Loverboy rhapsodized all those years ago...Everybody's working for the weekend.....

I don't think the University of Cincinnati has the horses (or the riders) to beat Oklahoma. But I don't think this game Saturday night at Paul Brown Stadium will be the blowout that a lot of national pundits are predicting. UC is having a hard time blocking people and it's secondary was shredded by North Carolina State last week. But the Bearcats will get a little 'juice' from the hometown crowd and OU doesn't travel all that well. But I don't see a lot of scenarios where teh Bearcats come out with a "W".....

I'm embarrassed by what the Ohio University mascot did on the field at Ohio Stadium last Saturday. While a lot of the country found it amusing, I found the 19 year old inside of that costume, Brandon Hanning, to be nothing short of an idiot. He claims that he took the job as team mascot, over a year ago, just for the opportunity to tackle the OSU mascot, Brutus. In a number of other areas of life, that would be tantamount to stalking with serious implications. What's worse is that the Ohio University athletic department allowed a non-student (Hanning has since transferred to nearby Hocking College) to continue in the role of playing the team mascot. In a number of other businesses, that would be cause for dismissal of someone, in this case whomever was charged with assembling cheerleaders and mascots. I'm still waiting to see something like that from a guy I admire a lot, school president Dr. Roderick McDavis....

I fielded a lot of phone calls after the Bengals beat the Ravens last Sunday on 1530 ESPN and the Bengals radio network from fans who are convinced the real problem with the Bengals offense is Carson Palmer. Callers insisted that either Palmer was over rated, or his elbow is still bothering him or that he was running scared from his knee injury five years ago and those were the reasons why the Bengals offense has been non-existant so far this season. Here's some breaking news: the problem isn't Palmer. It's his line. It can't pass block. Further, the Ravens defense will make a lot of good quarterbacks look bad this season. So will the Steelers defense.

Palmer isn't an elite quarterback right now. He's a top 10 quarterback, but not among the top three or four. He could still get there. But the problem with the Bengals offense isn't its quarterback. You'd want Jordan Palmer playing instead? Arnold Palmer might be better than that.

Good wishes to Mark Dantonio, who like me, just found out how mortal we all are. Dantonio's heart attack after his Spartans beat Notre Dame last Saturday night resulted in doctors placing a stent in one of his veins. Dantonio will heal and be back coaching soon. Trust me, it gets better. But watching him pull a play out of Brian Kelly's book to beat Kelly's Irish had to be particulary gratifying for Dantonio. Kelly won at UC, largely, on Dantonio's recruiting. Kelly's first BCS bowl team, the 2008 squad, was heavily populated with Dantonio recruits.

Imagine how UC fans had to feel watching that MSU-Notre Dame game, with both of their former head coaches competing against each other on national television. No disrespect to Butch Jones, who may someday be in Kelly and Dantonio's league, but the sight of those two slugging it out in East Lansing with UC sitting at a very shaky 1-2 had to be tough for Bearcats fans.

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