On Tuesday night’s episode of the “T.Ocho Show,”Chad Ochocinco discussed the possibility of not returning to the Bengals. He sees “significant” changes being made for the 2011 season and he doesn’t know if the team will retain him.
From the Cincinnati Enquirer:
Says Ochocinco about next season: “I’d love to see Terrell come back next year. As far as myself, I don’t even know if I’ll be back next year. … Changes will be made and they’ll be significant.”
Some pundits believe that the Bengals are unlikely to pick up Ocho’s $6 million option for next year. The team has to make decisions about whether or not to retain other key offensive players such as Cedric Benson and Carson Palmer and may not want to spend $6 million to keep a receiver when a makeover is paramount.
Offensively, the Bengals have been inconsistent the past two years. The one thing they had going for them on that side of the ball last year was that they could run. But after spending the offseason trying to upgrade the passing game with the additions of T.O. and rookie tight end Jermaine Gresham, the entire offense has taken a step backwards. Now Cincinnati is to the point where it has to consider gutting the whole thing and starting from scratch.
Will that require jettisoning players like Ochocinco and Palmer? Maybe.
You may have hated his brash attitude, the way he ran his team or the way he conducted his business. You may even feel that he ruined baseball. But regardless of how you may have felt about him, there’s little denying that George Steinbrenner will forever be one of Major League Baseball’s icons. Steinbrenner passed away in July of this year. He will forever be a man known for helping revolutionize the business side of baseball by being the first owner to sell TV cable rights to the MSG Network. When things eventually went south with MSG, he created the YES Network, which is currently the Yankees’ very own TV station that generates millions in revenue. During his tenure, he took the Yankees from a $10 million franchise to a $1.2 billion juggernaut. In 2005, the Yankees became the first professional sports franchise to be worth an estimated one billion dollars. While many baseball fans came to despise the way he ran his team (mainly because he purchased high priced free agents with reckless abandon due to the fact that he could and others couldn’t), don’t miss the message he often made year in and year out: The Yankees are here to win. He didn’t line his pockets with extra revenue (albeit he generated a lot of extra revenue for his club) – he dumped his money back into the on-field product. Losing wasn’t acceptable and if the Bombers came up short one year, you could bet that Steinbrenner would go after the best talent in the offseason, regardless of what others thought of the approach. How many Pirates and Royals fans wish they had an owner with the same appetite for victory?