And so it begins.

The 2018 football season is here.  I type these words as I sit on the couch mashing the channels between the Bengals vs. the Bears and the Giants vs. the Browns.

The first pro football game I attended was a preseason game at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati.  The Bengals were playing the Packers that night.  The Packers had a new coach, Bart Starr.  My Dad and I sat alone in wooden folding chairs on a concrete floor with a roof over our heads as we hung on the wall and looked over South goalpost. Don’t ask me how we got there.  I was seven years old. It was great.  I got to watch my hero, Ken Anderson, play for a while before giving way to John Reaves.

The Bengals.

I have been asked on occasion, over the years I have written speaktherights.com, questions like “Where did you come up with that?”

Now and again I do find an artifact.  In 1981 the Cincinnati Bengals changed their uniforms.  They had old  jersey’s with normal horizontal stripes.  Their old helmets said BENGALS on the sides.  That all changed in 1981.  They put Bengal Tiger stripes on the helmets and on the sleeves.  I was thirteen years old the day I looked in the Courier-Journal to see the report of the Bengals first preseason game of the season against the Tampa Bay Bucs.  This is what I saw:

It was my first glimpse at the Bengals new uniforms.  There was no twitter and no ESPN 2 or NFL Network.

I must admit I was not impressed.  Or was I?  I did cut the picture out after all.  I cut out many that season.  It was my favorite NFL season of all time.  It was the greatest season of all time.  I know I have written this before.  I will again.  Super Bowl XVI on January 24th  of 1982 was played between the Cincinnati Bengals and the San Francisco 49ers.  In the 1981 regular season the Bengals were 12-4 and the Niners were 13-3.  The year before they were both 6-10.  Never before had the NFL seen such a turnaround.  Hasn’t seen one since either.  It was a special season.  Glad I was there.

Today I told my friend and colleague, Hal Pearson, that I rarely feel old.  I told Hal I attribute that to a few things.  Attitude is important.  You know, that you’re only as old as you feel thing.  Another thing I have going for me, and I have said it before, I have easily held on the music of my youth.  I first saw Justin Hayward sing Nights in White Satin when I was eighteen years old.  Justin had just turned forty.  Later this month Carrie and I plan on hearing Justin sing that song again.  I am 50.  Justin will be 72 this year.

I admitted to Hal today that I felt old.  It seems like yesterday.  It was twenty years ago.  How?

Carrie and I were living in New Salisbury’s Briarwood subdivision between New Salisbury and Central Barren.  We didn’t have any fancy TV.  We had an antennae that sat inside a metal tube that was not on the house but on the ground and you could grab the antennae pole and turn it.  Twenty years ago I turned it to the North and prayed a picture would come in.  The Hail Mary was answered.  You had to sit back from the TV set a bit but the picture was there.

It was Peyton Manning’s first game with the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts were playing against the homestanding Seattle Seahawks.  His first pass was a touchdown.  I was watching that night and it just doesn’t seem like that long ago.  I was 30.  It was a long time ago.

Tonight the Colts are playing at Seattle.

Ken Anderson and Peyton Manning, the man who made football in Indiana,  may not be playing football anymore, but Justin Hayward sounds better than ever!

I’m still young.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson