Bengals Don't Waste Any Time Getting Terrell Owens Playbook Ready

The news of Terrell Owens signing with the Bengals is less than 18 hours old, but as you can see in the picture above, the team wasted no time in getting T.O.'s playbook ready.

The funniest thing about the playbook picture above is this: take a gander at Chad's playbook. The man changed his last name to Ochocinco two years ago, but Marvin Lewis doesn't seem to care, the playbook still says "Chad Johnson."

By the way as Chad sauntered in to Georgetown today for training camp, he had a bold statement for reporters, telling them it would be "a fucking shame if we don't win the Super Bowl."

So now you're probably wondering, "great, Chad thinks we're going to win a Super Bowl, that must mean every game is a sellout this this year, right?"

Geoff Hobson over at Bengals.com has this report from the Bengals ticket office:

Andrew Brown, director of ticket sales, said Wednesday morning that since the news of Owens' signing broke Tuesday night the Bengals have sold more season tickets than they did all last week combined. Brown called action "brisk but not overwhelming," and said single-game tickets have also spiked with the Sept. 19 home opener against the Ravens in the lead. The Nov. 8 Monday night game against the Steelers has already been hot and Brown says tickets are limited.

It sounds like Brown is saying the Bengals sold eight season tickets last week and they have beaten that total by already selling nine this week.

Oh and one more thing: to the people in the Bengals front office: If the negotiation team worked half as fast as the playbook production team, Jermaine Gresham would have been signed the day after the draft.

T.O. to the Bengals is Only a Signature Away From Happening

Just what the world needed: the new TMZ Sports Department to start gaining credibility. On the totem pole of respectable sports sites, TMZ ranks right below us and right above this blog. However, thanks to their Terrell Owens report Friday, they are slowly moving up.

On Friday, the same website that shows live feeds of Linsday Lohan court hearings, one upped everyone in the NFL world (Adam Schefter, Everyone at ESPN, Profootballtalk, Chris Mortensen, Jay Glazer, Jason La Canfora, Peter King) when they reported that Terrell Owens signing with the Bengals was 'imminent.'

(Was Adam Schefter asleep at the wheel when the T.O. rumors started. ESPN's favorite insider refuted TMZ's initial Terrell Owens to the Bengals report)

After TMZ broke the news, every sports reporter in the country laughed at them, then they laughed some more and then when they were finally done laughing, they 'rebuked' the Terrell Owens to the Bengals story with their own 'sources.'

Today, it looks like TMZ's tip paid off. At 4:42 p.m., Enquirer Bengals beat writer Joe Reedy tweeted:

Why did this all happen?

Why didn't we just sign T.O. in March?

Great questions.

Back in March, the Bengals went with Antonio Bryant, even though everybody knows that there are middle school chess players with more receiving talent than Antonio Bryant.

The Bengals finally realized this and now they're trying to bring T.O. to town.

Anyway, lets just point out one more thing: there is a currently someone on the Bengals coaching staff that is going to have a resume that looks like this:

Convinced Cincinnati to sign untalented, washed up receiver Laveranues Coles to completely overpriced contract.

Convinced Cincinnati to sign untalented, washed up receiver Antonio Bryant to completely overpriced contract.

Alright, we're going to close with this, here's our final take from Bryant's March signing, as we wrote on March 10:

Final Take: If we were Mike Brown, besides selling the team to a really rich, win-at-all costs owner, we would probably have gone with T.O. It would have been cheaper and we would have only had to sign him to a one or two year deal.

Coming tomorrow: TNT NBA sideline reporter Craig Sager doesn't just wear ridiculous outfits on the basketball court, he wears them on the golf course.