Doc: Bengals deserve everything they get with Mixon

Every so often in this business, we cling to the notion that character matters in professional sports. It keeps us from losing our minds.

There has to be a suggestion of nobility in our games. Something that uplifts and elevates. Something that makes us feel better for having been there. These players are “our guys.’’ These teams are a big stitch in our local fabric. Especially in smaller cities where options for civic sporting pride are limited. How many years has Cincinnati been defined, in part, by the Big Red Machine?

We like to think our sports teams represent who we are. It doesn’t matter how silly that sounds. It’s what we believe. These guys get paid to play games in Cincinnati, not be Cincinnatians. No matter. We want them to make us proud.

How do you feel about the Cincinnati Bengals today?

How did you feel when you saw Anthony Munoz at the podium Friday night, announcing Joe Mixon as a Cincinnati Bengal? I felt like crying.

Get on the Internet. Google “Joe Mixon punch.’’ Watch the clip. Ask yourself how you’ll feel cheering for this guy. Your guy.

When winning is all that matters, winning no longer matters.

The Bengals have forfeited any and all rights to the word “character’’ as a descriptive. They have lost all remaining sympathy from anyone who still believed Cincinnati’s miscreants were no different than any other team’s miscreants.

They have perpetuated an image and they have done it willingly. They have done it for a quarter century. At least. Mike Brown picked up Jess Phillips from prison in August 1968. Phillips had done time for check forgery. Mike drove him to training camp.

This isn’t a rant against Joe Mixon. His actions were despicable. That doesn’t make him despicable today. No one’s life should be defined by a heinous act at age 18. It’s about the Bengals. Your hometown football team.

We could list the conga line of second-chancers and probationers the Bengals have enabled over the decades. We could remind everyone that the Bengals have been a punch line for what they’ve done and who they’ve been. But you know that already.

In situations like this, a team needs to get at least half the equation right. It’s like a college football or basketball coach whose team lands in NCAA jail. If his team wins a championship by cheating, most fans would take the punishment. The Bengals haven’t won a championship.

My e-mail and Twitter exploded last night. Most writers expressed indignation. Some praised the pick. “Just win, baby,’’ one person typed. But this isn’t war. It’s not cancer. It’s football. Victory at any cost isn’t the objective. There has to be some connection greater than winning games.

We take our sports personally here. When Baseball went on strike in 1994, some of us never came back to the game. Baseball was doing this to us, and our guys were complicit. Not surprisingly, our favorite Bengals have been good people, too. Or at least that was our perception. Ken Anderson, Isaac Curtis, Reggie Williams. Dave Lapham. Boomer and Sam and so on. And Anthony Munoz, bigger than life, in all ways. These were good players who stood for something larger than winning football games.

We didn’t just embrace their football triumphs, because their teams didn’t have many of those. We embraced them as people. Especially if they stayed here after their careers were over. They were who we liked to think we were.

Think of the Big Red Machine. What’s the image? Accomplished, modest, responsible, professional, diligent. Us.

Who are the Cincinnati Bengals today?

What sort of connection do you feel with them?

Who knows the Bengals actual thinking when it came to drafting Joe Mixon. Who knows where coaches and front-office types stood. Mike Brown doesn’t like being told he can’t or shouldn’t do something. He enjoys doing the opposite. Marvin Lewis said, “I don’t know who isn't disgusted with what they saw’’ on the restaurant video. But he made the pick, anyway.

“That's one day in a young man's life, and he's had to live that since then and he will continue to have to live that,’’ Lewis said. “He gets an opportunity to move forward and write his script from then on."

As he should. It just shouldn’t have been here.

(And by the way, the woman’s name is Amelia. Amelia Molitor. No one mentioned her Friday night. Her life matters, too. Her future counts.)

On his conference call to the media, Mixon said the punch that broke four bones in Amelia Molitor’s face and sent her to the hospital, “changed me a lot as a person, the way you think, the way you carry yourself, go about things.’’

Then last November, he tore up a parking ticket, threw it in attendant’s face and according to the complaint, "inched (his vehicle) at the officer. . . to intimidate the officer.’’

The Bengals own Joe Mixon now. They deserve everything they get.