Wednesday, a curious thing happened with the Cincinnati Bengals.
The team tweeted an innocent-looking picture of a snowy Paul Brown Stadium with the tag “Is it September yet?” and racked up a little more than 800 likes.
Then deleted it.
Normally this might not seem like such a big deal. Social media accounts — and even team accounts — delete tweets when there is a mistake or something wrong.
But this one was interesting because astute fans quickly zoomed in on the image and noticed the stadium bowl video board listed off the names of a few franchise legends: Anderson, Krumrie and Munoz.
Blake Jewell captured the side-by-side:
Uhhhh pic.twitter.com/7eB7eAk4X2
— Blake Jewell (@BlakeJewellNFL) February 10, 2021
It wasn’t long before local media ran with the story too:
Is a Ring of Honor coming to Paul Brown Stadium?
Our video shows a clearer picture of what could be in the making. More tonight at 10 on @fox19. #Bengals pic.twitter.com/b8GWxp6xwC
— Jeremy Rauch (@FOX19Jeremy) February 11, 2021
The knee-jerk reaction is that the Bengals are finally creating a Ring of Honor for their franchise greats. A newer franchise like the Houston Texans has a Ring of Honor, so it has been a point of angst for the fanbase for a long, long time.
The Bengals, for what it’s worth, have remained radio silent on the topic. They didn’t even try to put out a replacement tweet.
Maybe this is nothing. Maybe the names are placeholders while they work on something. But with new jerseys already on the way this spring, it would be fitting if the organization finally modernized in this fashion too.
