Paul Brown Stadium – Cincinnati, OH (5/31)

Sunday October 16th, 2011. Week 6 Colts vs Bengals

Paul Brown Stadium’s location makes it unique, which adds a fun dynamic for those visiting from out-of-town. The Stadium sits right along the Ohio River with the Great American Ballpark (home of the Reds) just down the street and Covington, KY just a bridge away. We stayed at Radisson Hotel Cincinnati Riverfront in Covington, KY just across the river and still close enough to see the stadium from our hotel room (no complaints, definitely recommend staying there). We learned pretty quickly that Newport/Covington, KY and Cincinnati, OH are treated, for the most part, as one big city. Getting away from football for a minute – Covington and Newport, KY are full of prohibition, organized crime and “early Vegas” American history. We highly recommend taking one of their walking tours through the city. We did and wish we had time to do more.

Once we got settled it took all of 4 hours since being in Cincinnati for me to want chili. We headed to the famous Camp Washington Chili and had a “5-Way” for lunch.

Later that night after our food comas and walking tour we took a dinner cruise on the Ohio River. If you’re ever there – it’s a good time. Great scenery.

Paul Brown Stadium on the left, Great American Ballpark on the right

Now on to football.

I dragged us both to the stadium pretty early but there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot going on. The tailgate areas are spread out a bit, taking away from the experience, but there was a “tailgate zone” run by the team that was pretty cool. Lauren showed up a bunch of kids by successfully kicking a few field goals. As one could have predicted, she was met with comments like, “You should try out!” and “We’d rather have you back there for us!” Fan morale was pretty average, and even though we were a few hours away from kickoff there wasn’t really anybody in the lots yet. Safe to say the tailgate scene was pretty crappy, so we made our way around the stadium to check it out.

It was coming up to 10am, so we wanted to make our way into the stadium and have a look around. The gates weren’t open yet, so we waited. We were entertained, though, by watching the athletes drive in through the gate. Every car was stopped by police and drug dogs circled the car before they let them pass through. Fans were in the parking lot across the street, one of them had a megaphone and ripped on virtually every player that came through. It was hilarious. In one case a rookie (whom I can’t remember) was dropped off by his mom and received the very worst best of the insults hurled that day. As it got closer to 11am, we went up to the gates again to head in but were told they were not open yet. WHAT?! How in the hell can you not let people in when kickoff is in 1 hour? I was a little angry but we got in at 11 and hurried to the concessions to get a beer and take our seats.

Since Bengals fans don’t like going to Bengals games we were abe to get 2nd row seats on the 10 yard line for pretty cheap.

To our surprise, nobody was on the field yet and the stadium was about 25% full 50 minutes before kickoff (which didn’t say much, because that stadium only got to about 50% full at its peak). Before going into full freak-out mode my wife and I had an epiphany. We were so used to being on central time that we forgot the game doesn’t start until 1pm EST!! We felt incredibly stupid, but we couldn’t deny the hilarity. Since we had an extra hour and 50 minutes to waste, we got wasted. Made friends with the beer girls and even used their phone charger for a bit.

Suddenly, a wild Manning forehead appeared:

Peyton Manning was still out with a neckiotomy, but was cool enough to sign autographs for the Colts fans who made their way up

When the Bengals were introduced they came out to “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns ‘N’ Roses… a little cheap, but I get it. They also nicknamed Paul Brown Stadium “The Jungle”, although I didn’t hear anybody refer to it as such. There wasn’t anything too exciting, enthusiastic or spectacular until Andy Dalton and A.J. Green were introduced. Bengals fans love that odd couple, and with good reason. Ginger and Ebony lit it up early for a touchdown.

The Bengals ran away with it early only to have Curtis Painter storm back to get them within a field goal. Buuuuut the Colts carried on this season as they have all season – Nate Clements blocked that FG and Carlos Dunlap ran it back for a TD to secure the win. Womp, womp, wahhhhhh…

Paul Brown Stadium is very nice, and I had no idea it was built as recently as it was. The stadium opened in 2000 and the amenities reflected that. It was very well maintained, easy to navigate and they even had escalators to get to the 2nd and 3rd levels of seats (although barely occupied)… outside! (as seen in the picture above – top left). Say whatever you want, I thought that was pretty damn cool.

The fans were great and the fan experience was fun but admittedly nowhere near the enthusiasm seen in Chicago, Green Bay or New Orleans. We had a great time at the game and also exploring the surrounding areas. We’ve only been to a limited number of stadiums so far, but Cincinnati definitely seemed like one of the better places to be in terms of finding things to do outside of the stadium (except New Orleans, that place is a party 24/7). Nice stadium, great city(ies), fun people, fantastic chili.