Cincinnati Bengals

The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are currently members of the North Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). Their first season, 1968, was as an American Football League franchise, but they joined the NFL as part of the 1970 AFL-NFL Merger, which had actually been agreed to in 1966.

The Bengals conduct summer training camp at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky and play home games in Paul Brown Stadium.

Founding
In 1967, an ownership group led by legendary former Cleveland Browns and Ohio State Buckeye head coach, Paul Brown, himself a Massilon, OH, native, after having been out of football for five years after his firing from the Browns by then-owner Art Modell, was granted a franchise in the American Football League (AFL). Brown named the team the Cincinnati Bengals in order "to give it a link with past professional football in Cincinnati." Another Bengals team had existed in the city and played in three previous American Football Leagues from 1937 to 1941. The city's world-renowned zoo was also home to a rare white Bengal Tiger.

Possibly as an insult to Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell, Paul Brown (whose namesake was picked as the Browns nickname) chose the exact shade of orange (actually a slightly darker tangerine like color) used by his former team. He added black as the secondary color.