It would be nice if someone got a little more creative with his rips. A reference to our city's crummy public schools, say, or a mention of Damon Lynch would indicate a little homework had been done. But never mind. We beat on ourselves enough here, we don't need outside help. Save it for someplace smug, like San Francisco. Or, you know, Denver.

Maybe today it will stop.

We've taken so many shots to the pride that we've been on a 12-year Advil bender. Something has to give. Maybe today it's the Denver Broncos at Paul Brown Stadium.

Why not? If it's possible for a team and a town to drag each other down for 12 solid years - and we've certainly shown that it is - why can't it work the other way, too?

"The potential," Oliver Gibson said, "is unlimited."

Believe what you want. Marvin Lewis isn't going to eradicate 12 years of neglect in one feel-good season. Lewis is a football coach, not the termite man. It will take him at least two years to get the players he wants and to get rid of those he doesn't.

But Lewis has a vision that extends beyond kow-towing to management. And management, in a move of genius desperation, is letting him follow it. The hope is real for a change. Why not run with it?

I took December off from the Bengals last season, because I'd run out of pain medication and synonyms for "lousy." I'm sick of complaining about the team and the city. I want to see some unlimited potential unleashed.

Can we get on with it? Please?

"That (2-14) taste is already gone," quarterback Jon Kitna said.

Amen, chief.

The Bengals are better. They practice better. They play harder. Their jobs aren't so secure. The man in charge is finally the man in charge. What an opportunity. What a chance for a team to wipe clean its perception slate and haul the town up with it. It's about damned time.

A football team can inspire a city as easily as it can drag it down. It can become so much a part of the local identity, we're willing to pass a billion-dollar tax levy to keep it around. Unless you're a beauty queen like San Francisco, or so self-absorbed you don't need the rest of the country's approval - see L.A. and New York - your town's perception is going to be smeared with a little Sunday afternoon sod and dirt.

The rest of the country doesn't know about the restaurants in Mount Adams or the schools in Wyoming or the ease of living in a (mostly) safe, orderly place. They just know the Bungles stink.

In Cincinnati, team and town have been joined with bad news so long, it's impossible to say which ship has sunk faster.

Dave Shula or downtown retail?

Bruce Coslet or Over-the-Rhine?

Dick LeBeau or police-community relations?

"When you're from here, the first thing people ask you about is the riot," Gibson said. "The second thing is the football team and why it's so bad."

Gibson has played in Pittsburgh; Lewis grew up there. Both know the impact the Steelers have had. Twenty years ago, the steel industry started to die. Unemployment hung over Pittsburgh the way coal soot once did. But the football team won four rings in a decade.

The town shared in the glory and recovered. Now, town and team are joined at the psyche. "The Steelers came from nowhere and turned around an organization and a city," Lewis said.

That can happen here and now, can't it? It has been so long since we woke up on a fall Monday morning with anything better than fear and loathing, it seems a permanent condition. It has to stop sometime. Why not now?

"In the grand scheme of things you'd like to think it was just football. But people take pride," Kitna said.

Said Willie Anderson: "This city is still going through some things right now, just like this football team. I don't know if a lot of guys have been here long enough to know how bad this city has taken it over the head. But they would say, 'Let's give the city something to root for.' "

So let's skip a day of self-abuse, shall we? Let's celebrate a team that has a chance to redeem itself and lift up the city along with it. The Bengals could do themselves and us a huge favor today by winning a game no one thinks they can win.

Then we can crack on Denver.

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E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com

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