NFL Bars
Bengal fans spend Sundays on the bricks
By Zach Swartz, Staff Writer
September 16, 2007 | 7:20 p.m.
Every college campus has its rival, and Ohio University is no exception. The thing about OU, however, is that one distinctive rivalry is a little hard to point out.
Drive up Route 33 to Columbus and ask the first person you see who he or she hates the most, and it’s no surprise that the answer will be a Michigander with a choice expletive inserted in front.
Make your way back to Athens and do the same thing, and you’ll get a variety of answers. Saturdays in the A-town are characterized by scarlet-and-gray No. 10 jerseys instead of green-and-white No. 5s, while on Sundays the town will be covered with any variety of yellow, black, orange and brown.
But as big as OU’s big brother Ohio State is around here, it is those surrounding NFL teams that bring the greatest hostility among students in Athens. Hostility among students inherently brings separation among those students. One of the most interesting methods for that separation has evolved over the years in one of OU’s finest staples: the bars.
It is obvious to the patrons who walk into the Red Brick Tavern on Court Street on a Sunday afternoon in the fall that it is not an ordinary weekend. People dressed in orange and black completely blanket the bar and restaurant, and that's not because it's Halloween.
Red Brick is the self-proclaimed and well-recognized Bengals Bar on campus, and it’s proud of it.
This past Monday night dozens of fans packed the bar to watch the Cincinnati Bengals open their season against the Baltimore Ravens. Cincy took the game 27-20, and raucous “Who-Dey”s echoed down Court Street for most of the game. Throughout the game, attendees were more than happy to express their excitement.
“It’s the best place besides BW3’s to watch a game, except here you know you’ll be surrounded by all Bengals fans,” said senior Alli Crago, “It’s obviously the best bar, especially on Sundays when there are a lot of people.”
“It’s a Bengals bar!” agreed junior Nate Lambert. “You’ve got to cheer for your team at the right bar.”
But how did a bar-restaurant combo that is known around Athens for its support of local teams become associated with an NFL club 175 miles away?
Although the tavern has been open in Athens for about eight years, the unofficial alliance with the Bengals began about five years ago, when the managers and employees there were predominantly fans of the team, said Bryan Metzger, assistant manager of the Red Brick.
With that crowd, Bengals games began taking over the televisions in the bar, and fans started to recognize the trend. The bar’s owner today is still a fan of the team, and while he was not at the bar on Monday night, he was showing his support for his team at the game in Cincinnati.
The tavern has evolved into the place to be for fans of the southwestern Ohio team on a Sunday afternoon or Monday night in the fall. The bar offers $2 “mega-Buds” during Bengals games, and on last Monday night during the approximately four-hour time span of the Bengals-Ravens game alone, bartenders believe around $3,000 was brought in just from beverage sales.
Still, the Red Brick’s affiliation remains an unofficial one. Most of the decorations and sports memorabilia that line the walls of the restaurant bear the logos of teams in the Athens area to affirm its local affiliations and declare the tavern as a sports pub.
By no means are all the bar’s employees Bengals fans either. Allison Loy, a server in the restaurant portion of the Red Brick, is from Cleveland, and while she admitted that the atmosphere during Monday night’s game was a wild one, she was not afraid to admit that “the only way it would be worse is if I was at Lucky’s with the Steelers fans.”
But as many students in Athens are well aware, the sight of a student bearing the colors of an opposing AFC North squad is not a pleasant scene, especially when over $3,000 worth of alcohol can be involved.
Early evening last Sunday after most of the season-openers had just ended and the Browns had been spanked by the Steelers (both teams that also uphold pervasive support at OU), one could walk down Court Street and find anything from screaming fans to black and gold jerseys challenging brown and white ones to fight from a block away.
According to Metzger, the hostility of such fans has been mostly avoided over the years by the Red Brick. Despite an article in an Athens newspaper last year that cited Bengals fans storming Court Street after a loss to the Steelers, he said, it has “all been pretty nice” and “[the relationship among fans] has always been very civil, very congenial,” at least in the premises of the bar itself.
This relative nonviolence among fans in the bar scene is the result of the fans secluding themselves in their respective team’s affiliated bar. The Red Brick is not the only NFL-associated bar in Athens; the Cat's Eye has had a long-lasting affiliation with the Browns, while Lucky's is a well-known Steelers hangout.
As most OU students are aware, bars and restaurants line Court Street, so is not hard to find a place to go to see a game and find fellow fans to watch it with, no matter which team you support, even if it’s the San Diego Chargers or the Appalachian State Mountaineers.
OU may lack a dominant athletic program itself, but as long as there are students here, there will always be support for these other teams. And as long as there are fans from Cincinnati, you can be sure that there will still be Bengals games on every TV and $2 mega-Buds at the Red Brick.