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Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009

Muhammad Ali boosts Bengals

Visits Bengals training camp

GEORGETOWN — The crowd of photographers and reporters had been gathering for an hour at Georgetown College's Toyota Stadium. So, too, was the NFL Films crew responsible for shooting the HBO show Hard Knocks. Some military men joined the small crowd. Then someone went to get a gallon jar of Sharpies.

Everyone there kept looking away from the Cincinnati Bengals' finely executed drills on their last day of training camp and toward the ramp that led to the street.

Something was up, figured Mark Rouse, Luca Romeo, Graham Raabe and Martin Jarvis, college boys from Cincinnati. Somebody's coming. They tried guessing. Madden? Montana? Beyoncé?

Hint: Go bigger.

Romeo: Erin Andrews?

No, ESPN's blonde sideline reporter was not suddenly going to show up.

It was bigger than that. Then the black limo rolled up. Muhammad Ali had come to see the Bengals.

The four college boys looked stunned as the golf cart bearing the champ rolled onto the field. Across the grassy expanse, Bengal head coach Marvin Lewis ended his practice and gathered his team around him. They began to applaud as Ali's entourage, which included his son Asaad, 18, came toward them. In the sparsely populated bleachers, people began to stand.

With Ali was Georgetown College president Bill Crouch, who spoke of the Muhammad Ali Center's involvement with the diversity program at the college and how Ali wanted to see the school, especially after viewing the first episode of Hard Knocks, a documentary on the Bengals training camp.

John Ramsey, vice president of the Ali center in Louisville, told the Bengals that the champ was happy to be with such a great team and that Ali had told him on the drive over that anyone who had talked bad about the team "should wake up and apologize."

Lewis, whose slogan for the training season had been "fight back," said the visit fit nicely with the end of the camp. "He's a good reminder that adversity is not the end of the world."

Flamboyant receiver Chad Ocho Cinco stood back and watched. "Yeah," he said, "he is the very best ever do it. I model myself after him, the way he approaches his craft. It's an honor that he came here. It is the only way I could have met him."

After Ali left, the college boys were texting their friends from the field, still amazed at their great luck.

"That might actually have been better than Erin Andrews," said Romeo, laughing.

"I could not imagine," said Martin, "that anything here today would be that big."