Cincy Sellout

How bad are things here in Cincy economically?

The Bengals can't even sell out their home opener against the Broncos this weekend.

The NFL has granted the Bengals a 24-hour extension in hopes that Sunday’s opener against the Broncos will sell out and continue a 44-game sellout streak of regular-season and postseason games.

Bengals ticket manager Andrew Brown continued the weeklong line of saying “a few thousand” seats are still available. When pressed, Brown did say less than 5,000 seats remained but had no comment when asked if under 4,000 were left.

The game now must be sold out by 1 p.m. on Friday in order for it to be aired in Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky. Three stations – WKRC (Ch. 12) in Cincinnati, WHIO (Ch. 7) in Dayton and WKYT (Ch. 27) in Lexington would be blacked out. if the game is not sold out. The nearest market to air the game would be Columbus.

Between this and the antics of Chad "Impending Suspension" Ochocinco, it's hard to know which will be the bigger disaster on Sunday here.

Times are tough, however. Ohio's unemployment rate is up to 11.2%, 11.0% in KY and 10.6% in Indiana. People around here just can't afford to watch the Bengals lose in person, you know...enough so they probably won't be able to see the Bengals lose on TV, either.