Monday 30 January 2017 12:29, UK
Cincinnati Bengals were the last team to join the AFL before it officially merged with the NFL for the 1970 season.
The franchise was created on the back of one of the sport's most controversial moments when businessman, Art Modell, sacked Cleveland Browns' head coach, Paul Brown, shortly after purchasing a controlling stake in the team.
Brown endeavoured to bring another team to Ohio and pulled Cincinnati into the mix. Just three years after his brutal dismissal from Cleveland, Brown's Bengals came to fruition and they went on to reach the playoffs six times and win the AFC Championship twice in their first 20 years.
A Super Bowl victory, however, remains a pipedream. Cincinnati lost both of their championship games - 26-21 to Joe Montana's San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XVI and 20-16 to Jerry Rice's 49ers seven years later in Super Bowl XXIII.
They remain one of the 13 teams to have never won a championship, as of 2016, despite an upturn in success on the field since former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator, Marvin Lewis, took charge as head coach in 2003.
Lewis has led the Bengals to half of their 14 lifetime appearances in the playoffs since 2005, but they are still without a post-season win for 26 years.
Who Dey, the Bengals mascot, and the high-energy crowds at the Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati drive their positivity into an electrifying offence and ferocious defence in the post-Mike Brown era.
Mike, who is Paul Brown's son, was the unfortunate head coach who occupied the hot-seat during the team's 14-year run of consecutive losing seasons, so the Bengals faithful are seriously passionate about carrying quarterback Andy Dalton and his team to the kind of success that would do the stadium's namesake proud - the kind of runs that were overseen by head coaches, Forrest Gregg and Sam Wyche, in the 1980s heydays.
