Chad Ochocinco Gives Mike Brown Money To Not Spend On The Team

In addition to his usual stream of boisterous nonsense, Chad Ochocinco has been a rare source of candor the last few months. When you have no filter, everything, for better or worse, is going to flow forth. It was curious when he stated a while back that Bill Belichick is a better coach than Marvin Lewis, a fact few would dispute, but probably not the best statement to come from a player under Lewis' purview. Now, Ocho is airing some more inconvenient truths about the Bengals organization in his upcoming book - primarily that the ownership doesn't spend enough money.

"We don't have a general manager. We have the fewest scouts in the league. Yeah, we have some great players, like me, Carson Palmer, T.J. (Houshmandzadeh, now in Seattle), Levi Jones (now a free agent), Stacy Andrews (now in Philadelphia). But we need more. We need to keep more of the guys we have, like Justin Smith (signed by San Francisco in 2008) and guys like that. Every time we start to make progress, we go backward. We have Willie Anderson playing and we let him go over a little bit of money."

Again. No arguments here. Just another startling admission from a guy in their employ.

Though the claim does lose some of its bite when Chad goes and does things like join with Motorola in buying out remaining unsold seats for the Bengals' game against the Texans on Sunday. (He claims that he and the company bought out the remaining tickets, but team officials say that Chad and Motorola have bought some, but not all of the tickets). Sure, he's doing the fans a solid by helping to remove what would be a blackout in the Cincinnati area. At the same time, he's lining the pockets of an owner that the fans have long recognized as unwilling to invest in the team's success. As with a lot of things that come out of Chad's mouth, it pleases some people, but it doesn't come across as very well thought out.

UPDATE: Here are details on Chad Ochocinco/Motorola's ticket giveaway, via press release:

The Bengals, Local 12 (CBS affiliate WKRC-TV in Cincinnati) and Motorola worked together to ensure the blackout would be lifted. As part of this plan, Motorola will give away 1200 tickets (600 pairs of tickets) to Bengals fans for free, starting at 11:30 am Saturday at the North Ticket Office (next to the Bengals Pro Shop) at Paul Brown Stadium. Motorola is a long-time sponsor of the Bengals and has a newly aligned partnership with Bengals WR Chad Ochocinco.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.