We wasn’t expecting this: Cincinnati Bengals key prolific star reveal reasons for his departure……
Bengals founder and pro football pioneer Paul Brown, who invented everything from the playbook to the radio helmet, would be quite comfortable standing in front of his team’s new locker room that huddles up the latest technology with the earliest traditions.
After a beehive of work began in the wake of last season, Joe Burrow and company began moving in before Tuesday’s practice to find their old space wired for the 21st century with trim from the Bengals’ 1960s origins.
A programmed lighting system worthy of a small city blinks according to the time of day.
A total of 93 “beast lockers,” stand sentry, each weighing about 800 pounds with a 24-inch electrical panel that juices everything from a wireless phone charger to Bluetooth lockbox.
A huge outline in the shape of a football covering a ceiling that has been raised hovers over it all.
“There’s nothing like it in the world. It’s a locker designed only for them,” says Sam Allen, owner of the Texas-based Longhorn Locker Company charged with the project.
“What the Bengals have is the cutting edge. This is the most intricate, most expensive, most involved, and required the greatest number of hours.”
The Bengals are the only team anywhere to have lockers with internal lighting from eight LEDs certified by a national safety standard. Each locker has nine drying fans to work on sweat-soaked helmets, shoulder pads, and cleats. A lift-up footlocker storage compartment sits in the middle of each, stamped with the “Paul E. Brown,” laser-engraved autograph.
No doubt about it. The days of hooks and hangers have officially gone the way of training camp two-a-days. The planning even included sizing the containers of the largest protein drinks so they’d fit the cupholders in each locker.
