Cincinnati Bengals (1937-41)

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Cincinnati Bengals was the name of a short-lived professional football team that played in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is unrelated to the current Cincinnati Bengals. The teamwas formed as a member of the 2nd American Football League that started in the 1937. The Bengals finished with a 2-3-2 record in their first year, but the AFL folded after the season. The Bengals moved on and continued as an independent team in 1938, and in 1939 joined a new unofficial version of the AFL, finishing in second place with a 6-2-0 record. Once again, the league folded after the season.

Once again in 1940, a 3rd AFL emerged, and again the Bengals joined. But that AFL suffered the fate of the two AFLs before it, folding after the 1941 season as the United States entered World War II, and the Bengals folded along with it.

Professional football returned to Cincinnati 26 years after the original Cincinnati Bengals folded. It was in the year 1967 when Paul Brown headed an ownership group that landed an expansion franchise in the modern-era American Football League that merged with the NFL in 1969. Brown, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who founded and coached the Cleveland Browns from 1946-62, picked the name Bengals for the new team "to give it a link with past professional football in Cincinnati."

[edit] Season-by-season

Cincinnati Bengals all AFL season by season

Year	W	L	T	Finish
1937	2	4	2	4th
1938	Independent
1939*	6	2	0	2nd
1940	1	7	0	6th
1941	1	5	2	5th

• APFL