Michael Nyerges

Cincinnati Enquirer

Bob Trumpy is in pregame mode.

I’m sitting with the former pro bowl TE on the back patio of the Glendale Lyceum in suburban Cincinnati, awaiting word from videographer Kareem Elgazzar that the cameras are set up inside and ready for our interview to begin.

It’s then that the baritone-voiced original Bengal slips into the routine he used before kickoff during his 10 seasons in pro football.

He lights up a cigarette.

Trumpy would pace and smoke, usually with teammates Bruce Coslet and Chip Myers, in the locker room shower prior to games.

Related:Bengals 50: Bob Trumpy, a true Bengals original

“Yeah, it was a real traffic pattern problem in the shower. Cleveland had a particularly small shower. We were all hiding from Paul. Halftime too. ‘Where’s Trumpy? Where’s Coslet? Where’s Myers?’” he barks with a smile.

“They’ll be here in a minute.”

This is the type of tale I came seeking from the colorful former player and broadcaster who has observed the Bengals from their very beginning.

The Paul he referred to is Paul Brown, the founder and first coach of the Bengals, who was responsible for bringing both the NFL and Trumpy to Cincinnati a half century ago.

The Bengals were the final team born in the NFL’s boom of the 1960s, a decade that saw the league expand from 12 to 16, then jump to 26 after a merger with the rival American Football League.

Paul Brown had lost out to New Orleans for the 16th spot in the NFL, so the Bengals were the decade’s final piece of the merger puzzle as an AFL expansion team in 1968.

“We wanted the NFL franchise, we didn’t get it. Then we settled for the AFL,” Paul’s son Mike Brown told me in 2014.

“A thousand-to-one shot” is how Mike Brown recently described the bid to land the franchise to The Enquirer’s Paul Dehner Jr.

Trumpy’s arrival was a similarly unlikely success story, a tale of a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work.

His college career consisted of only two seasons. The first was in 1964 at the University of Illinois on a team that included future Hall of Famer Dick Butkus. The second was at the University of Utah in 1966.

The Bengals drafted Trumpy in the 12th round of the 1968 draft.

“At the time I was drafted, I was collecting bills for Beneficial Finance out of 607 Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles,” Trumpy said.

His life changed with a phone call from his wife Pat, who told him he had received a telegram stating he had been drafted by the Cincinnati Beagles.

“My wife still denies that… she said beagles. She did, she said beagles when I got the telegram,” Trumpy said.

Regardless of the team’s name, Trumpy knew that this was opportunity knocking.

He immediately quit his bill collector job to find a construction job, something to make him “hard” as Trumpy explained.

It was on his commute to that construction job that luck stepped in.

As he drove past a junior college field, Trumpy noticed a group of 8-10 men playing football.

“Pitch and catch, lining up, doing some calisthenics,” he said.

The next day he stopped to find out who they were.

As he approached he noticed a bag with the Green Bay Packers logo on the side holding footballs. Trumpy introduced himself and found that running the practice was Zeke Bratkowski, the backup QB for the Packers who made his offseason home in the area.

Bratkowski invited Trumpy to join them, so in March 1968 Trumpy began working out with the group for six days a week to prepare for the Bengals training camp.

“We started practice with 75 up-downs, just the way Vince Lombardi did with the Green Bay Packers” Trumpy said. “I ran the Green Bay Packers patterns.”

On the last day of practice, Bratkowski pulled Trumpy aside.

“He said ‘I’m going to mention your name to our coaches. That if your name shows up on the waiver wire we should be interested in you, you can make our team. You can make our team this year,’” Trumpy said with a look of astonishment.

“I thought, what? What did he say? Heard every word.”

Bratkowski added one more thing.

“‘Remember, you gotta show something special every day.’ Ooh… That’s not easy,” Trumpy said.

The Bengals opened their first training camp at Wilmington College in July 1968.

In addition to the 41-member collegiate draft class, the Bengals also brought players acquired from the AFL allocation draft to camp. Each AFL team with the exception of Miami surrendered five veteran players.

“They were mostly old, broken down, some were even retired,” Mike Brown said in 2014.

“We picked some guys who were genuinely retired, and stuck with retirement. They weren’t planning to play anymore. But that’s all that was there to take.”

Trumpy arrived in Wilmington in the best physical shape of his life.

“Mentally, Zeke told me I could play for the Green Bay Packers, surely I can make this team,” Trumpy said.

“But when I get here, being a 12th round draft choice, it was very easy to understand what he was talking about.”

Trumpy was an athletic 6’6” and 208 pounds — somewhat slight for a tight end. So at weigh in, he snuck a 10-pound weight onto the scale with him under a towel.

“I was actually 208, I weighed in at 218,” Trumpy said.

Players came and went quickly as camp got underway.

“My first roommate, he was there the night I showed up, he went to breakfast before I did the next morning. I got back from breakfast, he was gone. His name was Wally Scott. I had six roommates that first year,” Trumpy said.

“Every day there’d be 12, 15, 20 people, get off the bus, run the 40, have lunch, be gone by dinner. It was staggering.”

Trumpy did his best to stick around, and heed Bratkowski’s advice.

At one point, he had heard that the coaches wondered if he was tough enough for pro football. So he decided to do something to stand out. During a seven-on-seven practice, he caught a pass a few strides in front of DB Charley King, a veteran acquired from the Buffalo Bills in the allocation draft. Rather than slow up, Trumpy ran King over.

“He got up ‘What the hell is that for,’ grabbed me by the chest. I grabbed him, pushed him away, went back to the huddle,” Trumpy said. “Just an indicator.”

Trumpy stood out enough to not only make the team, he also played in the first of his four Pro Bowls in 1968.

But that’s not to say there weren’t anxious moments in that first camp.

“There was this horrible part of training camp, we were required to be in our room from 7:30 to 8 a.m. after breakfast,” Trumpy said.

In that 30-minute window, players were cut.

“So you sit there in your room on the edge of the bed. And you hear the knock down the hall. Getting closer, getting closer, getting closer,” Trumpy said, gesturing as if knocking.

“Six times they knocked on my door and six times it was for the other guy.”

Trumpy’s roommate situation settled down permanently when he was paired with center Bob Johnson, the first draft choice in team history. The two men roomed together for the rest of Trumpy’s career.

Of the original 1968 Bengals, only Johnson was with the team longer than Trumpy, playing 12 years to Trumpy’s 10.

On the other end of the spectrum was a player whose tenure with the team lasted less than one game.

In December of 1968, kicker/punter Dale Livingston had military reserve duty when the Bengals played the Patriots at Boston’s Fenway Park.

“Paul got ahold of the last kicker he cut in training camp in ’68 whose name was Rex Keeling,” Trumpy said.

Keeling, who was selling cars in Alabama, was brought in to punt.

He did not have a good day, averaging 28.3 yards on six punts.

“His first punt hits the fullback right in the butt,” Trumpy said.

“The next one he shanks off to the sideline right at Paul Brown’s feet, that’s two. The third one goes about three yards.”

By halftime, Paul Brown had seen enough.

“Paul says ‘That’s what I get for trying to make a used car salesman into a punter. Keeling, get dressed.’ He never took the field again,” Trumpy said.

“Flew back with us, they paid him and he went home.”

Keeling’s story was one of several Trumpy shared about teammates from that inaugural Bengals team.

RB Paul Robinson was a 3rd-round pick that went on to be AFL rookie of the year.

On road trips, the players were required to wear a coat and tie. On one trip, Robinson pulled Trumpy aside.

“He gets me over in a corner and he says ‘I’ve never tied a tie, will you tie a tie for me?’” Trumpy said. “He had this pink tie to go with a brown jacket. So I tied the tie for him, and as I remember, that tie — tied — lasted the entire season. And the next year I had to tie another one for him.”

Fourth-round pick Jess Phillips missed the first month of camp while serving jail time in Michigan for forging a check.

“Jess was a great guy, wonderful guy,” Trumpy said.

“I noticed that every day, he would go get a pair of socks and write JWP on ‘em. And a jock, JWP. And a t-shirt, JWP,” Trumpy said.

“Finally I said Jess, what the hell is with the initials? He said ‘man, I was a number for eight months. Those initials are important to me,’” Trumpy said.

A few weeks into camp, Trumpy recalled walking past Phillips’ room.

“Jess had a tailor in there making him clothes. And that pretty much says Jess Phillips.”

As our hour-plus long interview wraps up, I’m amazed at how many entertaining stories Trumpy has shared. And I can’t help but wonder if he would be in Cincinnati today if it wasn’t for that little bit of luck, and a lot of hard work that helped him stand out 50 years ago in Wilmington.

“I was going to be nothing, until I proved I could be something,” Trumpy said. “Which is what I attempted, and apparently, succeeded in doing.”