Bob Trumpy and James Brooks are to be inducted into the Bengals Ring of Honor at halftime of Sunday's game against the Titans (1 p.m.-Cincinnati's Local 12), so step into the Bengals.com broadcast booth to celebrate these careers of sound and fury.
Behind one microphone is Bob Costas, poet laureate of American sports from the MTV age to the rise of MGM-plus. One of the 28-year-old Costas' first assignments in his four-decade run at NBC came in what he fondly recalls as a smoke-filled booth with Trumpy for the three NFL seasons from 1981-83.
At the other microphone is Solomon Wilcots, a Bengals Super Bowl safety and Brooks' teammate on that 1988 team who now directs traffic as host of "The Opening Drive," the daily morning show on NFL Radio on Sirius. Wilcots is the only man to have tackled Brooks and shared plane rides with Trumpy when they flew back to Cincinnati after their Monday Night Football broadcasting duties.
They are talking Brooks, the dual-threat running back who is still influencing playbooks, and Trumpy, the late pioneering tight end who went to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a broadcaster.
Wilcots: I felt like there was no better running back in the league than JB. When he was on my team, I was like, 'I'll take this guy over anybody because I've watched him drag the field with Clay Matthews, Chip Banks'. Guys like that. We were up in Pittsburgh one time, and we had a two-by-two set, four wide receivers and a single-back set. That thing parted like the Red Sea, man. He hurdled Thomas Everett on the way to about a 45-yard touchdown to close out the game. Oh God, it was beautiful. I mean, this dude could run-block. He could catch it. He could play wide receiver. He was the dual-threat back that they don't have a lot of today in our league.
Costas: He and I were a pretty darn good broadcast team in the early '80s. Trump was, especially by the standard of the time, he was fearless. He would say whatever was on his mind, and he didn't just have football knowledge. Almost everyone that has had that role, whether they're in the top tier or doing regional games, wherever they land, almost everyone has good football knowledge. But he came equipped with excellent broadcasting skill. Not only did he have the great voice, but he knew how to get in and out and say something concisely and clearly, and with the proper emphasis. So he was a natural on the air.
Wilcots: (Trumpy) worked for Westwood One calling the Monday night games on the radio. I was working for ESPN and I would do the Sports Center hits before the game and after the game.
He and I were always flying home together, and we'd talk about the Bengals. Obviously, we talked about football. We talked about broadcasting, and he was so cool because I think he appreciated how I came up. Through local TV and covering all kinds of sports. And we talked about that because he covered different sports. He covered golf. He worked at NBC as a top announcer, but he covered sports outside of football.
And he was so good vocally. He had great pipes, right? We just talked about the nuance of the business, how to get along with your crew, how to manage it all, the travel and everything. And he was just so phenomenal, man. I've always appreciated that about him.
Costas: NBC was the AFC network. We got Jets games. We also got a very large number of Bengals games. That wasn't an accident, right? The Bengals went to the Super Bowl that first year (1981) Trump and I were partners. This is Ken Anderson, this is Pete Johnson, this is Ken Riley, this is Chris Collinsworth as a rookie. This is a good team, a good team to talk about, and we got a lot of Bengals games.
Wilcots: The year we went to the Super Bowl, we had a game early in Philadelphia (a 28-24 Bengals win in the second week). They had Seth Joyner, Reggie White, Jerome Brown. They had all these great players on defense. He ran all over those dudes. And we went in there and beat them. That's when we knew we had a team that year because we went in there and just beat them and physically beat them. We physically beat them. He played bigger than his size (5-10, 180). Always.
With his work ethic and what he did on the field, he had everyone's respect. He was running the stadium steps as soon as the season ended. He was one of those guys you need. It wasn't the money. He would have played for, I don't know, hubcaps.
Costas: Trump was a very good player. He was in that that group of tight ends that weren't just primarily blockers. Jackie Smith was like that in that era. John Mackey was maybe the greatest of them. (Mike) Ditka was kind of a combination of the two. Ditka came before Trump, but Bob had speed. He wasn't just a tight end that used to line up at the at the end next to the tackle. They split him out wider, and he could run after the catch. He was very good. He was a very, very good player.
Wilcots: (Trumpy) was the kind of guy that helped to keep my feet on the ground, play the long game. He would tell me, don't be afraid to be opinionated. I would ask him about that because, remember, he was opinionated. And what I learned is that he didn't have an ax to grind. He didn't dislike any one team or any one person. He just had his own convictions of what he believed and what he knew, and he was not afraid to say it.
He talked to me about never being afraid to say what you feel. If you've done the work, see it a certain way, that's how you see it, and you can't be afraid to say it. It's like he empowered me because I was young at it, coming up in the business. He was a guy who worked with all the great play-by-play guys. Remember Don Criqui? And he was on the No. 1 team (with Dick Enberg). He worked with Costas for years when Costas was a young guy. So all I'm doing is soaking it in. The fact that he's hanging out with me and taking the time every single week, it became a thing.
Costas: He was good. He and I clicked. We didn't make up a plan. We just clicked. There was a good yin and yang to it. I remember one time Richard Todd was the quarterback for the Jets, and he had a habit. He dropped back. He's looking for his receivers. Guys are covered. Secondary receiver, and he would tap the football with his left hand as he was about to release.
So Trump picks that up. It's like finding a tell in a pitcher's delivery, right? So he picks that up and he starts talking about it and at some point he goes, 'This is just tragic.' And I say, 'Trump, it's unfortunate. This should be corrected, but is it really tragic?' And he says, 'Yes, absolutely, it was tragic.' And then I said (after an incompletion), 'Now tragically, the Jets must punt,' and that got some notice in the New York papers. He didn't care. He liked the byplay.
Wilcots: First of all, JB was an intimidator. Not that he intimidated me, but he intimidated a lot of people. He rarely smiled, and he rarely spoke. He would tell rookies, 'Don't talk to me. You haven't done anything on this team. You don't deserve to say anything.'
So I'm a rookie, and my first encounter with him was during the (training camp intrasquad) scrimmage. I make a tackle on him in the open field, and all I know is Paul Brown mentioned something that was in the paper that Wilcots is a great tackler, stuff like that, and the crowd just goes crazy. But to JB, that was like, 'Ain't no rookie tackles me in the open field.'
We were walking into watching the film (the next day) and he's just walking by me, and he's staring me down. I just looked at him and said, "What?" And he said, "You closed your eyes." I told him, "I hate to see what would have happened had I kept them open."
He laughed. And you know, that from him, that's big, right? It meant I earned a little bit of his respect. … He didn't suffer people who didn't contribute to winning.
Costas: Trump had the radio (talk) show in Cincinnati and to do that kind of show well … a lot of guys do it now and it's just stupid hot takes, and they're not that well informed … He had strong opinions, but they were all informed opinions.
Wilcots: He could run it, he could catch it. Punt return, kick return, anything dealing with the ball, in the end, JB could do it. Barry Sanders is really good company. He couldn't run a route like JB. Thurman Thomas couldn't run a route like JB. Roger Craig (one of the newest Pro Football Hall-of-Famers)? Roger Craig couldn't run routes like JB.
Costas: (Trumpy) wasn't the first (prominent player to do well in broadcasting). There were guys in the '50s. Paul Christman. Al DeRogatis. There were a lot of people before him, but he had exceptional broadcasting skill. He was an ex-football player and broadcaster equally. He wasn't just a player who had acceptable broadcasting skills. He was a former player with excellent football insight who had exceptional broadcasting skills and also a presence. And it is a presence on camera.
Wilcots: Put it like this: if you lined JB up at wide receiver, which we did, you don't want Roger doing that, right? So what I'm saying is, Roger was a great running back, yeah. But now when we talk about dual threat. Yeah, (Craig) got 1,000 yards catching it out of the backfield. But JB can catch it out of the backfield and line up at wide receiver. That's where Roger and a lot of these other running backs come up short.
The red light is staying on through the weekend. Brooks and Trumpy rule the Ring of Honor monitor.
