You have to be smart to survive in that business. You're not trying to be some street guy who gets arrested all the time. That's stupid. The ones who do the illegal stuff are bright. Some of them might be some of the smartest people in the world to get away and do some of the things they do. Not only do you have to be smart at what you do, you have to be able to outthink the system, outsmart the system.
A lot goes into that. You don't know who's who. Now, I'm sure the NFL doesn't like to hear that, but let's be real. Let's put it out there. This is what happened to me. This is what this book is about. It's not just my story, it's me. It's about what I think, what I feel, why I do this. It's about what the NFL is, the side of the game you don't understand all the time. This is about what you don't hear or see about me because you really only see it through the perspective of the media, the people who wrap up my story in a few words or in some video and think, "Hey, this is what Chad Ochocinco is.
I didn't shove him. The dude is like 5-foot If I'd have shoved him, he'd have sued my ass. I pushed his hands away. Was I in a bad mood? Yeah, I was. That's when I was on my big kick to try to get out of Cincinnati, which didn't work out so hot more on that later. Anyway, the dude from the NFL touched me and I pushed his hand away. That was it and then I left. But now everybody thinks I'm shoving guys to the ground, I'm fighting, committing assault and all sorts of crap that never happened.
It was just typical BS that comes with being me. We got guys in other places doing crazy s, like punching their quarterback in the face in the weight room, and it barely gets in the news. You see, the funniest part is that people think I'm so bad, but do you see one arrest on me since I got to the NFL? Do you see me getting suspended for using drugs or steroids? Do you see anything about me beating up my girlfriend or some other guys? No, none of that. Still, people think I'm this bad guy because I do some celebrations and talk trash and I'm flamboyant.
Look, I'm working hard, I'm having fun, and nobody is going to stop me from having fun. Well, maybe the Bengals will, but that's another story for later. I'm not hurting anybody, but I push a guy's hand away and it's an international crisis.
He might fly to Japan and start some s there. Yeah, that would be me, Chadzilla. Man, I ain't going to Japan. I don't even like sushi. Unless you got a sushi company you want me to endorse. I can see it now, try the Ochocinco sushi roll.
It would be like a spicy tuna roll with tempura flakes. Damn, I'm getting hungry already. The commish, Roger Goodell, is probably going to give me that look like, "Ocho, what did you do now? And this is why football was so important, why it was everything I did as a kid. I'm that great player. When I wore the Hall of Fame jacket as a celebration, I didn't mean that disrespectfully. That's where I want to be. That's where I expect to be. Even today, it's everything I am.
Ask my boys from home. We'll be out at a club on Friday night before a game and I'll sometimes just be sitting there, daydreaming. I'm thinking about the game. I'm thinking about what I'm going to do. I'm zoned out on football, that's all. People can come up to me and say, "What up?
But that's where my head is at. It's all about football. Ask my coaches, they'll tell you the same thing. Marvin Lewis, my head coach with the Bengals, he'll tell you. I call him at three or four in the morning sometimes, telling him, "I was thinking, we should run this play" or "We should do this.
No matter what you think you see, no matter what you think the antics are about, I want to win. I know that football is first. Most people out there will say, sarcastically, "Yeah right, Ocho, all you think about is football. Look, the marketing is important. I want to be Ochocinco, the brand. Yeah, that's what I want. This is a business and I want the things. But you know what I know? It's about winning. Nothing else matters unless you win. The year we made the playoffs was the best year of my career.
That's what I play for. The day of that playoff game against Pittsburgh, the only playoff game we've had since I've been in Cincinnati, I was walking through the parking lot before the game, high-fiving people. I was geeked up. I was ready. People are offering me barbecue, chips, everything. It was so great. They're hyped, we're finally going to do something. The atmosphere is awesome. It's what I wanted to do when I got to Cincinnati.
Everybody said when I got there, "Oh, you don't want to be here, this team sucks. I want to make the Bengals a champion. That's what I want. Because I know the winning has to come first. People don't give a s about you unless you're winning.
That's where you make a difference. That's how you get the things you really want. Do you know what it would be like to be the player who brings championships to the Bengals?
That would be amazing. It would be, "Man, do you see what these guys did to win a title? You hear people in other sports say, "Oh, you have to be in a big market and win there to make it big. This is the NFL. If you win championships, especially if you win them with a team that hasn't done anything before, that just makes you even bigger.
You saw what happened when St. Louis won a title in ? What did everybody call them? The Greatest Show on Turf. Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce were big-time. Kurt Warner went from some guy who was a bag boy to MVP.
Marshall Faulk went from a nice running back to the best all-purpose runner in the league. Look at Baltimore, where they didn't even have a team for years, just like St. The Ravens win it and Ray Lewis is huge. And the most obvious of all is Peyton Manning. He wins a title in Indianapolis. That's not some big-ass market, you know what I'm saying?
But if you turn on your TV, you can't go five minutes without seeing his face on some commercial. It's unreal and Peyton's pretty funny. That fake mustache commercial or the one where he holds back the chicken.
That's funny. I want to play for championships. Everything you get flows from winning. In this book, my coaches will tell you that. They know I want to win. I want the f' ball because I believe I can help us win.
That incident in the playoff game against Pittsburgh -- and I'm going to say it again, that wasn't a fight. I'll explain it more later, but I didn't swing at anybody. Not my head coach [Marvin Lewis]. Not my receivers coach [Hue Jackson]. That incident was about the fact that I got one pass in the first half of that game.
One f' catch in the first half and you're telling me we're trying to win this game. Winning starts everything. Yeah, they'll come out and watch the games even if the team sucks trust me, I know that. But the place is dead, people are leaving early, nobody is buying s I get it. That's why I want to win so bad. People think I just want to play because I'm into myself and that's it.
They don't understand, I see the big picture. I see what it takes to get the life I want. I see what it takes to escape the streets, to not have to sell drugs like so many of the people I grew up with in Miami. Like I said, I would have been right there with them, living that life.
Thank God I don't have to worry about that stuff, because I am where I am. I have these things -- these cars, this house, my kids, and my life -- because of football. Because I work hard at football. Yeah, some people are jealous. They think I was just lucky to be born able to run, jump high, and catch. There's lots of guys who can do all that. Just go back to the 'hood where I grew up, where lots of guys grew up. There's lots of guys who were great athletes back where I was from.
It's just like when I say that there are a lot of guys from the 'hood who could do what Michael Phelps has done. I'm not saying what he did is easy. I'm saying there are a ton of guys who just don't have the focus or the surroundings to do that, but they have the physical ability. That's why I say, "I'm Michael Phelps. I'm just saying that there are people who could do what he did. A lot of people.
There's guys back in the 'hood who could do it if they put their mind to it. If they work at it. That's why I say that I could beat anybody in any sport. I have the ability. I can do it. Lots of guys can do it. But you have to work hard. You have to want to do it and, for me, sometimes it takes a while to figure out what you have to do. If I knew then what I know now about school and how it held me back from getting what I wanted, I wouldn't have wasted my time the way I did.
That was stupid. I cost myself at least a year in the pros because it took me three years to get through junior college.
Three years! I'm serious. You're supposed to be done in two and I took three. Nobody wanted to touch me back then. No college. That's when I realized, I gotta get serious about this s He didn't care, he just said come play up here, do your thing. So I did. I spent four months up there in Corvallis, Oregon. Nothing to do up there. I mean, nothing.
I just played football and that was it. I think I went to class the first week and then I was done. Made sure I was there for attendance, whatever. I did enough to get myself to the Senior Bowl that year and that helped me get drafted. I should have been a first-round pick. That was ridiculous that I wasn't a first-rounder. But the reason was that teams couldn't trust me. You know what I'm saying? It was my fault that I didn't get drafted higher, because the teams couldn't trust me.
Even so, I've spent my entire career proving to them how wrong they were for not taking me. I can't be stopped in this game.
Nobody can stop me. No cornerback can touch me. S, I don't even see cornerbacks. It's like they don't even exist when I'm out there. I talk to them just so I can keep them sharp, keep them on top of their game, because that keeps me going. That's why I talk so much trash. Never stop. Never let up. Even before the game, I'm talking to the guys on the other team.
You see, everybody works hard to get to the NFL, to get those things they want. You have to. I don't talk about how hard I work out or how much I run or how much I lift or how much film I watch. He was beloved by many fans both of the Bengals and throughout the NFL but was public enemy number one of the NFL due to his celebrations. He played during a time when the NFL was trying to put a stop on celebrations to make football serious, but even with restrictions or fines placed on player celebrations, Ochocinco kept football fun.
Football fans looked forward to what he would do every time he caught a touchdown pass. Chad Johnson came to the Bengals and quickly helped to change the franchise around.
He became one of the greatest wide receivers in the game while he played and was a constant presence. The duo of Carson Palmer and Johnson ushered in an era of competitive Bengals football, as opposed to the previous decade that consistently saw Cincinnati at the bottom. From legendary celebrations to iconic performances, Chad Johnson did it all.
Zac Taylor on A. Next 1 of 5 Prev post. Today is the perfect time to remember Bengals legend Chad Johnson, one of the most enjoyable players to watch during his career.
Next: Ochocinco the Golfer.
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