CINCINNATI -- Cincinnatians have come to agree on one thing during the last nine years.

	Coach Bruce Coslet (left) smiles as he watches Peter Warrick during minicamp.

It wouldn't matter if the Bengals had Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Jim Brown and Anthony Munoz on offense, with Mean Joe Greene, Dick Butkus and Deion Sanders on defense.

As long as Mike Brown was running the show, they would still lose 13 games a year.

Brown's stubborn, entrenched, outdated ways would reduce even the game's finest players to losers. He would infect them with his business-as-usual attitude and his button-down, bottom-line mentality.

Until Brown relinquished control of the franchise to someone with an innovative approach or -- and this seemed even less likely -- adopted a fresh approach himself, the Bengals still would flounder.

They know this in Hyde Park, and they echo it in Price Hill. From east to west, it has been woven into the city's collective psyche like Skyline three-ways.

We're not about to say he has progressed to the cutting edge of the NFL just yet. But Brown has done a few things lately that make you believe someone has gotten to the Bengals' president and convinced him that he might want to try a different tack. Either that or the real Mike Brown has been whisked away to a deserted island in the South Pacific.

In the past few weeks, we've seen the Bengals acting so much out of character, we wondered if they had swiped the San Francisco 49ers' operating manual.

First, they flew their top draft pick, Peter Warrick, into town to meet the media in a private jet on draft day and transported him to Spinney Field in a limo.

	“	Mike is issuing a challenge to us. 'You've complained about this for years. Let's change a few things and see if it really makes a difference.' ”
		— Doug Pelfrey

Then they revealed that Carl Pickens had been removed from the invited list for minicamp because they'd had it with his spoiled-brat attitude and because they couldn't find his favorite rattle. Finally, over the weekend, when the players showed up for minicamp they found themselves reveling in new towels, socks, caps and practice uniforms with the promise of more amenities to come after the opening of Paul Brown Stadium.

"If the players like it, the media likes it and the fans like it, maybe I'd better learn to like it, too," Brown said. "It costs some money probably, but we spend more for a backup wide receiver than we will for these things."

I had a hard time believing this was Mike Brown talking, so I asked his daughter, Katie, what has happened to her father. Did he get knocked off his horse on the way to Damascus?

"I think he's always listened," she said, as if this new attitude is nothing out of the ordinary.

Listened, maybe, but never acted like this -- at least not that anyone could tell.

"He's doing what he thinks can maximize our efforts on the field," said kicker Doug Pelfrey. "The thing I see is it takes one more excuse away from the players. I like not having crutches. Mike is issuing a challenge to us. 'You've complained about this for years. Let's change a few things and see if it really makes a difference.' "

But it's not just the socks and caps and towels or the soon-to-be-finished luxuries in the locker rooms that make you take notice. The most startling move was the decision to, as the club put it, separate itself from Pickens.

The real Mike Brown has always been a staunch defender of Pickens and even rewarded him with a five-year, $23.25-million contract last year.

By jettisoning the veteran wide receiver, Brown was saying that attitude counts, too. And that maybe he was wrong about Pickens.

Add it all up and it appears that Brown has finally conceded that he's not operating in his father's NFL anymore.

"These are things that weren't even imagined back in those days," Brown said. "Back then, coaches used to do their own laundry, believe it or not. It was a different time, and there were a lot of admirable things about those times."

And now? "These are very frothy times we're living in," Brown said.

Who knows? Maybe this new, improved Mike Brown has finally decided to stop fighting change and embrace it.

Maybe he has learned something from all those losses. "It's (all about) the perception, isn't it?" Brown said.

Can that really be Mike Brown talking?