The irony is that Mike Brown, who holds player agents responsible for most of life's miseries, would make a great one himself.

	The Bengals were able to sign ex-Seahawk Jon Kitna but couldn't persuade Elvis Grbac.

As the taxpayers of Hamilton County know all too well, Brown's the guy you want negotiating the deal. When it comes to that, the Bengals general manager is an unremitting perfectionist, a first-order businessman who can't stomach the thought of being anything less. Willie Anderson would take the field in a tutu before Mike Brown would suspend his principles of hard bargaining.

But, at least once -- better yet, at least twice -- he must. If Brown ran the Raiders or the Cowboys or any team with some cachet or recent victories to work with, he could measure the market value for the game's most eminent free agents and simply pay it to get one or two. The Bengals, however, don't have that luxury.

Offering market value, the Bengals can't compete. Until they come to grips with the painful but obvious need to overpay -- as the Green Bay Packers did when they signed Reggie White in 1993 -- the locals have neither the track record nor the sex appeal to persuade quarterback Elvis Grbac to play here and not in Baltimore for the Super Bowl champions; or to convince pass rusher Kenny Holmes to play here and not in New York for the NFC champs.

In the first weeks of the latest free-agency period, the Bengals, for a change, have purported to be players. They've invited most of the right guys to town. They've signed a quarterback and a defensive tackle, although neither was anybody's first choice, and re-upped with their center.

But they didn't offer a better package for Grbac than the Ravens did, and they didn't even match the winning deals for Holmes, Leon Searcy or Jeff Mitchell. What they did, mostly, was kid themselves.

That, and save money. The Bengals have more money available under the salary cap than any other team, and they've attempted in their own way to actually spend some of it this time, but there has been no significant breakthrough in either philosophy or talent. The perpetual patsies remain compromised by ownership's fiscal conservatism, held back by Brown's fundamental inability to do something wild and crazy.

He keeps saving for a rainy day, neglecting the fact that it's been hailing hand grenades on this franchise for more than a decade. The Bengals explain that they're hoarding their nickels for Corey Dillon and for unforeseen emergencies, which is good business but fairly hopeless football.

The Giants, on the other hand, went over the salary cap to sign Holmes. What they'll have to do now is cut a lesser player, which they'd have to do anyway to make room for the new guy.

See, that's what Super Bowl teams do. They find ways to pay players who can help them win.

There were several of those on this year's market, but most have now come and gone, hired by teams that need them much less than Cincinnati does but apparently want them a little more.

	“	I wish they wouldn't bring in a bunch of guys that we've never heard of. We're the Bengals. We're a team full of no-names already. ”
		— Willie Anderson, Bengals tackle

Meanwhile, the Bengals are stocking up on guys they call solid starters, which sounds suspiciously like more of the same. It even sounds that way to Anderson, their best lineman, who, after the club signed Tony Williams and Jon Kitna lamented, "I wish they wouldn't bring in a bunch of guys that we've never heard of. We're the Bengals. We're a team full of no-names already."

For its part, the Cincinnati front office maintains that there has been no chance to change that in the current offseason. "We know the Reggie White theory is out there, but our people don't really see a Hall of Fame player on the market this year," said team spokesman Jack Brennan.

"We understand that, given our losing history, people are going to be skeptical until we do it on the field, but we think there's plenty of evidence that we're taking a productive approach. We've been more conservative than most teams about going over the cap, but teams that have gone over the cap are hurting for it now. We think we're positioned well because of our conservative philosophy."

Yeah, well, the Bengals have been well-positioned since Paul Brown invented the line of scrimmage, and if they don't spend all their cap money, they'll be well-positioned again next year. Hapless, as always, but well-positioned.

Nothing's going to change until the team forgets about positioning and signs somebody good.

Lonnie Wheeler writes for the Cincinnati Post.