Bengals Promise Not To Introduce Players To Katy Perry's Roar After Fan Backlash

Football is a rough game. It requires men to brutishly impose their wills on others. It requires emotion, aggression, intensity and consistency. What it does not require are the trendiest pop songs of the moment, regardless of how “on the mark” their choruses might seem. At least that’s what the workers in charge of the music at Cincinnati Bengals games found out on Monday when they pumped Katy Perry’s “Roar” through the loudspeakers while the players took the field and received an absolute asswhooping for it on Twitter.

Here’s a random sampling of tweets of the thousands of negative tweets…

Over the past few years, the Bengals have been working very hard to try and reinvent the game experience for fans, and to the team’s credit, the powers that be have actually listened to fans in the past in terms of not playing country music and when to open the parking lot for tailgating. That fan-friendly tradition will carry over in this instance, as well.

Here’s what the organization told E!

"I think some fans proved that there's an expectation that when the team takes the field, there should be more of a hard-rock, classic-rock song and I know that's what we're going to do this game. Katy Perry is not going to be the last song you hear before the team takes the field."

People are going to continue watching and attending football games regardless of what music is played, but for the sake of everyone involved, teams are far better off choosing tracks with a little aggression behind them, as opposed to Perry's new pop anthem.

Editor In Chief

Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.

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