For Central East football coach Kyle Biggs, being called the Bengals doesn’t matter to him.
That’s after Central Unified district administrators finalized changes in May that would name Central West the Grizzlies, while Central East would be re-named the Bengals.
According to a December staff presentation, Central East would keep its current school logo of a bear claw, as well as the original school colors of orange and black. The original Central High, located at McKinley and Dickenson avenues, would keep its “current crest” with orange and gray as its colors.
Biggs who led the then-Grizzlies to a state title in 2019 and another state appearance in 2024 was disappointed that the name was “taken from us.”
“It’s above my pay grade,” Biggs said. “I wasn’t asked for my opinion or for my decisions. I just do what I’m told and I’m going to make the best of a bad situation. You give kids some new logos, helmets, uniforms all of sudden they’re OK with it. Kids are going to play. Don’t matter who we are: Ravens, Grizzlies, Bengals, Seahawks. It doesn’t matter.”
The Bengals received their new uniforms in July. As expected, the uniforms are the same colors but instead of Central on the front of the jersey, it is replaced with ‘Bengals.’ Their home jerseys will be black while the away jerseys will be white.
The helmets are new to the players. It consists of what the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals wear. It’s all black with stripes on the helmet. The Bengals will have an all-white helmet with black stripes.
Grizzlies wideout E.J. Morgan really enjoys how the helmets look.
“I feel like the white one is a little better than the orange and black one just because they got that Cincinnati Bengals all-white look,” he said.
“I really like the white helmets.”