Most football fans are familiar with the AFC West Division, which consists of Oakland, Kansas City, the San Diego (now Los Angeles) Chargers and Denver.
What most people are not aware of, though, is that there was a time when there was a fifth team in that division. In 1968, the American Football League’s West Division (the forerunner to the AFC West) consisted of the Raiders, the Chiefs, the Chargers, the Broncos and . . . the Cincinnati Bengals.
In their inaugural season, the Bengals called the west coast home, and they were there for two years before moving to the AFC Central after the merger of the AFL with the NFL in 1970.