In 1968 the Bengals played their first games as an expansion team. The first coach and majority owner, was Paul Brown. Paul Brown was instrumental in bringing professional football to Cincinnati although some view his desire to create another Ohio-based football team was out of spite.

Paul Brown was considered to be the greatest coach of the Cleveland Browns, having lead them to many championship titles using innovative approaches to training, game plans, and other revolutionary approaches that earned him his enshrinement in the Football Hall of Fame. The Cleveland team's owner, Art Modell, and Paul Brown had some interpersonal conflicts.

After the falling out Brown pushed to have an expansion team brought to Ohio with Cincinnati being a suitable location. The similarities between the clubs were suspicious. Cleveland's team colors are orange, brown, and white, and their helmets were a solid orange with a white dorsal stripe over the crest. The Bengal's team colors were orange, black, and white, and their helmets were the same shade of orange with a similar stripe, with the only variation being the word "Bengals" in block letters on either side of the helmet. The uniforms were changed to the tiger-striped helmets in 1981.

This sparked a bitter intrastate rivalry between the two pitting Brown versus Modell. After Cleveland moved to the AFC Central(now North)in 1971, the Browns and Bengals played each other at least two times a year, sometimes up to four times when they met in the preseason and also playoffs.

--Wikipedia