Sports Today: Joe Mixon turning heads at Bengals training camp

Mixon moves very fluidly, especially for a 228-pounder.

If he can give the Bengals a breakaway runner to go with the vertical receiving threats of A.J. Green and John Ross, watch out.

RELATED: Day 4 Bengals camp observations

On the down side, Andre Smith wasn’t able to practice yesterday because of an undisclosed injury.

Nothing can submarine a team faster than a poor offensive line, though it’s not unprecedented for a team to find ways to work around it, at least in the regular season…

RELATED: Positives abound in Bengals’ first weekend

When Pete Rose's lawsuit against John Dowd was rubber-stamped by a judge in Pennsylvania, I wrote that it was amazing someone could be reckless enough to say something that a judge could agree might hurt Rose's reputation and qualify as potentially being made with "actual malice."

From a legal standpoint, defamation cases are not easy for public figures such as Rose to win because he has to prove Dowd knowingly lied or was reckless with the truth.

On top of that, there’s probably going to be some debate about how damageable Rose’s reputation actually is because it has been decades since he would be confused with a choir boy.

RELATED: The latest on Pete Rose’s lawsuit against John Dowd

Of course, gambling too much and evading taxes are not comparable to having inappropriate relationships with underage girls, which probably explains why that is where Rose apparently draws the line when people are talking about him.

But in that first column I should have also written that filing such a suit is also a potentially reckless move by Rose because it opens his life up to a lot of legal scrutiny by defense lawyers.

It should come as no surprise Dowd’s team is looking to dig up as much dirt on Rose as it can now, although since I’m not a lawyer I’m not sure what the legal ramifications of this recent revelation might be if what they find are not things Dowd knew about when he told a radio station Rose’s bookie had talked of “running young girls” to the Hit King during spring training decades ago...

There was also news on current, future and former Reds yesterday. 

Injuries prevented them from flipping free-agents-to-be Zack Cozart and Scott Feldman at the MLB trade deadline, but they sent Tony Cingrani to the Dodgers for a pair of players, one of whom might help them in three or four years and the other who has a famous last name but hasn’t proven to be a consistent major-leaguer.

RELATED: Reds trade Cingrani to Dodgers for Van Slyke and catching prospect

You never know what you’re going to get from a 20-year-old catcher in rookie ball, but there wasn’t much sense in keeping Cingrani, who was the team’s fifth-best reliever this season.

He provided some thrills when he was called up, but over the past three-plus seasons has proven to be just a guy — and not one that is worth almost $2 million...

Meanwhile, Jose Siri of the Dayton Dragons made Midwest League history by extending his hit streak to a record 36th game last night against Fort Wayne…

As for me, I had a great time in Centerville last night at the annual Sonny Unger Award Banquet.

Getting A.J. Hawk, Bobby Carpenter and Anthony Schlegel on stage together promised to be fun, and it certainly delivered.

RELATED: Former Buckeyes headline Centerville banquet

The trio talked about their memories of playing together at Ohio State as well as in high school and the pros.

Can you believe 11 seasons have passed since they were the starting linebackers on the 2005 Buckeye squad that started a streak of six straight Big Ten championships?

They might be mellowing in their old age, but I got the sense there’s still a little bit of cowboy in all of them even though only one is from Texas.