Pay The Man.

No reason to delay.

Somebody’s gonna get paid.

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The Bengals don’t have to do anything for Joe Burrow right now. They could force their savior to play out his four-year, $36 mil rookie deal this season. That’d make Burrow the best bargain since we bought Alaska from Russia for two cents an acre.

The Fam can dangle that cash explosion just out of Saint Joe’s reach. Watch the bear flail at that honeybee’s hive.

Why would the Bengals do that?

Because they can.

I’m not suggesting The Fam will play it that way, or even that they’re pondering it. And yet here we are, two days from the start of training camp, still talking about it. Higher minds than mine surely can offer explanations.

The Bengals picked up Burrow’s 5th-year option, so he’s not going anywhere. Burrow has expressed no interest in going anywhere. He will, on some undetermined day, become the NFL’s richest player, or close to it. There is no rush. Or maybe there is. Regardless, count me among those who wonder what the holdup is.

Jalen Hurts got a deal. Lamar Jackson got a deal. Patrick Mahomes has one. Aaron Rodgers has a recliner atop Mt. Cashmore. Burrow’s at the altar, waiting for the music to start. How come?

The Bengals can wait, but the delay will only make Saint Joe more expensive. Why wait?

Anybody got change for a $10?

Understand this: It’s all but impossible for an NFL owner to lose money. That’s how the whole socialist setup works. The league’s new TV deal kicks in this year, an 11-season, $113 bil colossus that would embarrass the Saudi royal family. That compares with the puny $27.9 billion, nine-year deal the league just completed.

Translation: The TV money quadrupled in a little less than a decade.

We’d say any new Burrow deal would be break-the-bank stuff, but this is the NF of L, where banks don’t break. They don’t even bend. You’d have to be a complete loggerhead to lose money in the NFL. The league does have loggerhead owners. Just not complete loggerheads owners.

Most of the time, owners escape complete loggerheaded-ness by getting public cash for new stadiums that produce even more revenue for them. That’s what happened here way back in the mid-90s. Mike Brown declared the Bengals couldn’t keep up at Riverfront Stadium, threatened to move the team to Baltimore and got paid for that bit of heavy-handed extortion.

Don’t think that couldn’t happen here again.

And yet, here we are. Burrow is eligible for an extension. He’s not owed one. Still. . .

Pay the man.

The market is set, his value is obvious. He’s not being a jerk and threatening a holdout. You have the money. Pay him.

Don’t make this whole training camp an open-ended question about the QB’s contract extension. Don’t make him talk about it ad nauseam. (He can say he won’t. That doesn’t mean we media heathens won’t try.) What’s the Over/Under on the number of weak media questions Burrow will take at Wednesday’s kickoff presser before he gets asked about the negotiations? I put it at two.

Burrow’s deal effects what the Fam will offer to other key players nearing free agency. Tee Higgins, Logan Wilson. They’d like to have some certainty, too.

It’s all incredibly boring and only slightly less pointless. They aren’t bartering. This isn’t a fake-Rolex shop in the Far East, where the proprietor is barking, “I give you best price!’’ It’s fairly cut and dried. So cut and dry it.

Now, then. . .

CONGRATS TO Chad and Boomer, newest Ring of Honor admittees. Sort-of similar personalities, for very different reasons.

Boomer didn’t need the attention. It orbited him and he was adept at managing it. Some guys grow charismatic. Some are born that way. Norman was the latter.

Chad needed the attention and sought it aggressively. You might, too, if when you were 5 years old, your mom dropped you off at your grandmother’s house in Liberty City near Miami and announced she was moving to Los Angeles.

Boomer had duende. (Merriam-Webster: the power to attract through personal magnetism and charm.) He owned the huddle in a way that was as effortless as it was firm.

Chad needed to be loved. Everything he did sprung from that need. The touchdown shows, the lists, his unfailing generosity toward total strangers he met at restaurants. If your party of eight was eating at J. Alexander in Rookwood and Chad showed up next to you, your ship had come in.

Singular talents, both. Big congrats.

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(iHeartRadio.ca)

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SPEAKING OF HONORS. . . Scott Rolen gave the perfect Scott Rolen speech at his HOF induction Sunday in Cooperstown. If you didn’t know him or never saw him play, you’d have believed Rolen owed his career entirely to other people, family most notably.

His six-minute Tribute To Everyone Else was a model of humility and grace. Here it is. Watch it. It’ll make you happy.

BASEBALL SCRIBE JOHN LOWE was also honored in Cooperstown. Don’t know him, never met him, apparently a fine fella. He invented the Quality Start stat, as sort of a companion to the Save.

Well, OK.

Pitchers and their agents ought to kiss Lowe’s ring. (As well as baseball writer Jerome Holtzman’s before him. Holtzman created the Save.)

The QS isn’t quite the bogus stat the Save is. But three earned runs allowed in six innings is a 4.50 ERA. How many pitchers with a 4.50 ERA are enshrined in Cooperstown?

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King of the wild frontier

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It’s average work. Maybe it’s gaining cred these days, when the 5-inning start is the norm, and anything beyond that is Davy Crockett at the Alamo. But 4-point-5 is 4-point-5.

The generosity of the Save stat — you can pitch one-third of an inning with a 3-run lead and get one — is why my eyes narrow whenever a relief pitcher appears on the HOF ballot.

Alexis Diaz got a 3-run save Friday and a 2-run save Saturday in which he allowed a run. Six of Diaz’ 29 saves have been 3-runners. He even had a 4-run save in April. Not saying he hasn’t had an exclamation-point season. He has. Saying the Save rule could use some tightening.

BRYAN HARMAN won the Open Championship. Thoughts:

The only thing better than rolling outta the rack on a Sunday morning to watch the British Open is rolling out to watch the British Open being played in a persistent rain.

Harman is a grinder, a Tour foot soldier and a lifelong striver with a never-quite-great chip on his shoulder. He was an utterly deserving champion. ESPN.com:

Before this week, he had won twice on the PGA Tour and earned about $30 million. He tied for second at the 2017 U.S. Open and for sixth at last year's Open Championship at St. Andrews in Scotland. Since the start of the 2017-18 season, he had 29 top-10 finishes on tour, the most of any player without a victory.

Howevuh. . .

The quirks. The set-up routine. The waggles — 10 of ‘em! Every tee box!

It was reminiscent of Sergio Garcia in the US Open at Bethpage. Remember? Garcia in the fairway looked like a man milking a cow. Grip, re-grip, repeat. Even the galleries got on him.

Harman was like that. Can you imagine that guy in your Saturday-morning group? You could mow the back-9, pray the rosary and eat a sandwich before Harman took back his club. Good Lord, man. Make the shot.

I FORGOT TO MENTION THIS AND IT IS VITAL. . . Among all the wonderful things experienced across two weeks in Italy was discovering Toscano cigars. My man Pogo had suggested I seek them out. I’d never heard of them.

Toscanos are those skinny, frayed-looking smokes Clint smoked in the Spaghetti Westerns. Because of their appearance and low cost, I figured I’d buy a 5-pack for the fun of it and then return to my regularly scheduled Drew Estates.

Not so fast, stogeyman.

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The Toscanos stayed lit, burned evenly, drew smoothly. They lasted 40 minutes or so, tasted like $10, not E6.89 (roughly $7.50) for a pack of five. I bought three more packs.

I put a good word in to my boys in the Party Source humidor. They have ‘em on order. My gift to youse, Mobsters. A true Johnny Thinwallet classic.

PROGRAMMING NOTE. . . My newest friend Larry Fannon, aka Tuscany Larry, is an independent tour guide who has been booking smaller groups for overseas travel for close to 30 years. He even has a home in Tuscany, the Italian region where Kerry, Kelly and I recently spent a delightful week. When it comes to traveling Europe, Larry knows what he knows, with the sort of personal touch that comes with leading a smaller group of 15-30 people.

He wants to take you with him. Summer or fall of 2024. Ten days, generally, though it can be more. Larry specializes in tours of the wine and cheese areas of Italy, and all of Ireland. The target demo is recently retired folks, with newly discovered free time and long-held dreams to be filled, though by no means is it limited to those peoples.

My wife and I would make the trip, too, if that thrills ya.

So if the idea of touring Italy, Ireland or anywhere else in Europe with a small group appeals to you, let me know. Or, better, email Larry: cruisetheinternet@gmail.com

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Former Cincinnati sports radio personality Tim Lewis posed this question on Facebook: What singer would you choose to come to your house and serenade you? Or something to that effect.

My pick was this guy, singing this tune.