We all feel beaten down by this pandemic, but if there’s anything the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills can teach us, it’s to never lose hope.
I was sorry to see Buffalo fall out of the playoffs yesterday. Their victory would have set up some sort of “David vs. David” match-up in the AFC Conference Championship. Now, the Bengals will face the Kansas City Chiefs in a more old-school David vs. Goliath situation. Only this time, David will win.
If the Scaianalysis Editorial Board is being honest with you, though, we haven’t always been die-hard Bengals fans. I grew up in Ohio but was raised a New York Giants fan for two reasons:
1.) Papa Scaia was a Giants fan
2.) For much of the 90s, the Bengals were awful. Just awful.
Prior to that, the Scaia Fam jumped on the Bengals bandwagon, though. I don’t remember much about Super Bowl XXIII except feeling glum when the 49ers scored that last touchdown.
More vividly, I remember yelling “Who dey!” quite frequently. Then someone else would yell “Who dey!” and then whoever else was in the room would inquire, “Who dey think they gonna beat them Bengals?!”
We also all fondly recall the Ickey Shuffle.
But in high school, because kids in high school are such fools, I developed a soft spot in my heart for the Patriots during Super Bowl 31. The Patriots had been awful, just awful, for much of the late 80s and early 90s. They were, like the 1994 Montreal Expos, rising up after years of being overlooked. But once Tom Brady turned them into a dynasty, I realized the soft spot was actually an aortic aneurysm.
The lesson to take away from that is that you’re never done improving yourself.
I didn’t become a Cincinnati Bengals die hard the same way I latched onto he Cincinnati Reds when I moved away from home, filling my home with blankets and parlor games celebrating the team.
Even now, I realize I don’t own any Cincinnati Bengals memorabilia. No Boomer Esiason jersey. No commemorative CD with our favorite artists of the 1980s singing “Who Dey” to raise money for agriculture.
I was sort-of a Bengals fan, in the same sense that most people in southwest Ohio were sort-of fans. I remember waiting until Friday to hear if they’d sold enough tickets so Sunday’s game could be on TV.
I sort-of got on board after I moved to DFW because around that same time, the Bengals drafted Andy Dalton out of TCU.
After the win this weekend, however, I thought, “This is getting serious.” Joe Burrow was born in Iowa, but his family moved to Ohio, and he spent a lot of his childhood there.
I went online to buy this handsome Bengals shirt, but they were out of stock. I bet they had plenty of those shirts this entire millennium until this weekend. Just as well; I grew up just north of the 513, in the 937 [pronounced, “nine-three-sev”], so everyone would have known I had just jumped on the bandwagon.
The Scaia Fam celebrated Super Bowl XXV because the Giants won, but I vaguely recall feeling bad for Scott Norwood. I understand the Bills’ frustration. That was the first of four straight years of them saying, “Surely, we can’t go to the Super Bowl [each year adding a number] times without winning.”
Bengals’ fans might have dreamed of advancing to the Super Bowl four straight years and then losing, though. But they weren’t always anomalies in the playoffs. Their first Super Bowl appearance earlier in the 80s was the highest rated televised sporting event in history. Even outside of sporting events, more people watched that Super Bowl than watched the Gettysburg Address on television or watched Martin Luther’s press conference after nailing his 95 theses to the door on television. More people watched the Bengals on TV than those two events combined.
To support the team, I may organize an Ickey Shuffle marathon Saturday night. Just Ickey Shuffling all up and down the streets of Fort Worth. And then serving Skyline Chili at the house for the game Sunday.
