Thinking about the Bengals

5 lessons from their turn-around season and heartbreaking loss

Well, of course I’m thinking about the Bengals this morning. I wish it were gloomier. That’s how it should be. The sun should not be shining. There is no joy in Mudville and all of that. Not much joy, at least.

I’m sad, but also trying to find some meaning, so here are 5 lessons from the Bengals’ amazing season and their shattering loss.

1.  Be who you are.

Unapologetically. If you’re confident, be confident. If you have a sense of style that no one’s seen on a white boy since Broadway Joe, show that shit off. I love Joe Burrow for lots of reasons. For his Heisman trophy acceptance speech, which ended up raising thousands of dollars to fight hunger in Appalachian Ohio. For the solidly middle/working class look of his parents’ living room on the night he was drafted. For his amazing athletic skills, yes. But most of all, for the way in which he refuses to let anyone shame him into being one bit less than who he is.

This was Joe’s pre-game ensemble

Drew Brees asked him in an interview, “Have you always been this confident?”, the kind of question that’s supposed to evoke an origin story about incredible odds he had to overcome and all the adversity he faced. Joe’s not having that. “Yeah, I have,” he said and smiled. Yeah, you be you, Joe.

2. Acknowledge that some things are really hard to do.

I was not a fan of Zach Taylor when the Bengals hired him two years ago. His whole qualifications for the job seemed to be that he had once shaken whiz-kid Sean McVay’s hand. He was not Marvin Lewis, in many ways, including that he was yet another white, inexperienced head coach.

I still think a Black coach should have gotten the job. Black coaches should get all the jobs in the NFL and college football for the next one hundred years and we’d be a little closer to making up for the last one hundred.

Still, even a white dude who shouldn’t have been hired gets it right every now and then, like last night after the game. In a post-game interview, Zach Taylor said, “Winning the Super Bowl is really hard. We’re proud of the season we had.”

Right. It is hard. Swept up in the wave of optimism, which is such a strange feeling for a Bengals’ fan, I forgot how very hard it is to win it all. It’s not the NBA finals or the World Series where you get multiple games. It’s one game for everything. Against what is probably one of the best teams in the league.

Some things are really hard. Writing a book. Publishing a book. Selling a book. They don’t happen for a lot of people because they’re hard and because so much is out of your control. It sucks, but that’s how the world works.

3.  Hope and love will always hurt sometimes.

Being optimistic as a Bengals’ fan does feel really weird. For years, we got used to disappointment. We got used to believing that more than likely, we would not win. Even when things were good, we were the masters of what Brene Brown calls forbidding joy. We could be happy that we made the playoffs, but we knew it wouldn’t go well after that. Our joy was always tainted by a sense of doom.

We tell ourselves that forbidding joy—tempering our happiness with a healthy dose of caution—will keep us from feeling as much pain when things turn south. This is, of course, a lie. Even if you tell yourself you expect to lose, it still hurts when you do.

To love a team fiercely and to hope for them to win will always cause pain at some point. Even the Patriots fans are suffering now (let’s take comfort from that). Even Tom Brady lost (hurray!). You can’t love and hope without also hurting a little sometimes and that’s okay. It’s still worth it, so lean into the love and hope. Go ahead and feel it. Feel it all.

4. Love each other hard.

You’ll hear NFL coaches and commentators talk a lot about ‘culture.’ They want to build a winning ‘culture.’ It’s one of those things no one can describe, but they know it when they see it.

The Bengals had it this year and it was a culture of taking care of each other. Of winning for each other. “These guys believe in each other and they play for each other and it’s special,” offensive coordinator Brian Callahan said.

I could go on and on about how important this lesson is. We’ve all been a part of a group or organization where people clearly did not care for each other or believe in each other. I hope you’ve also been lucky enough to be a part of a group or organization that does. It makes all the difference in the world.

5. Sport as inspiration or opiate or a little of both.

I saw a tweet on Sunday that said something to the effect of, “The only winners in the Super Bowl are millionaires.” Which is true in many ways. Sport is a big business. A lot of people made a lot of money last night. Most of them were already rich.

The NFL is facing a lawsuit for their racially discriminatory practices in hiring coaches and if there is anything right in the world, they will lose this suit. They should. The NFL has crap policies about sexual violence amongst its players and employees (though probably less crappy than policies for people like, I don’t know, congressmen, presidents, and Supreme Court justices). Their stance on police violence and racial injustice has also been crap. I could go on and on.

Sport is nothing but a tool by our capitalist overlords to keep us distracted as they exploit the hell out of us. That’s the sport as opiate perspective and there’s a lot of truth in it. I get it.

There is also an incredible joy in watching humans do amazing physical things with their bodies and their minds. Ja’Marr Chase’s one-handed catch was a thing of beauty. The way Aaron Donald blows past defensive linemen is amazing. Watch a running back like Walter Peyton on film in slow motion and tell me it’s not like ballet.

Maybe all the capitalism cancels out all that beauty, but maybe not. Maybe we can take the good with the bad and find a way to both love sports and demand a whole lot more from them.

Well, at any rate, that’s what I’ll be doing. So keep your fingers crossed the MLB owners don’t let their greed take another baseball season away from us and go Reds!

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