The Cincinnati Bengals and Me
My name is Rob Gressis, and I’m a professor of philosophy at California State University, Northridge. You may know me from my book, The Most Awkward Man in Japan: Dispatches from a Philosopher Abroad, or from my many crimes. Although I teach philosophy, a far more relevant fact about me is that I have been a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals since 1989, when I watched them lose Super Bowl XXIII to the San Francisco 49ers, 16 to 20. The Bengals were expected to lose by 7, so, unsurprisingly, Cincinnati fans stormed the field in celebration: “the Bengals beat the spread!!” they screamed. By contrast, San Francisco fans looked on in anguish as 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo, Jr. floppily held up the Vince Lombardi trophy in the San Fran locker room after the game.
That day, a fan was born. I was that fan.
Admittedly, it was a prolonged labor. After that Super Bowl, I didn’t watch any more Bengals games for the next thirty-two years, popping up in 2022 to watch the Bengals lose, again, in Super Bowl LVI, where they succumbed to the Los Angeles Rams, 23 to 20. I was sad to see quarterback Joe Burrow’s Bengals defeated by the Los Angeles Rams, but nevertheless, Cincinnati fans across the nation high-fived each other in jubilation, ecstatic that the Bengals, once again, covered the spread (Las Vegas predicted the Rams to win by 3.5, so it was a nailbiter!).
After Super Bowl LVI, I was hooked. So hooked, in fact, that it took me only 575 more days before I watched another Bengals football game, on September 10, 2023, where they lost to the Cleveland Browns 24-3.
The Bengals didn’t have a great season in 2023. They were on everyone’s short list to make the Super Bowl, but they went 9-8, Joe Borrow missed half the season with an injury, they were last place in their division, and they didn’t make the playoffs. Even worse, they covered the spread only seven times that whole season.*
I didn’t write anything about the 2023 Bengals season, because I didn’t know I would have a website that was supposed to have any content until, like, nine days ago. After scrapping the idea of a website that documented my bowel movements (it would have been updated regularly!), we settled on the idea of a football blog, because after living and dying with the Bengals through seventeen games, I became very ill, and I needed to do something to give me a sense of purpose.
My illness, in case it wasn’t already evident, was Bengalsitis (self-diagnosed). I became completely obsessed with the Bengals, listening regularly to four separate podcasts dedicated to them, checking The Athletic, The Ringer, ESPN, and Cincy Jungle daily, hourly, and, on some days, minute-ly, fantasizing about moving to Cincinnati so I could feel the walls of Paycor Stadium, and pressuring my son Briscoe to get his grades down so he could focus more on football (he obliged).
In other words, I think about Cincinnati football a lot. Since I am someone who can turn two-hour sashimi dinner into a 5,714 word hallucination, I figured I’d be able to transform some of NFL-perseverations into a delightful word salad for you.
So that’s what this blog will be about: you traveling alongside me while I delight in the highs and bewail the lows of the 2024 Cincinnati Bengals Season, a journey thirty-five years in the making.
Who Dey!**
*Eagle-eyed fans (but not Eagles fans, who are ironically cross- or lazy-eyed), may have noticed that I emphasize beating the spread rather than actually winning games. I have two reasons for this. First, football is an amazing sport, a game where a thin, rangy man tries to sniper a football at one speeding cheetah who is surrounded by a pack of hyenas, all while violent goliaths are trying to pulverize him. Beating the spread is objectively amazing: it means your team did better than the market, which incorporates all public information, predicted. Second, football is 100% a vehicle for gambling.
** This is what Bengals fans constantly say. I think it’s because of an owl or some shit
