8/13/2023 0 Comments Jay busbee 31 thoughts![]() And if you’re an arrogant, they-hate-us-’cause-they-ain’t-us fan base whose team never manages to actually win, well, you’re just the Dallas Cowboys. If you’re a mouthy team that never manages to actually win big games, who cares? Get back to us when you’re playing in February, slick. Still, the Bengals are well on their way to satisfying the first, and most important, trait for a villain team: winning. Cincinnati’s not there yet, and maybe those good old-fashioned Midwestern values won’t let that happen. If an organization is going to go full heel, it has to go all-in - you’ve got to despise everything from the badly dancing owner that TV cameras keep showing all the way to the ushers and popcorn slingers. Plus, Bengals team ownership and the coaching staff don’t exactly inspire fury the way that, oh, Jerry Jones or Bill Belichick do. If you’re going to be a supervillain, you’ve got to be evil from the ground up, and Cincy isn’t that. ![]() Does anyone really hate Cincinnati? Sure, everyone makes the same tired jokes about the chili, but have you ever had it? It’s actually pretty good. Next, we have safety Jessie Bates, saying he wants Kansas City's Patrick Mahomes to be "100 percent healthy so there is no excuses." Wanting the best out of the probable NFL MVP on the other side of the ball is a bold strategy, but it fits with the attitude of this entire team.Īnd then there’s cornerback Eli Apple, undercutting the heartfelt words of Buffalo’s Stefon Diggs with a devastating three-word jab-slash-offseason vacation suggestion:įor all this recent yapping, Cincinnati has some serious hurdles to overcome to become a truly hated team. “I hate that for people to have to endure all those logistical issues. Start with Burrow’s cold dismissal of the NFL’s neutral-site dreams: “ Better send those refunds,” he said on the field Sunday night, a mic dropped hard enough to crack the earth's crust.Ĭut to head coach Zac Taylor, the smarm dripping off his words as he expressed “sympathy” for the NFL’s planners: “It is tough, because they have to formulate the plans for coin tosses, they gotta formulate the plans for neutral site games, and we just keep screwing it up for everybody,” he said after the game. Since the Bengals toilet-swirled the Bills on Sunday, their victory lap looks like the start of something much, much bigger. Anybody who “disrespected” a team that hasn’t lost since Halloween is not someone to be taken seriously, but hey, get that motivation however you can, Cincy. More recently, Cincinnati spent the days leading up to the Buffalo game playing the “disrespect” card because the NFL decided to start selling tickets to a hypothetical game before the teams had been finalized. Even though he was born in 1996, Burrow has spent the past four years doing a note-perfect imitation of an '80s movie nerd-hunting jock villain. Look closely, and the villainous pieces are falling in place. And nobody smirks these days quite like Joe Burrow. But you know what really drives sports fandom? Pure, uncut loathing, the desire to beat the smirk right off the face of the other guy. Sure, all the images of rivals embracing and “so wholesome!” tweets of players playing catch with kids are fine. Pride is fandom’s driving force, and if pride isn’t on the line, a game is nothing but an elaborate dress rehearsal, and the players themselves simply business associates. We need more villains in sports, more teams and players to root against. To be clear: I am in no way opposed to the Bengals transforming into villains. The Bengals aren’t the NFL’s next supervillains yet, but they’re well on their way. ![]() ![]() Why? Why give the already-powerful any more motivation and fuel than they already have? Giving Burrow the epic slo-mo social treatment is like helpfully pointing Thanos in the direction of the Infinity Stones, or suggesting to Max Verstappen that he’s not on Lewis Hamilton’s level. This is the Bengals’ bad-guy origin story playing out right in front of us, right this moment. Instead, we all fell all over ourselves praising the moment, every one of us contributing to the hype that is Joe Brrr/Joe Shiesty/Joe Whatever-the-hell-we’re-calling-him-this-week. ![]()
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