Albert Einstein said:
"The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over expecting different results."
On Sunday my dad took me to a Cincinnati Bengals game, something he and I have been doing for half my life. I never saw Michael Jordan play basketball, and I’ve never been in the stadium when the Yankees create one of their improbable, unstoppable rallies, and I never saw Mark Messier win a Ranger game simply by force of will. But I’ve seen enough games in Cincinnati to tell you the Bengals play with a magic no less exceptional than these.
Take Sunday’s conference battle against the Baltimore Ravens. Bengals got 25 first downs. Though running back Corey Dillon, the Bengals’ MVP/felon, got bottled up for most of the game, QB John Kitna threw for over three hundred yards, with two touchdowns. Cincinnati converted on four of their five fourth downs. The stats tell a story of Bengal domination.
But the Bengals found a way to lose. Fucking Bengals always lose, even when they dominate.
It’s difficult for an outsider to understand the Bengals’ spectacular capacity to bumblefuck a game. It’s not just that they lose. Anyone can do that. What the Bengals do is lose improbably, infuriatingly, inexplicably. They drive 80 yards, and then Icky Woods fumbles on the 1-yard line. They come back from 17 points down, but then Tim McGee drops a touchdown pass in the final second. They run a near perfect two-minute drill to get within field goal position at the end of the game, just so Neil Rackers can shank it.
The cursed, soulless Bengals are doomed to walk the earth like ghosts, never capable of grasping what will bring them peace.
Sunday’s game was a classic of the bumblefuck genre. Bengals score the first TD of the game—and miss the extra point. Bengals drive 80 yards but then, with under a minute left in the half, throw an interception that’s returned 98 yards for a TD. Bengals hold the Baltimore offense back throughout the game—until they block a Cincinnati punt, recover the ball, and run it into the endzone. Bengals fight back, drive down the field, and then with just seconds left on the clock, fail to convert on 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th and goal. The Bengals’ last attempt was the only time all day that they failed to convert on fourth down.
Dad and I shook our heads and sat in the cold shade of the stadium, watching the game tick to a close. Like a gambling addict, my dad’s been buying season tickets to Cincinnati games for over a decade, thinking this is gonna be the year they’ll win a few. And I’ve been the pathetic enabling son who helps dad gamble, lies to the creditors when the call, sleeps in the car while papa bets away the money Dad said he was saving so sis can go to private school. How else can you explain two guys staring out at the field in Cincinnati, struck with that odd, awful feeling of self-loathing that comes on you when you realize you got taken again?
Luckily, there was Cincinnati chili to be had on the way home. All worthwhile. I am fatter now than I’ve ever been in my life.
