The NFL regular season begins tomorrow (football season started last Thursday) and the occasion always makes me a little nostalgic.
From 1995 to 2002 I lived and breathed everything Bengals. In that time period their regular season record was 41-87. I was thirteen when the run started, and a junior in college when it ended. Zero playoff appearances and one .500 season in eight years, and that season (1996) they were 5-8 and won the last three to end up even. The team didn't even sniff serious late-season postseason contention. From Harold Green and Jeff Blake to Akili Smith and Takeo Spikes, I cheered them all and rarely missed a game on television (2001 season finale at Tennessee, won on a last-second field goal, is the only game that comes to mind). The Marvin Lewis era and I are strangers. The semi-competent, always near .500, 2005 AFC North-winning team isn't the Bengals team I grew up with.
When people like Bill Simmons or whoever write about what it means to be a fan, what fan experiences are supposed to be like, how it's supposed to feel, I can't help but get disconnected. I wasn't even rooting for the Reds in 1990 particularly hard; my early baseball fandom was plagued by early allegiances with the Astros (cool name) and Royals (not lefthanded, not a third baseman, but a George Brett fan for some reason). The Reds' World Series victory that year was nice, but not a personal triumph. Since then the Reds' only experience with postseason baseball was in 1995, and getting swept by Atlanta in humiliating fashion. I've never seen a team I followed daily play in a World Series. My Bengals fandom began by watching them lose the Super Bowl. I've seen them play one playoff game, in which any hope they had of winning was snuffed out in the opening series. My college football team is Ohio University, who went 7-4, 1-10, 4-8, 2-10 and 4-8 in my five years in Athens. Naturally, the first year I only went to two home games and didn't really follow the football team.
The sports experience I've lived, and many live, depending on what team they follow, is effectively one of playing out the string. Of November home games in front of half-filled stadiums, of chronic indifference, of never flying a banner or calling yourself champion or seeing your guy on the cover of a magazine. A life of SOPcasting games, of praying for regional coverage, of pining for GamePlan and Sunday Ticket and a mention on Baseball Tonight.
Corey Patterson is possibly the worst player in the majors to get as many plate appearances as he has this year, but damned if I didn't feel proud when he got the top play on this morning's SportsCenter for his homer-robbing against the Pirates last night. Rooting for chronically bad teams is the ultimate way of living in the moment, of savoring the now, because there's never a division race, never a pennant chase, never any reason to think about anything beyond tomorrow.
Those semi-competent Bengals, with their power rankings in the teens and being picked for the playoffs, they were strangers. These high-20s Bengals, with awful defenses and Chris Henry... that's my Bengals. Cincinnati vs. Baltimore, Sunday at 10. Let's do this.
