On the most recent episode of The Editors podcast, I explained that I was shamelessly and half-heartedly climbing aboard the Cincinnati Bengals bandwagon, much as I did last year. And that I was doing so even though, until recently, an entire lifetime (for me) of disappointment from my hometown NFL franchise had conditioned me against caring much at all about their performance. Alas, last night’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs disappointed me once more.
The sort of wholly irrational sports-related superstition that Charlie has described well on his podcast and in his newsletter kept me from actually watching the game in real time, as my preferred nonsensical notion is that I negatively affect the outcome of games I watch for the team I like playing in them. So I didn’t find out until this morning what had happened. At least I am not to “blame.”
Someone who might be, by the unverifiable standard of sports-based paranoia? Cincinnati mayor Aftab Pureval. I had missed that, in a ceremony last week raising the Bengals flag before City Hall, Mayor Pureval introduced a mock resolution criticizing Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes that went, “Whereas Joseph Lee Burrow, who’s 3-0 against Mahomes, has been asked by officials to take a paternity test confirming whether or not he’s his father.”
This was wrong and bizarre on many levels. According to a WLWT report, fans recognized it as such immediately. The mayor was “booed by Bengals fans at a tailgate gathering and roundly criticized by fans here for what they called an unnecessary and unappealing remark.” One said that it was “bulletin board material” for the Chiefs. Pureval himself went the “it’s just this war and that lying son of a bitch Johnson” route, saying, “Look, I’ve so much passion for my city and for the Bengals, and I just so desperately want them to do well. The competitive juices and the love for Cincinnati really got away from me, and that’s my bad.” As a noted sports non-fan (usually), I see in this remark an attempt by a fellow apathetic to get in on the hype vibe — and failing.
Apart from that, though, it’s hubris, and hubris demands nemesis. Again, it’s totally irrational to believe such things determine the outcomes of games. But now that sports betting is increasingly (inadvisedly) being legalized, Mayor Pureval should make a Pascal’s wager that it might — and, in the future, shut up.