It has now been close to a week since the conclusion of Saturday’s Bengal-Steeler playoff game (working title, “The Bungle in the Jungle,” patent pending, all rights reserved), and I am just now getting a chance to collect some thoughts in an attempt to describe the indescribable—to explain the inexplicable.
To put it mildly, the game was brutal. The conditions were brutal. The play on the field (and on occasion, off of it—I’m looking at you, Mike Munchak) was brutal. Most of all, the conclusion of the game was brutal—the cruelest twist of fate dealt to a team who has had more than their share of bad luck and self-inflicted agony.
The Bengals lose. It’s what they do. Sometimes early, sometimes late, but for 47 years, the Cincinnati football team has specialized in finding new, creative, more painful ways to not win.
But on January 9, 2016, the Bengals delivered their masterpiece—a magnum opus of defeat that may never be matched. It was King Lear, full of plots and subplots, tragic heroes and anti-heroes. It was Guernica—a chaotic, dark work of art painted on the soggy canvas of Field Turf at Paul Brown Stadium.
Reflections from a Perfectly Normal Childhood 