The Bengals DGAF
From here out, I’m on the Cincy Bandwagon. My rooting preferences for what’s left:
-The Bengals
-I am hit by a bus
-The Chiefs
-The 49ers
-I am hit by a larger bus, then a train, and my body is flung into a pit of acid and then I am nuked
-the heat death of the universe
-The Eagles
The NFL screwed over Cincinnati after the Hamlin game and it seems to have given them supreme bulletin board material. There was no perfect solution to the Hamlin cancellation but they could have done better by the Bengals. Like I posted last week, it seemed strange to me that the NFL decided the game did not happen, but then decided it had to account for the Bills and Chiefs #1 seed being uncertain, so it came up with a solution to cater to the Bills in the scenario, but not the Bengals. If fact, it hurt the Bengals, making them have to face a potential coinflip to lose home field to the Ravens if they lost to Baltimore in week 18. The Bengals could have won that game the same way the Bills could have, so it was strange to see one scenario help one team and hurt another, when the much more obvious solution was to just…also give the Bengals and Bills a neutral site, or at least a coin flip for home field in case of that matchup. The Bengals saw all this and said “Fuck you, we’re not gonna let you do any of this dumb shit”, beat the Ravens to avoid the coin flip, beat the Bills to prevent the neutral site game, and now I hope win the whole thing.
One of the worst things that’s come of this neutral site game is rumors and discussion that the NFL has debated on making the championship games into permanent neutral site games, similar to the Super Bowl. Fuck that. Fuck no. Absolutely not. Shoot that idea in the dick. It makes sense for the Super Bowl. When you have two champions from two separate conferences and only one game to play, having that game be a neutral battlefield to determine the best of the best is a sensible one. For championships? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that. One of the most prized possessions a team can earn in a season is home-field advantage. If you prove to be the best team in the conference, you deserve to have the conference come to you. The fans of that team deserve to see their team, on their turf, host the game. It’s part of the fun! It makes it special when the team wins, or even more notably, the team loses, and thousands of fans get their hearts ripped out in front of them. I feel this is incredibly important to the experience. A #1 seed will still get the benefit of the bye week and home field in the divisional, but that’s it. The power of the #1 seed would be diminished greatly. If you can get the #2 seed, you can effectively be free from ever having to challenge the top seed in their house. If the NFL expands to a 16-team playoff, which I expect to happen in the next 10 years or so in conjunction with an 18-week season, that will remove the bye week altogether, making it even worse.
What else sucks? Those neutral site games will also have another Super Bowl problem: cold weather cities. Chicago, Green Bay, Buffalo, Cincy, KC, New England, Denver, Philly…these cities and a few others will never get to host the game, which hurts those fans and communities.
Like all things NFL, it’s money. The neutral game pre-sold tickets like hotcakes. I’m not surprised. Novelties are fun things to get tickets to. But if they make this permanent, the games are going to be so much less fun because the crowd is part of the experience. A neutral game site is going to have a lot of random fans of neither team there, and it’ll cater to the wealthier fans to start with. That’s why the NFL wants it. They make bank on rich tech bros and such turning the Super Bowl into a party and ticket prices are astronomical. They want customers who will spend more money, regardless of being a fan or not. This is already a massive issue with the Super Bowl, but it’s kind of inevitable there. There’s no reason to do this for the Championships. I hate it.
The only other “reasoning” I’ve seen for it is that it would allow the NFL to scout new cities for potential super bowl sites, seeing how they handle the championships. A flimsy, bullshit excuse. Use the pro-bowl for that if you must, or just…do your fucking research. Stop pretending it isn’t about the money.
Anyway, thank you Bengals for not giving the NFL a chance to test-run this terrible idea. Go take that spite energy all the way to the top.
Im glad this isnt happening. Really hate the idea. Call me crazy but if “neutral site championship games” becomes the norm it wont end there.
We 100% would eventually get a “Final Four” type event where the Conference Finals are played on a Sunday at two different stadiums and then the Super Bowl is the week after also in the same city. Pretty much a “Super Bowl Week” and literally any city with two big stadiums somewhat close to each other. Like London or Los Angeles. Even crazier places like Madrid or Paris could do it or Atlanta if you include Athens.
I’m also rooting for the Bengals. If my team isn’t in the playoffs, I always root for whichever team has never won the Super Bowl and this year, that’s the Bengals.
Making the regular season matter less a la basketball should be the exact opposite of what the NFL should want to try to do on top of all the other issues with it. Awful idea, glad the Bengals preemptively shot it in the head, and hopefully it stays dead.
If the eagles weren’t still in it, I’d be pulling for cincy all the way. That being said, since we’re playing the 49ers, those conditions might be met sooner than I’d like
I’m rooting for the 49ers, just for because I want CMC to get a ring (you’re still a Panther on my heart!), but I’ll be happy for a Bengals win too. Fuck yeah, stick it to the man!
The Bengals are not only doing good (except for Eli Apple, of course), but are getting a Playoff Bandwagon against good, non-hated teams (Giants fans, notwithstanding)?
Well, I best grab my Bible, as if this trend of good luck continues, I fully expect Jesus to return in the 4th Qtr with the Bengals having the ball and a solid 13-point lead.
GO NINERS
I think you nailed it with the money thing, but I also think its flip side of the coin – the NFL hates that smaller market teams like KC and Cincy are getting all the attention. Rich folks don’t live in the midwest or southern Ohio. KC games are already getting ridiculous but when you see Super Bowl tickets that START at 10x that…
Go Bengals! Kitty goes meow!
The cynic in me says they will see how much the NFL makes from neutral site sales, so they will decide to make the entire playoffs neutral site.
The chaos fan in me wants them to make every team play one neutral site game each season, that way everybody has the same number of home and road games.
For extreme chaos, the NFL could offer these games to cities that don’t have NFL teams, and try and get even more stadiums built in more cities, and eventually go to an entirely neutral site league, with hundreds of stadiums around the country fighting it out to get NFL games.
Have every playoff game in London.
Boom. Your welcome.
Ban this person!
@NFLCommish likes this point
dammit. Likes this POST.
How can you even think of denying the NFL Owners the opportunity to make the game worse if it means increasing their revenue‽
Love the hovertext
Good points, the NFL is looking at the decision to make money. Hopefully the owners would veto making the championship games a neutral site. Surprised to see tech bros singled out when the people flying to the Superbowl are the 1% and not the 25 year old Silicon Valley developer watching the game at a sports bar. As a Giants fan I love Daves rooting guide and it mirrors my own. The Niners have a tough game Sunday but they would really do us all a favor by winning.
Why is there a giant garbage plate on top of the building in the last panel?
This will almost certainly be like talking to a brick wall like every other time i try to say this but part of the reason why the coin flip happened was because if the Bengals hadve lost the Bills game, we would have gotten a chance to play for the AFC North and the game getting canceled screwed us out of that opportunity, so the NFL introduced the coin toss if we beat Cincy to try and make things fairer for us. I recognize that Cincy was screwed over especially by the NFL not giving the Bills-Bengals game a neutral site (didn’t turn out to need it though), but it’s been a little disheartening as a Ravens fan to see literally everyone rush to comfort and support cincy for how they got screwed over while at best ignoring and at worst outright deriding ravens fans for trying to bring up their angle in the whole fiasco. Neutral site AFC championship games are stupid though and while I would sooner eat glass than root for the Bengals I am at least glad that isn’t happening.
I get that, the coin flip for the Ravens made sense in the same way the neutral site of the Bills/Chiefs made sense. It was a possible scenario.
What didn’t make sense is that the NFL didn’t come up with any adjustment scenarios that benefitted the Bengals, but did for the other two teams. It’s like the NFL just assumed the Bengals would lose that game, but got spared the loss so invented ways to adjust for that loss.
This is precisely why I was so angry with the solution. They changed the rules 2 weeks before the playoffs, but didn’t change them in a fair way.
There were 2 options:
1. Do nothing because that’s what the rules say.
2. Acknowledge that the Chiefs got an unintentional advantage, and the Bills, Bengals, and Ravens got disadvantaged. They could’ve disregarded one conference win for the Chiefs and it would’ve put all 4 teams back in the same position as they were in before the Hamlin game.
That would’ve been a radical solution, but it would’ve been fair. And they were already taking radical measures by changing rules on the fly basically.
Gooddell sucks.
I love how Dave has been rooting for chaos all year, but when the Bengals win to stop the chaos of coinflips and neutral sites, they’re suddenly his hero.
That feels less like chaos and more contrived bullshit.
The Bengals are also still the most chaotic team left. They were the only away team to win over the weekend. They are the only team left without a Super Bowl win. They are playing angry, determined football. And telling the NFL to suck a lemon when the NFL screwed them over is still chaos.
I suppose so. I was calling the coinflips and neutral championship sites bullshit anyway.
Here I am a lifelong Steelers fan in the 2023rd year of our lord rooting for the Bengals.
What a time to be alive.
It is funny how so many people pre ordered ticked to a game that can’t happen now, but the only reason I’d somewhat be against the bengals winning now is so Eli Apple shuts the hell up.
The SB often feels so overproduced that it lacks soul, and the lack of significant fans for either team is a big part of that. I often feel that the conference championships are more entertaining, and a big reason is because of the engagement of the crowd rooting for THEIR team.
The Super Bowl has routinely lacked the crowd hype that typically comes with big-time playoffs games in large part due to all the regular fans getting priced out of going to the game. Nowadays, the game feels like a big get together for a bunch of celebrities and rich people rather than real football fans.
This is why, despite actually finding neutral site Conference Championships to be a pretty cool idea, I am completely against it. It is just not worth losing the atmosphere that comes with the current format. Those games are already overpriced as shit as it stands, but at least the locals don’t have to fork out thousands more just to get to the damn game.
I’ll admit that I took a lot of joy in seeing Cincinnati humble Buffalo. After spending an entire offseason whining and forcing a completely unnecessary rule change (that didn’t actually change anything) while swearing up and down that this was the year they were gonna take down Kansas City, they go out and get bitch-slapped on their home turf by the other guy they should have been a lot more worried about. Good riddance.
y’know, if Joe Burrow actually delivered an atomic backbreaker to baddell, that might be enough to make me a Bengals fan for life
Missed a truck there, like.
Burrow wrecks the white board- CRACKLE
Then he opens up the C4 – POP
How petty would Kellogg’s have looked if they’d tried to sue over a comic? It would have out-toxic’d Wizards of the Coast inside a couple of weeks of their own bullshit. #OpenDnD #DnDBegone
post cereal is preemptively suing the band OKGO (who they have previously worked with) because they want to steal their name… so there’s that