Welcome to my blog. I am a Bengals fan from Scotland, but I've recently moved to the USA. I've been following the Bengals since the 2008 season and I've been hooked on them ever since.
I started following the Bengals because of a video game. My friend had just visited Disney world on vacation and had come home with a copy of the latest edition of Madden football. I was over at his house playing it and was hooked pretty early on. I wanted to go and find a football game of my own to play at home but couldn't afford madden as it had just been released, I was only 12 at the time, but what I did find was on offer was NFL Street 3.
It had Chad Johnson, or so he was known at the time, on the cover and from the minute I put the disk into my PS2 Chads' character came to life. I knew he was good because they wouldn't put a talentless bum on the cover... right? I started playing the game with the Bengals squad became familiar with them. The next time I went round to my friends' house I knew who I was gonna be playing with. From then on the Cincinnati Bengals have been my team.
Over the 2008 season, I followed my Bengals through the use of my high schools' library computers. Watching game highlights every Monday during my lunch. It wasn't a good season to start following the Bengals, we went 4-11-1 with very few highlights during the season but it didn't put me off one bit. Over that season I had managed to find a preowned copy of Madden 06 and that helped me to learn the rules of football better and the flow of the game, instead of learning the sport on the blacktop of the arcadey NFL Street 3.
The 2008 regular season finished with the Bengals far out of the playoffs but my enthusiasm of the sport had only grown stronger. The only problem was I had not yet actually watched a real live game of football. It was getting further and further through the playoffs and it had been whittled down to two, The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals. I found out that the Superbowl was to be televised live on terrestrial UK TV and started begging and pleading to stay up and watch it live, even though I had school the next day. Eventually, I got permission and lost my NFL virginity and what a game to be your first.
A tight game all the way through with big plays that came right down to the wire which was won with one of the most impressive toe-tapping touchdown catches I have seen to this day. If only I knew how I'd begin to feel about the Steelers years later I might not have been so happy for the Steelers, but to this day I still consider it one of the best games I've watched live.
Now that I had watched my first NFL game I was even more hooked. I eventually got to watch my first Bengals game in week 17 of the 2009 season, which was a much better season sweeping the AFC North and going into the last game had already clinched the division. With the Bengals in the playoffs and the New York Jets trying to clinch a wildcard slot, NBC flexed the week 17 game into primetime Sunday night football, which again was on UK TV. I stayed up to watch it as it was during our Christmas break, but it wasn't a good game to be my first. The Bengals sat starters, including QB Carson Palmer, and the Jets took advantage of the soft squad and dominated the Bengals 37-0. It left a sour taste in my mouth, but we were still in the playoffs but with the Jets win they were to be our opponent.
After the embarrassing performance I was sure that when we'd bring the starters back we'd be a much stronger team, alas I was wrong. The Bengals playoff woes continued as the Jets went on to beat us two weeks in a row, first in New Jersey and then in Ohio.
Since then I've started to watch all games live, through NFL gamepass, and even visited Cincinnati with my girlfriend to watch her beloved Colts against my Bengals in 2017. As I've recently moved to the US I'm hoping to get to many more games but for the time being, I've started this blog where I'm going to give my opinion on all things Bengals. I hope you enjoy my blog and enjoy my view of our beloved team.
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