Puck Boy resigns as Cincy Bengals fan and adopts L.A. Kings

Sept. 14, 2009

Mike Brown
President, Cincinnati Bengals
1 Paul Brown Stadium
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Dear Mr. Brown:

This letter is to notify you that after 34 intense and often deflating years, I am resigning as a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals as of 11 a.m. Pacific time today. It will no longer be solemn duty to watch your team lose game after game via my satellite dish.

In fact, if I had a big enough ladder, I would also unhook my satellite dish as I no longer want the signal from Bengals games invading my otherwise mostly peaceful homestead.

I do not take this decision lightly. For the past three-plus decades I have:

    *Watched nearly every game the Bengals have played, even the dozens of meaningless games played from mid-September through December when the team has already been eliminated from the playoffs.

    *On sleepless nights when insomnia strikes, I have laid awake counting permutations of the Bengals offensive line instead of simply counting sheep – as a normal human being might do.

    *Have suffered countless impure, adolescent fantasies involving the Ben Gals, their heaving bosoms and Greaters chocolate chip ice cream.  I am now 43 years old. My heart simply can not handle bosoms and ice cream at the same time anymore.

    *On at least two occasions I publicly wept after hard-fought Bengals losses, including the heart-wrenching defeat in Super Bowl XXIII – a game that the 49ers should not have won under any circumstance. And perhaps they would not have won if the Bengals running back Stanley Wilson didn’t go on a cocaine bender the night before the game.

    *Speaking of which, I have turned the other way as a parade of Bengals players were handcuffed and marched off to the pokey for a variety of serious offenses. These guys make an infantry unit like the Vienna boys choir!

    I know what you are thinking: I would not be quitting on the team if the Bengals hadn’t given up a super-freaky 87-yard tipped touchdown pass in the final 20 seconds of yesterday’s soul-stripping loss to the Broncos. But it’s more than just that.

   

I dressed as Kenny Anderson for Halloween in the mid-1970s. I attended games on 15 degree days when few others did and performed the Ickey Shuffle to entertain my sick dog. It is only now, in the darkest hours of defeat, that I have come to realize that my faith in the Black-and-Orange will never be rewarded.

    And what is it that I ask? A simple wild card berth! Really—is that too much? A 9 and 7 season followed by a road loss to (pick one) Pittsburgh/Baltimore/San Diego?

    My resignation is irrevocable. I will not be writing on Friday asking to be reinstated as a fan. I am done. Finished. It’s over.

    Besides, I will be attending my first Los Angeles Kings game of the season Tuesday night. No longer can I split my affections between them and the Bengals – the Kings deserve all of me. So what if the Bengals have more recently made the playoffs than even the Kings? That is but a trifle detail today as I reach for my mental paintbrush and my heart is converted from a staid black-and-orange to a much more stylish purple-and-black.

    With regrets,

    Steve Hymon
    Fan of the Cincinnati Bengals, 1975 to Sept. 14, 2009

    P.S. You would have never been in position to lose yesterday’s game if you had run the ball more often on third-and-short earlier in the game – just like I scream at the television season after fucking season.

    P.P.S. As recently as last week I did a chest bump with the television after Coach Lewis told the team to act like “fucking professionals” on HBO’s “Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the Cincinnati Bengals.” I now realize I was a victim of NFL propaganda and should never have lied to my girlfriend and signed up again for the satellite package.