Classic Sports Story
I enjoy sports, really I love them. I know they aren’t everything, or even significant beyond entertainment value. However, they do create some amazing stories, and I think I have one here.
Growing up, I was more of a basketball fan, especially of the NBA. My dad, sister, and I bonded over the Phoenix Suns in the early 2000s, meaning that by the time I got to college I didn’t follow the NFL and really only sat down to watch the Super Bowl. In 2013 I had a roommate that was a big Packers fan and, as a good friend should, any time he watched them play I loved to heckle. During one particular game, his precious Packers were getting beat by the Bengals. I did my duty and morphed into a life-long Bengals fan. I cheered like I was a proud father watching his son make it in the big league. Obviously, my roommate hated it. He took my taunts and cheers seriously and was ready to handle the situation like men. I am five foot five inches tall if my shoes have a thick sole. I am not a fighter, so I doubled down on my sincerity claiming to be a fan of this Bengals team. By the end of the game, with the aid of several google searches to learn players’ names and other random facts, I had this friend convinced I not only loved the Bengals but the city of Cincinnati as a whole. No punches were thrown. No serious injuries, other than his fragile Packer-fan ego.
That alone would be enough to turn me into an actual fan, but it gets better.
A few days later we are at a party celebrating a different roommate’s sister’s birthday (yeah the link is pretty weak, but we were in college and there were girls at this party). The first roommate is talking to a girl off to the side and I am hanging out with a different crowd, things are pleasant. Things are fun.
“You’re from Cincinnati? My roommate loves Cincinnati!” says the roommate.
His hand reaches from the depths of the crowd, grabs my shoulder, and pulls me into his conversation. The girl is kind, sweet, but not exactly my type. I am nice, however, so I play the part and use all the google searches done during the game to keep the façade that I know about the city of Cincinnati and carry an affinity for a city I have never been to.
We talk about Cincinnati Bearcats (college), Reds (baseball), how horrible Cleveland is, and the Bengals. The interaction takes about three minutes and I melt into the crowd, rejoining my roommates. Nothing about the night feels significant.
A week after the Bengals-Packers game, I am enjoying a relaxing Sunday afternoon doing nothing and avoiding homework. Remember the roommate’s sister who celebrated her birthday? She called me. I didn’t know her very well, having only met through her brother.
Before I go on, I should mention that everyone in this story belongs to the same church, or at least we were at the time. We are from Utah, and attend The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the traditions of the church is that on the first Sunday of the month congregations host what is called a testimony meeting, where members go to the microphone and share what they believe, know, and enjoy about the church. It is a sort of oper-mic sermon.
This particular Sunday was a testimony meeting and the roommate’s sister tells me that the girl from Cincinnati shared her thoughts with her congregation. She tells everyone that she was ready to drop out of school and move back to the great state of Ohio to be around fellow Cleavland haters. She said she had prayed for a sign that she needed to stay and for a little sliver of comfort, even a reminder of home. Her friends convinced her to attend a party, though she was not interested. Some guys try and flirt, but her heart is not in it. One boy asks where she is from.
“Cincinnati,” she replies, thinking of all the cornfields and the astounding number of astronauts that have come from the state.
“You’re from Cincinnati? My roommate loves Cincinnati!” the boy says.
She tells the crowd that it was a miracle. This boy pulls over a young man (me) who talks to her for several minutes about her home state and town. She is shocked and amused at his knowledge of random facts of a city he has never been to.
“The conversation was a miracle,” she tells everyone, “God sent him to me to remind me of home and give me the strength to finish the school year.”
I listen to the story and I am dumbfounded. It has been seven days since I learned the name of the Bengals starting quarterback (Andy Dalton), and I only learned that fact to heckle a roommate. I don’t know what to do. The phrase, “God works in mysterious ways,” really seems to be taking on new meaning. Apparently, my idea of a joke turned into a miracle that helped a young lady finish school.
I don’t know what the official sports fan bylaws state, but it seems like if someone preaches about your love for a team from the pulpit at church you have to be a fan of that team for the rest of your life. Nearly ten years later I am screaming in my parent’s living room as I watch McPhearson kick his second game-winning, and a playoff rookie record eleventh, field goal of this postseason to send the Bengals into their first Superbowl since 1989. I can tell you how Joe Burrow is the first top overall pick to lead his team to the big game in his second season, or how the Bengals were the worst team in the league two years ago making this turnaround the fastest worst-to-best run in NFL history. What started as a joke, turned into someone’s spiritual experience, ended as a sincere fandom.
Sports are not that important, but they are fun and they do create amazing stories. Go Bengals.