The Thinking Fan's Guide
Lots of people will break down the chess match that will take place in Sunday's Super Bowl. I'm going to measure the owner's wallets and tell you about the only Rams fan I ever met in the wild.
The Bengals reached the Super Bowl in spite of their owner’s wallet, the Rams are here because of it.
That more than anything explains a fundamental difference between the two teams playing in this Sunday’s Super Bowl, but it’s not the only thing separating them, and I’m going to do my best to explain either the reasons or the ramifications of rooting for each team on Sunday.
But first, I wrote about the Asian-American freestyle skier who is competing for China in yesterday’s newsletter. I’ve come across a few more stories that echo the kind of themes I talked about, but I also had a story that exemplifies how that framing is being applied exclusively to her. Norm Charlatan — one of the best Twitter handles ever by the way — linked to this ESPN.com story about China's men's hockey team, which includes American men. The story lacks any of the political freight that is loaded into the coverage of Eileen Gu. I’m not saying one way is right or wrong, but the inconsistency is striking.
Today’s newsletter is about football, though. The ‘Merican kind. We’ve got the Super Bowl on Sunday so without further ado, I introduce my humbly titled treatise on the ethical implications of any rooting decisions you make. I’m kidding. Kind of.
The Thinking Fan’s Guide to Sunday’s Super Bowl
Why should I hate the Rams owner? Well, Stan Kroenke is a super-rich developer, one of the largest landowners in the entire country and married a Walmart heir. I’m not knocking that. As someone who married a significantly more capable spouse — someone who’s covering our rent currently — I don’t think that should be held against him. However, the fact that he was born in Missouri, yanked the Rams out of St. Louis to plop them in Los Angeles at a state-of-the-art stadium he developed is eminently loathsome.
Why should I hate the <strike>Browns</strike> Bengals* owner? He’s most definitely NOT super rich. At least not by NFL owner standards. He’s the son of one of the most famous football coaches in the sport’s history (Paul Brown), and he is the last of the lamentable misers in the league. See, it used to be you had a fair number of cheapskates. The Bidwells in Arizona. Bud Adams in Tennessee and before that Houston. But Mike Brown is the last guy in the league who treats his quarters like their manhole covers in that he doesn’t throw them around casually.
(*I feared I was going to make this mistake, and I did. Mike Brown’s Dad — Paul — is whom the Browns are named after. The Browns, however, owned the Bengals as Paul was fired by Art Modell in 1963, spent the next 5 years going stir crazy before joining the Bengals as coach and part-owner. So the family the Browns were named for actually owns the Bengals. Shout out to Arnie Winslow who (gently) pointed out my mistake. I regret the error.)
Advantage: The Bengals, but it’s close. Nobody likes a cheapskate, but you know who’s suffered most because of that? Bengals fans. They’ve essentially been in a hostage situation for the past 30 years. Judging by Kroenke’s move from St. Louis, he doesn’t hesitate to kill the hostage.