In areas that have two teams competing in the same sport (New York: Yankees / Mets; Chicago: White Sox / Cubs) there seems to be a sense of indifference toward the other club since they don’t play in the same division nor often enough to spark a true rivalry.
Not so with Cleveland / Cincinnati as both football teams play in the same division and there appears to be real antipathy between the two fan bases.
That said, is this temporarily put aside and are the good people of Cleveland going to become Cincinnati fans for the big game and root for the Bengals in the name of Ohio unity or are they hoping they get whupped in the much more satisfying name of schadenfreude?
Yankees fans rarely root for Mets except when they were playing the Red Sox in 1986. Mets fans tend to hate the Yankees.
Giants & Jets fans are mostly indifferent and I don’t recall many of either rooting for the other except I remember Jets fans rooting for the Giants over the Pats both times in the Superbowl.
If the Jets were to make a Superbowl vs. Eagles or Cowboys, I would be rooting for the Jets to win.
The Islanders and the Rangers are in the same division. If the Rangers got into the Stanley Cup (they might this year!), I would root against them no matter who they were playing. I imagine it’s the same with the Browns and the Bengals for many fans.
I’m a Giants fan and would root for them over the Jets, but would root for the Jets over almost any other team in the SB. The Jets are beneath our contempt as Giants fans, so good for them if they do well. Look at our little Jets. All grown up and pretending to be a team!
I’m not really a baseball fan, but if you told me to pick a team, it would be the Mets. But, since they are in different Leagues, the rivalry isn’t as strong as Rangers/Isles or Bengals/Browns.
Anyway, I’m rooting for the Bengals. I lived there for a year and loved Cincinnati. OK, I’ll shut up and let the Cleveland fans get a word in.
Cleveland-Cincinnati isn’t a particularly big rivalry. The big rival is Pittsburgh.
That said, my family is from western PA, so although I will completely and unambiguously root for the Browns over the Steelers, I will also root for the Steelers over anyone else. The rivalry isn’t enough to put the Steelers on the “root against” list. If Clevelanders rooted against everyone who beats the Browns, we’d never be able to root for anyone in the Superbowl.
In this particular case, I don’t have any strong feelings about either team, and given that, geography is enough to settle it, so I’ll be rooting for the Bengals (I can’t enjoy a game if I haven’t chosen someone to root for, however arbitrary the reason for my decision might be).
All that said, I am about as far as you can get from a typical sports fan, so other Clevelanders might have very different opinions.
I’ve always been ambivalent about the Bengals. I have a visceral hate of the Steelers, even though my family is from western PA. I “watch” the Browns and Steelers games on Sundays with my PA cousins via text, along with my Cleveland cousin, and I still give the Steelers no love (made easier this year as the PA cousins are embarrassed by the Steelers this year).
The r/Cleveland subreddit is solidly pro-Cincy and there’s a lot of congratulations from Cleveland in the r/Ohio subreddit. My Cleveland friends on Facebook are also excited for the Bengals.
So, I’ll be rooting for the Bengals. But once the season starts up again I’ll be rooting for them to not get too high and mighty like those stupid Steelers did!
All true. But I think the Met fans are a little more rabid than average about it. The old saying was the Mets’ fans consider the Yanks to be bitter rivals and the Yankee fans don’t consider the Mets at all.
While I despise the Steelers and the Ravens, I’ve never really gotten very concerned about the Bengals, which is odd, because although they’re usually a terrible team like the Browns, the few times in my life when the Browns have shown flashes of success, the Bengals are putting out their best product at the same time.
While I haven’t lived in Cleveland since I was a kid, I have had occasion to go back and visit southern Ohio a fair bit (I dated a girl from Athens when I was in college, was stationed at Fort Knox when I was in the Army) and it’s a very different place from Cleveland, so I’m not sure about the whole “team Ohio” bit that I’ve heard about. I also don’t have a really visceral reaction against the Rams because of OBJ, which I’ve also heard about from other Browns fans as a reason to root for the Bengals.
All that being said, I don’t think I can pull for the Rams. LA doesn’t need any more championships, the Rams just fled St. Louis a few years ago (and fled LA within my living memory) and Matt Stafford has a dumb face. I’m not buying any Joe Burrow jerseys or anything, but I guess I’ll be with the Orange and Black next Sunday.
If their situation is anything like our situation with the Packers, there is no way in hell that they would root for Cleveland. In fact, if the Bengals fall, they’ll probably party till they drop. The Packers’ loss to 'Frisco was the best thing this season for we Bear fans.
As a longtime (former) central Ohio resident, there didn’t seem to be much antipathy between Browns and Bengals fans. As far as Cleveland fans went, their real hostility was toward the Pittsburgh Steelers and their devotees.
There’s a long tradition in New York of baseball fans loathing other N.Y. teams (and their fans). Back in the day, Brooklyn Dodgers fans had no use for the Yankees; the Dodgers 1955 World Series win over the Yankees was a joyous occasion on a level approaching the Red Sox’s knocking off N.Y. in the 2004 ALCS.
i hear tell that Chicago Cubs fans are not overly fond of the White Sox and vice versa.
As a side note, while I have tended in the past to root against the Bengals because their “color” announcer, Dave Lapham is such an annoying ass, I’d be mildly pleased to see them win the Superbowl.
Browns fan here and this Super Bowl is tough. On the one hand you got a division rival and on the other you got Odell, who did a lot of damage to the Browns this year. But he’s just one guy, so I can root for the Rams to win the game and for him to have 0 catches. Just can’t root for the Bengals.
Life long Browns fan chiming in. Agree that there’s not a lot of animus against the Bengals that I can see. That said, I haven’t lived in Cleveland since the late 70’s, so I don’t really have a read on the city’s temperature in this regard. As others have said, the Brownies’ big rival is the Steelers (although I can’t feel too much hate against them, since they held a rally in support of Browns fans when Art *&@#! Modell took away our team). With the Bengals, for me at least, it’s more like, Dammit, if the Bungles can make it to the Super Bowl, why can’t we?
Matthew Stafford is a Georgia guy, and I remember watching him play for the Dawgs, so I’ll root for the Rams, just to see him get some success after so many years of futility in Detroit. But really, this Super Bowl will be like every other featuring two teams I don’t have any particular feeling for or against - I’ll just hope for a good game.
