Local Bengals fans prepare for chance at long-awaited Super Bowl title

Cincinnati Bengals fans in Johnson County are used to being the butt of jokes.

As Peyton Manning was leading the Indianapolis Colts to deep playoff runs, including a Super Bowl victory in 2007 and another Super Bowl appearance in 2010, the Bengals were the dregs of the NFL.

Pryce Rucker, a junior at Franklin Community High School, lived through those difficult years in Colts country. But he didn’t lose faith.

“It was kind of a struggle,” Rucker said. “There was hate towards the Bengals and I made sure every Colts day at school to wear my Bengals stuff. Especially, the last two years, I took some heat from major Colts fans. Every year, I would say, ‘We’re going to the Super Bowl.’ I always tried to keep hope in the team.”

Now, some of the same students who had called the team the “Bungles” two years ago when it had the worst record in the NFL are saying “Who Dey,” the rallying cry of Cincinnati fans. With the Colts missing out on the playoffs this year, and the Bengals making the Super Bowl for the first time since 1989, the Bengals bandwagon is full.

The team will go for its first Super Bowl title against the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday.

Rucker’s uncle, Marc Rucker, has been waiting for this opportunity his entire life. He was born in 1957, 11 years before the Bengals played their first game.

Living in Madison at the time, he spent his early childhood as a Cleveland Browns fan, but his father was an even bigger fan of Paul Brown, who, after coaching and co-founding the Browns, played a role in starting up the Bengals franchise.

The first two seasons, the team played at Nippert Stadium, part of the University of Cincinnati’s campus. Marc Rucker remembers going to those early games as a child.

“It was different, there are a lot more people going now,” he said. “Tailgating has really boomed since then, we tailgated — sort of. We would open up the back of whatever station wagon we went up in and ate a sandwich.”

The Colts played in Baltimore until they moved to the Circle City in 1984. Before then, Hoosiers typically sided with either the Bengals or the Chicago Bears, two teams that split time on local airwaves. For Greenwood Community High School football coach Mike Campbell, who grew up in the 1970s in northern Indiana, the Bengals were the team of choice.

“I was five in 1978, it was before the Colts were here. The Bears were on one channel and the Bengals on another,” Campbell said. “The Bengals had the tiger and I thought it was a cool mascot, with the tiger stripes on the helmet. Then, they went to the Super Bowl, and I thought, ‘I got a team.’”

Campbell’s wife, Andi Campbell, also grew up a Bengals fan.

“My dad was originally from Cincinnati and his whole family, too. I grew up raised by my mom and dad as a huge Bengals fan,” Andi Campbell said. “One of my first childhood memories was watching the ’88 Super Bowl with my parents and their friends. I remember that and the disappointment in that. I remember watching Boomer. A lot of teen girls had crushes on rock stars. I had a crush on Boomer Esiason.”

Esiason served as Bengals quarterback from 1984 to 1992, including the Bengals second Super Bowl appearance in 1989, following the 1988 season, when the San Francisco 49ers defeated them 20-16. It was a frustrating loss for Bengals fans, as the 49ers also beat the Bengals in their only previous Super Bowl appearance in 1982, Marc Rucker said.

“They should have won both Super Bowls they were in before,” Marc Rucker said. “There was a dropped interception in the end zone and (49ers quarterback) Joe Montana ended up throwing a touchdown.”

Just two years after that Super Bowl appearance, Esiason would lead the Bengals back to the playoffs, winning the wild card round against the Houston Oilers 41-14. Little did fans know, that would be their last playoff win for 31 years. The Bengals would go on to struggle mightily during the following decade and a half, failing to post a winning record from 1991 until 2005, when they finally broke through and won the AFC North division.

The playoff stay was short-lived, though, as they bowed out in the first round.

The Bengals would make the playoffs six of seven years from the 2009 to 2015 season. Each time, the team failed to get past the first round.

The Bengals have been a large part of Greenwood resident and Harrison, Ohio, native Marc Harnist’s life. The early part of his 42 years saw success with the Super Bowl run, but since then, there have been more downs than ups, he said.

“I was born into it. I remember my first Bengals game at Riverfront Stadium against the Patriots as a kid. When I grew up, it was the Cincinnati Reds and the Bengals, and it’s something I always truly enjoyed through the good and the bad, a lot of bad more than good,” Harnist said.

Charlie Pride, of Bargersville, was also born into Bengals fandom, as his father was a fan since the start of the franchise in 1968. Although some of Pride’s earliest memories include the Super Bowl appearance during the 1988 season, there have been many tests of loyalty, Pride said.

“My dad and I stayed loyal. There were some good years in there. Marvin Lewis became the coach, we made the playoffs several times but couldn’t win. It was a 31-year playoff (win) drought,” he said. “We were loyal fans throughout that whole time.”

Not that there weren’t temptations, he said.

The (playoff) game at the end of 2015 against the Steelers, I think we were both frustrated by that. Some of us Bengals fans switched over to the Colts during that period, Jim Harbaugh had a good run in there and Peyton Manning, but we stayed loyal,” he said.

After so many lean years, that loyalty is on the verge of paying off as the team squares off against the Rams Sunday.

Pride’s father passed away three years ago, and will be on his mind when he watches the big game, Pride said.

“He frequently wore an ‘80s-style Bengals hat,” he said. “I think he would have loved to see this.”

Although 12-year-old Braunsen Stern isn’t old enough to remember many of the Bengals struggles, he is old enough to remember the three seasons with double-digit losses that preceded this one. Two years ago, he met running back Joe Mixon, who gave him his gloves, and long snapper Clark Harris, who gave him an NFL game ball. Although there aren’t many other Bengals fans at Custer Baker Intermediate School, where he attends, he never wavered, Stern said.

“You can’t just disbelieve in your team,” he said. “I know we’ve been bad, but I knew something was going to happen sometime.”

Campbell got to see the Bengals punch their ticket to the Super Bowl with his father, Charlie Dryer, as they attended the team’s 27-24 overtime victory in the AFC Championship Game against the host Kansas City Chiefs. Although Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play, is known for being ones of the loudest venues in the NFL, there was satisfaction is hearing the relative silence that accompanied the Bengals victory in Kansas City, Campbell said.

“When they took the lead, you could hear a chant of ‘Who dey?’ It was surreal to hear that many Chiefs fans that quiet,” Campbell said. “I’m glad I was there for the fact I don’t know if I’ll ever get to go to something like that again, but to be part of that, for the first time in 33 years, was certainly a special time.”

Tried and true fans have long waited for something like this, Marc Rucker said.

“Older guys like me, most of the people I grew up with still like the Bengals but they switched allegiances. When the Bengals are winning, they’re Bengals fans, but when the Colts are winning, they’re Colts fans,” Rucker said.

“It would mean the world to the true Bengals fans.”

The Bengals run has rejuvenated a fan base used to being the underdog, Harnist said.

“I’ve enjoyed every step of it. My wife is putting my reactions on Facebook, all these games have come down to the last play,” Harnist said. “People at work are telling me ‘congratulations.’ My neighbors have been fun, trying to soak it all up. It makes all the years of heartbreak seem worth it. It’s all come to fruition.”