by GeneralCounsel
Today, people across the world will see a total solar eclipse. This rare celestial event reminds us that no matter who we are, no matter where or how we live, we all look up to the same sun, the same moon, and the same stars. Most people will not know that, when the moon covers the sun, they will be looking at a confirmation of the Bengals’ inevitable rise.
The Great Conjunction
On December 21, 2020, an 11-2 Pittsburgh Steelers team strutted into Paul Brown Stadium on a Monday night to play the 2-10 Cincinnati Bengals in front of a national audience. Our great hope, rookie Joe Burrow, had suffered his first major injury, and no one gave us a chance. The Steelers, a 14.5 point favorite they said, would dominate their cursed cousins. But this was no ordinary night, and that curse, and that era, was coming to an end.
Jupiter and Saturn would align in the night sky to form a “Great Conjunction,” an astronomical event not seen since 1226. This Great Conjunction was predicted to “bring about a cultural moment when things change irrevocably, whether we’re ready or not.” With our Bengals, we were ready. The nation was too because Juju Smith-Schuster had been running around the country dancing on other teams’ logos.
And then it happened–the hit heard round the world.
The Great Conjunction. A cultural moment bringing an irrevocable change.
Deep in the Nation’s Conscience
Von Bell and the Bengals became America’s new team all in one moment. We penetrated the culture, and a slew of Bengals videos and memes exploded on the internet like the Big Bang.
Juju and the Steelers tucked their tails and never danced again.
Wounded Tigers and The Uses of the Blues
The Ohio River Valley raised us. In no small part, it shaped us. We learned how, towards the end of summer and the beginning of fall, the city turned orange with the leaves, orange and black that is. In ‘88-89, we got a taste of what a Bengals winning season and a Super Bowl run could feel like. I was seven years old at the time. I thought those times and feelings would never end.
And then, we were wounded–repeatedly cut by 14 consecutive non-winning seasons. We were wounded by and subject to Mike Brown’s hard-headed and ill-fated attempt to be as good at football-businessing as his father. Forces beyond our control were making something we loved so much—the Bengals, and rooting for them with our friends, loved ones, and the city at large—hurt.
original sketch by JoFo
We became Wounded Tigers. The wounds were in the minds, body, being, and the culture of Bengals fandom. We questioned why we were fans at all. Many of us tried to not be, but we couldn’t. We were born into the river valley and it into us. And deep inside, we knew someday we would rise.
So we faced it all together. As James Baldwin wrote in his essay, The Uses of the Blues, “[t]here’s something funny–there’s always something a little funny in all our disasters, if one can face the disaster.” Baldwin used blues music, emerging out of Black pain, as an example to “suggest that the acceptance of this anguish one finds in the blues, and the expression of it, creates…a kind of joy.” We Wounded Tigers were given every opportunity, at least two decades worth, to face the disaster and still create some joy out of our fandom. We developed what Baldwin called “this passionate detachment, this inwardness coupled with outwardness, this ability to know that, all right, it’s a mess, and you can’t do anything about it…so, well, you have to do something about it.”
We looked at the Steelers and all the grief they and their fans gave us, led by Roethlisberger’s brazen depravity, and saw how ugly it could be to be “bathed in a bubble bath of self-congratulation” and to “suppose that one’s well-being is proof of one’s virtue.” Like Baldwin wrote, “[i]n evading my humanity, you have done something to your own humanity” and “[w]hat I think of you says more about me than it can possibly say about you.” Baldwin wrote that “[t]here is something monstrous about never having been hurt, never having been made to bleed, never having lost anything.” And, in fact, it is often the so-called broken people who are the most kind, because you know what it is like to suffer, and you want for not only yours, but others’, to stop. As Baldwin writes, “[y]ou don’t know what the river is like or what the ocean is like by standing on the shore.”
Confirming the Conjunction: we are a part of it all
That Monday night more than three years ago, when Von Bell conjuncted Juju and the curse all at once, was just a glance into the times the new era would bring us. Led by a quarterback who gained his team’s respect by speaking up on social issues and calling for the world to listen to historically excluded people, guided by a coach who is all about the culture and allowing people to be their authentic selves, and inspired by a wide receiver who is the One, the Bengals have been on a beautiful run that has given us all so much joy.
There are too many moments that let us know the Bengals positioning in the universe was shifting. There was Ja’Marr Chase setting the Bengals’ receiving record against the Chiefs right after Wounded Tiger called that Burrow and Chase would rise like White Morpheus and Black Neo to bust us out of the Matrix.
There was perhaps the greatest win in Bengals history to beat the Chiefs in Arrowhead and head to the Super Bowl.
There was our fans, all those Wounded Tigers, welcoming our team back home even after they just missed out on totality at the Super Bowl.
There was Jessie Bates confirming that the Great Conjunction was real.
And now, the path of totality runs through Ohio and the river valley. This season the Bengals will complete the Great Conjunction’s promise. Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase will return to the New Orleans Superdome to win their second title together, and they may set records along the way.
The Great Conjunction was not only about the Bengals winning but was said to be about moving out of an era with a “focus on materialism, hierarchies, resource acquisition, territory control, and empire stabilization” and into an era with “the renovation of hierarchies, decentralization, shifting orders, rapid translation, mass mobility, trade networks, and rampant spirituality.” As the astrologers wrote about the Conjunction, “[a]s with everything in the stars, you have to do the work to get the most out of it.” We are a part of it all. And, of course, the Bengals are a part of it all.
Let us step into the new era with our beloved Bengals, who I know will show us on the field this year what Baldwin wrote: “In order to act, you must be conscious and take great chances and be responsible for the consequences.” Here’s to experiencing this ride together.
Wounded Tiger Pod 
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