VIva La Revolution

In the movie Event Horizon, Captain Miller pilots his ship, the Lewis and Clark, to rescue an abandoned ship. The abandoned ship, named The Event Horizon, was designed to harness the power of the black hole to travel through space. Of course, the engineers who came up with idea neglected to consider alternative possibilities. They learned the hard way that Black Holes not only connect two points spatially in this reality but also inter-dimensionally. You may go into the Black Hole intending to exit at Alpha Centauri, but instead find yourself seeing dead people and hearing Latin phrases while and you and your crew go murderously insane. The Bengals enter the Black Hole that is Oakland Colliseum this Sunday. Will we emerge with an easy road win and one step closer to the playoffs? Or will we be warped to an alternate reality as the Eagles were a few weeks back? A world where a playoff caliber team is destroyed by the unlikely Oakland Raiders.

Jamarcus Russell has been benched to be replaced by Gratkowski. I like the Bengals facing new quarterbacks about as much as the Reds like facing rookie pitchers on the 1st big league start. To make matters worse, we haven’t had much luck in Oakland or against the Raiders in general. We’ve never won in Oakland. The last time we played the Raiders in a game that mattered we lost in the 1990 Playoffs. That game is more known as the game that ended the football career of Bo Jackson. That playoff loss marked the beginning of the Lost Years, also known as Bengal Football 1991-2003. Those of us that lived it, we know how bad it was. Coaches and quarterbacks entered and exited the building in a seemingly constant stream. (Except for Dave Shula who somehow hung around for 4 years.) I think until recently the Curse of Bo Jackson has hung over this franchise like a dark cloud, a specter, a boogie man roaming the halls of PBS. Every bad snap, every locker room outburst, every muffed punt, bad tackle and busted draft pick, somewhere Bo Jackson smiled and thought about what could have been.

But that all ends on Sunday. The Curse of Bo will be banished for good. The Bengals will emerge on the other side of the Black Hole unscathed. Any lingering doubts as to the veracity of this team were trampled into the shoddy turf of Heinz Field by Bernard Scott’s cleats and then further crushed beneath Ben Roethlisberger’s falling body. The Bengals are for real. But last week’s victory over the Steelers goes far beyond simply serving as a bandwagon booster and announcing the emergence of a new national press darling. Last week’s win was a deafening salvo, a volley fired straight into the ranks of the NFL establishment. Revolution has come to the AFC North and beyond. This weekend, we march on to Oakland, but have no doubt about it, our destination is Miami. Prepare yourselves, Comrades, for the long march ahead. Viva La Revolution!