Tigers

Two conference titles sit on Cincinnati's record, in 1988 and again after the 2021 season, and both times the next step slipped away: the Bengals reached the Super Bowl on each occasion and lost it. The second run, capped by a trip to Super Bowl LVI, turned "Who Dey" from a home-crowd chant into a phrase repeated well beyond Ohio.

Paycor Stadium holds 65,515, and on the nights the Bengals get it right the noise there has been enough to rattle a snap count. Sundays there run to Ohio, but not always to the schedule locals expect: the modern rivalries the roster faces most often, teams like the Raiders and the Panthers, share little history with the Bengals beyond the standings.

The name traces back to the animal, not a slogan: Bengals, after the Bengal tiger, given to a Cincinnati franchise that took the field for the first time in the 1968 season, a year after it was put together in 1967.