Cincinnati sports fans explained

I just had an epiphany. I figured out why Cincinnati Reds/Bengals fans stay so in love with our marginal teams.

Ok, so today was the trading deadline in Major League Baseball and the first day of training camp for the NFL.

The trade deadline is a big second-half-of-the-season landmark. This is the day where contenders go out and get what position they are in need of most for their playoff push, and pretenders ship off their only good player in exchange for some hyped minor league prospects. At this point in the season the Reds are somewhere in the middle. We aren't a contender (mostly because this last month we sucked hard), but we definitely aren't a pretender either. We have a good starting rotation, a solid bullpen, and some great young players, a few of which are hurt. O yeah, not to mention today the Reds shipped off Edwin Encarnacion and some prospects for Scott Rolen. Yeah, that guy who has 7 GOLD GLOVES!

Sidenote: For those of you that don't know about my intense passion for the Reds, Edwin Encarnacion has been the player I have loathed the most in my whole life. And to put this in perspective, Barry Larkin almost ran me over with his pink Porsche on my 9th birthday, and I hate Encarnacion more. At least Barry Larkin could play the field. And he was smooth when he did. Edwin is gone, a serious hatred has just left me and I feel refreshed.

Anyways, the Reds season is winding down, and it isn't really looking too good for the post season. But, fancy that, the Bengals just started training camp today.

Just like years passed, the Bengals are getting some hype. We have the potential to be really good this year. Everyone is healthy (it's only been one day, but last year two guys went down), and we could make some noise and rattle some feathers. Have we done that for the past 6 seasons since we've had the dynamic duo of Carson Palmer and Chad Johnson/Ochocinco? No, the one good season ended with a ceremonial dropkick to the gonads - Carson Palmer goes down in the first round of the playoffs, against the Steelers of all teams, with a mangled leg.

The moral of this story Cincinnati Sports fans, is we always have the potential, year in and year out, we just haven't done anything with it for a while. The Reds last made it to the playoffs when we tied the Mets for the Wild Card in 2001, but lost the one game playoff. Hardly counts. And I already mentioned the Carson Palmer fiasco 4 years back. We're a next year kinda town. The preseason's the best season because we don't have any other teams showing us that good on paper doesn't necessarily translate to good on the field.

The only team that we can rely on to take us to the post season each year, and play better each time, is, drum roll please, the Xavier University Musketeers men's basketball team. Let's go X!