By STEVE KING

Are you going to root for the Cincinnati Bengals for the rest of this postseason, beginning with Saturday’s AFC divisional game on the road against the Tennessee Titans?

I am, and I also was pulling for them in the playoff opener last Saturday, a down-to-the-wire 26-19 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders in the wild-card round.

With the hometown Browns out of the picture after having failed to qualify for the playoffs, why not root for the Bengals?

They’re based in the state of Ohio.

They’re from the Browns’ division, the AFC North.

Their quarterback, Joe Burrow, is from Athens, Ohio and played at Ohio State before transferring to LSU, which he led to the national championship.

They were founded in 1968 in the American Football League by Paul Brown, the former iconic Massillon High School head coach in the 1930s who was the first head coach of the Browns in 1946 and then was the owner and the first head coach of the Bengals.

All these decades later, 90 years after he took over at Massillon and turned it into one of the top high school programs in the country, the legacy of that man still burns brightly in that city, so much so that Massillon radio station WTIG-AM remains a longstanding affiliate on the Bengals Radio Network. That says volumes.

Brown was still alive when the Bengals last made the playoffs in the 1990 regular season. He died eight months later.

That the Bengals, who finished last in the division in 2020 and was predicted to be a lock to do so again this season while the Browns and Baltimore Ravens, and also possibly the Pittsburgh Steelers, competed for the division title and wild-card playoff berths, remains one of only four AFC teams left in the running to land a spot in the Super Bowl, makes them easily — very easily — the No. 1 feel-good story in the NFL.

And since I like feel-good stories, I’m rooting — hard — for the Bengals. I hope they go all the way.

Now, let me be very clear in saying that, while I greatly respect overall the organizations of the Steelers and Ravens, there is no way on God’s green earth that I would ever, or will ever, root for them in any games, especially ones in the playoffs. 

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