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#Why Bengals fans are shotgunning chili for Super Bowl 2022

“#Why Bengals fans are shotgunning chili for Super Bowl 2022”

It’s champagne for Cincinnati fans.

Bengals devotees are getting ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl 2022 festivities by chugging whole cans of Skyline Chili, a Queen City-born brand best known for its chili and cheddar-cheese spaghetti dish.

The spectacle was reported on by Cleveland Scene this week ahead of the team’s face-off with the Los Angeles Rams, which will be the Bengals’ first Super Bowl appearance since 1988.

The 72-year-old regional brand has been dubbed the “official chili” for many local professional sports establishments, including MLB’s Cincinnati Reds and ice hockey team Cincinnati Cyclones — that’s how much they love this stuff.

So when Cincinnati’s own Bengals clinched a spot at Super Bowl LVI against NFC champs Los Angeles Rams, Cincy citizens toasted to their beloved food mascot, then took a big, meaty gulp.

“You put it in a swimming pool and I’ll dive in there and I’ll eat my way out,” said Bengals tight-end C.J. Uzomah during a recent press conference.

But on both sides of the Super Bowl aisle, sports fans on social media living outside of Ohio have resoundingly agreed: If guzzling chili beans are part of the prize, Bengals fans can keep it.

“Cincinnati Bengals fans are shotgunning entire cans of Skyline Chili to celebrate their Super Bowl appearance. There’s a lot to unpack here,” said Associated Press political correspondent Scott Bauer on Twitter, responding to a video thread compiled by Barstool Sports Cincinnati documenting the stomach-churning local trend.

“Every day, we stray further and further from God’s light…,” added another appalled witness of the foul acts.

It can be a divisive dish. Where most of us are nourished by a mug of bean or beef chili, perhaps with a few Saltines and a sprinkle of cheese, Cincinnati concocted their own perversion which turns the hardy home-cooked dish into pure festival fare with the addition of pasta and a mountain of cheese — the main ingredient of which is sold in stores throughout the Midwest in 15-ounce cans that pack a whopping 1,830 milligrams of sodium.

Even some with chili pride are skeptical it’s worth swapping for, say, shotgunning a Hu-Dey. “Like…I love Skyline…but not enough to chug it from a can,” said NBC producer Shawn Reynolds.

The only faction who came to Cincinnati’s defense were Green Bay Packers fans, many of whom partake in their own regional adaptation featuring elbow pasta and a soupier tomato base, called Wisconsin Blue Ribbon Chili.

Because evidently, in some parts of this hungry nation, chili isn’t just a bowl of beans — it means something.

Said Green Bay’s mayor Eric Genrich, “In the interest of chili solidarity, I’ll be cheering for the @Bengals on Sunday.”

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