“First Pain, Then Hope.” That phrase headlined the Columbus Dispatch‘s sports page the day after the Cincinnati Bengals lost the latest Super Bowl to the Los Angeles Rams. The trouble is if you are a fan of Ohio sports teams at either the college or professional level you are going to get a lot more of the former than the latter. That’s because Ohio teams find it almost impossible to win the national championship in their particular sport. It’s important to take note of the word “national” since baseball pennants, division and conference championships, and similar secondary-level triumphs are fairly common. But put an Ohio team in a World Series, a Super Bowl, or a college bowl game leading to a national championship, and victory becomes discouragingly rare.

Let’s look at how some Ohio sports teams have fared since the late 1950s, which is when I, as a kid, started to follow them. Let’s start with professional baseball. If you’re a Reds fan, you may recall the “Big Red Machine” that won back-to-back World Series in 1975 and 1976, or the 1990 Reds that won the World Series that year in a four-game sweep of the Oakland A’s. But preceding those triumphs were disappointing losses in the World Series to New York in 1961, Baltimore in 1970, and Oakland in 1972. There was also that stunning loss to the New York Mets in the 1973 National League Pennant series. I say stunning, because the Mets won only two games more than they lost during the regular season, while Cincinnati had a 99-63 record. No matter, the Mets won the five-game series 3-2, and claimed the pennant. Then we have Ohio’s other major league baseball team, the Cleveland Guardians, formerly known as the Indians. Whatever nickname they have, Cleveland’s baseball team may be the most-hapless, most-snake-bitten team anywhere in professional sports. In the last 60 years, they have been to the World Series three times but couldn’t win any of them. The last loss to the Chicago Cubs in 2016 was especially frustrating since the team had a 3-1 lead but couldn’t win that final fourth game.

Now switch gears to professional football.  One of the greatest and most-enjoyable games I’ve ever seen was the Cleveland Browns’ 27-0 win over the Baltimore Colts for the 1964 NFL championship. The following year, the Browns again made it to the NFL championship game but lost to the Green Bay Packers 23-12. Both games came before the Super Bowl era, and since then, the Browns have occasionally had decent records. Nevertheless, they remain one of four teams to have never played in the “Big Game.” That brings us to the Cincinnati Bengals. They’ve now played in three Super Bowls and have come away with no wins. Before their loss to the Rams, the Bengals fell twice to Joe Montana’s San Francisco 49ers. All three losses were by narrow margins: 26-21 (1982), 20-16 (1989), and 23-20 (2022). Granted, there is no embarrassment in such losses, but there is certainly frustration!

I don’t follow either college or professional basketball closely. I know the Cleveland Cavaliers won the 2016 NBA championship in seven games over the Golden State Warriors. But that year was the exception, not the rule. On three other occasions the Cavs and Warriors vied for the NBA championship, with the Warriors coming away winners.

Finally, we come to the team that is closest to my heart and the one I have followed since I was eight years old — the Ohio State University football team.  The results here are more mixed, although once again, looking at games that determined a national championship, the negative outweighs the positive. In the late 60s, the Buckeyes had one of the most-powerful teams to ever take the field in a college football game. With Rex Kern at quarterback, Jim Otis in the backfield, and defenders like Jack Tatum, Jim Stillwagon, and Mike Sensibaugh, the Buckeyes won the 1968 National Championship with a 10-0 record that culminated with a Rose Bowl victory over the USC Trojans. With most of that team returning for the next two years, OSU looked ready to claim national championships in 1969 and 1970. Except it didn’t. In ’69, they were upset by archrival Michigan and in ’70, they avenged the loss against the Wolverines only to fall to Stanford in the Rose Bowl. Not until Jim Tressel’s 2002 team upset Miami in the Fiesta Bowl did Ohio State have another national championship. In the intervening years, one team or another dashed the Buckeyes’ national championship hopes. In 1975 and 1979, Ohio State sent undefeated teams to the Rose Bowl where they lost to UCLA and USC, respectively. The loss to UCLA was especially painful since the Buckeyes had beaten the Bruins decisively in the regular season.  In the BSC era the results have continued to be more negative than positive. True, there was the 2002 championship alluded to earlier as well as another in 2014 when the BSC switched to a 4-team format. Offsetting those successes, however, were disappointing losses in 2006 to Florida and in 2007 to LSU. And since 2014, the Buckeyes have been denied championships either by Clemson in the semi-final round or Alabama in the championship game itself.

So how can Ohio’s national championship curse be explained? Overconfidence? Bad officiating? Bad luck? All three have probably contributed along with the unpleasant fact that sometimes the team in the other dugout or on the opposite bench was just better.

There is already talk of the Bengals returning to the Super Bowl next year and maybe winning it. For that to happen, Joe Burrow and company will need to have a better offensive line and — somehow, some way — elude the Ohio national championship curse.