As any NFL fan will be quick to remind you, the season is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s not that every game isn’t important—they clearly are—but when you look back on Week 2 in January chances are you’ll have no idea what happened in that game. Baltimore Ravens fan Nic Cullison is determined to make sure he won’t forget his team beating the Kansas City Chiefs for the first time in nearly a decade, so he took a pretty drastic step to ensure there was no chance his memory would lapse—he got a tattoo.
That’s commitment right there. Perhaps Cullison wanted to get a tattoo of last week’s score too, he could be building an entire leg sleeve here, but he didn’t think an embarrassing loss to John Gruden’s Raiders was the ideal way to kick off the collection. Or, maybe, Cullison was so enthused by the victory that he didn’t care that the Ravens were still only 1-1 and nailed to the bottom of the standings in the AFC North, he just wanted to flaunt that victory.
As a bitter Chicago Bears fan, I like to have a little fun at the expense of another fan getting a silly tattoo, but who am I kidding? I’ve definitely thought about getting a Mike Ditka portrait (this picture, of course) on more than one occasion. Honestly, I think this tattoo is hilarious. It’s always fun to see fandom run amok in a way that is positive and silly.
Is it ridiculous to get the score of a football game in September tattooed on your leg? Sure! Particularly if you’re just a fan and not, for example, Odafe Oweh, the Ravens’ rookie linebacker who caused and recovered a victory-sealing fumble in his first regular season game. But it’s all in good fun and if Baltimore goes on to a historic season, I’m sure it’s a tattoo Cullison will be proud of for years to come.
Now, if they drop the AFC Championship game to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs… well… then we may have a cursed tattoo on our hands. Not that sports fans are superstitious or anything.