Cincinnati Bengals aiming to complete true Hollywood underdog story at Super Bowl LVI

At the start of the NFL season, the Cincinnati Bengals winning the Super Bowl was about as crazy an idea as five hip-hop superstars joining forces to play the half-time show.

Yet, here we are. On Sunday night Dr Dre, Eminem, Mary J Blige, Kendrick Lamar and Snoop Dogg will be in one dressing room, while a team who had not won a play-off game in 31 years will be in another.

When the NFL first hit UK screens in the 1980s, the Bengals were actually good, losing in two Super Bowls. For those Brits who adopted them, it has been tough to live with ever since. In the 90s, some called them The Bungles, while this century saw seven trips to the playoffs and seven losses. Even when it was better, they merely flirted with special without ever coming close to wooing it into bed.

That story began to change when they finished their 2019 campaign as the worst team in all of football, and drafted quarterback Joe Burrow with the very first pick in the draft.

After a debut-season injury which saw him rip his knee seven ways to Sunday, Burrow (above) has come back to inspire this young team, with only four players over the age of 30, to the cusp of a fairytale that is straight out of Hollywood, in more ways than one.

The brand new SoFi Stadium will play host to the big game, built on the former site of the Hollywood Park Racetrack, and rumoured to have cost more than $5billion.

It has a double-sided, suspended 360-degree video wall, its own lake and heated seats with attachments that massage your feet. One of these three statements is false.

More importantly, it is the new home of the nomadic LA Rams, the only team who can shatter Cincinnati’s dream and, in doing so, win back that California love.

And while the unfancied Bengals are playing with