Super Bowl 2022: How beleaguered Bengals turned around their fortunes

After a season full of surprises, it seems fitting that the NFL's championship game features a side that few fancied to get there.

Just two years ago, the Cincinnati Bengals finished with the worst record in the league.

Last summer, even the Jacksonville Jaguars had shorter odds for reaching Super Bowl 56.

Yet while the Jaguars went on to become the league's worst team for a second straight season, the Bengals will play in the big game for the first time in 33 years.

Cincinnati face the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday looking to claim their first NFL title and complete their journey from whipping boys to 'world champions'.

But how has the long-suffering franchise managed to turn its fortunes around so soon?

American football has been the most popular sport in the US since the 1960s and the main reason is competitive parity. It's what the NFL prides itself on.

In 55 years, no team has won the Super Bowl more than six times, and the last 22 seasons have seen 13 different champions.

But two-time Super Bowl winner Osi Umenyiora says this season the «parity was unprecedented». Fellow BBC pundit Jason Bell reckons it was «the greatest in NFL history».

The regular season produced a record 35 walk-off wins — games won with a score on the final play. There were four more on an extraordinary weekend in the play-offs, before Cincinnati claimed another to deny the Kansas City Chiefs a third straight Super Bowl and continue their own Cinderella story.

«You love competition and that's what the NFL delivered,» Bell added. «The teams are so equal. With so many match-ups we just didn't know what was going to happen.»

The NFL tries to level the playing field by having a salary cap and distributing television revenue equally to the 32 teams, while the