Who coined “Burrowhead”?

Let’s investigate.

During the Cincinnati Bengals’ walloping of the Buffalo Bills, slot corner Mike Hilton said on the sideline “We’ll see you at Burrowhead,” referencing the teams inevitable rematch with the Kansas City Chiefs in their stadium.

This little fun display was picked up by fans and media personalities:

Needless to say, it reached players as well, ultimately leading to Kansas City defensive tackle Chris Jones sarcastically using the phrase:

Even Cincinnati’s mayor, Aftab Pureval, got in on the “fun” with a “humorous” proclamation that used the term “Burrowhead Stadium”:

Naturally, Bengals fans, being the respectful people they are, denounced this failed attempt to leverage affinity for a football team to gain popular approval.

But then Kansas City’s mayor, Quinton Lucas, responded by implying that Cincinnati lacks class:

But who started this mess?!

The Origins of “Burrowhead”

The first recorded use of the term “Burrowhead” (in this context) goes back to January 24, 2022, two days after the Bengals beat the Tennessee Titans and were scheduled to play the Chiefs in Kansas City’s stadium, which, as some may remember, is actually called “Arrowhead Stadium”:

The tweet, however, received zero likes, zero retweets, and zero replies.

Four days later (still before the game), Yoda Sheisty tweeted the phrase in reply to a photo from Joe’s father, Jimmy Burrow, that showed the Bengals quarterback in a Chiefs helmet:

That tweet did get some traction with 186 likes and ten retweets.

However, it was Evan McPhillips’ tweet immediately following Cincinnati’s overtime victory that got the most attention:

Now here’s the thing. A tweet with 6,500 likes does have some visibility, but it won’t normally find its way to Bengals players unless they are following McPhillips or… they saw the tweet featured somewhere… like a video that garnered 70,000 clicks on YouTube in the first couple of weeks after the game…

But who is the hilarious or annoying or hilariously annoying person who created such a video, resulting in the sharpest divide between these two cities and fanbases to date?

You can watch the video below to help us discover their identity:

Of course, it’s also possible that “Burrow” so closely resembles “arrow” that the connection was obvious and Hilton thought of it entirely independently.

At any rate, we hope this storyline won’t impact the game negatively for the Bengals. In fact, if they can just play as physically as they did against the Buffalo Bills, they stand a good chance of pulling off another upset, regardless of the high emotions running on both sidelines.

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