Tuesday, February 4, 2014

When Being a Superfan Goes Horribly Wrong

Posted By on Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 9:00 AM

Chris Kingman is a diehard Denver Broncos fans, one of those guys that says "we" when speaking of his favorite professional football team.

Needless to say, he was crushed when the Broncos got bent over and taken to town by the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday night during Super Bowl XLVIII, losing 43-8. But the pain Kingman felt extended far beyond just the game itself.

It's now permanently etched behind his left shoulder, where Kingman has what now is a heavy favorite for the most unfortunate tattoo of all time.

broncostat.jpg

Kingman got that art on Saturday night, after a conversation during dinner and drinks with friends turned into a late-night foray to Sacred Art Tattoo. Three-plus hours (and $225) later, and Kingman had the ultimate symbol of his devotion to the Broncos.

The caption on the above picture, which Kingman posted on Facebook before the game, says it all: 'Yes this is real. Better not fucking lose tomorrow!'

Kingman said he'd been talking with his best friend, a fellow Broncos fan, about getting the ink for quite some time.

"He told me if I did it before that nobody could question my fandom," he said. "I ultimately had decided against it a week ago."

But at dinner, when the topic came up, Kingman's roommate, Nick Lei, offered to pay for half.

"I instantly agreed and we called Sacred Art tattoo to find an artist," Kingman said.

They called Sacred Art, and even the artist, Jibo tried to get Kingman to reconsider by saying "but he knows they're going to lose right?" over the phone.

"Well now pride kind of got in the way and this immediately became the man to do the tattoo," he said.

Kingman says he doesn't regret his decision, even with the massive amount of attention he's gotten for it, attention that's expanded far beyond Tucson. His story has been told (rather anonymously, mind you, since most media outlets don't bother to track down sources and actually name them) all over the internet, and even got featured on ESPN's Olbermann during their "Worst People in Sports" segment.

"There's a ton of jokes being replayed over and over again," Kingman said. "I'm a good sport about all of it though and I expected the backlash if we lost."

Kingman isn't trying to hide from the attention—in fact, he says he can't because Lei "keeps coming into my room every five minutes and yells about where he's seen the pic. Well, he did pay for half of it ..."

Lei has turned down the offer to pay additional money (the bid was $10,000) to have his business, Deluxe Granite, added below the tattoo.

For the record, Kingman says he wasn't drunk or stoned when he got the ink. He'd been drinking during dinner, but by the time it came around to actually getting the tattoo he was sober. Just chalk it up to being young. He turned 29 today.

"You can't make this shit up," he said.

(Blogger's note: I apparently only get to write about the Super Bowl when it involves the absurd. Before this, my last Super Bowl stories stemmed from the Great Porn Splice of 2009, when I helped the morning daily set online readership records with such hard-hitting stories as an interview with the chick who whipped it out)

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