Is there a tradition better than opening day in Cincinnati? The beauty of the long march to the stadium, family and friends getting back together, the beer, the team that we love despite playoff failure. And today, none of this has anything to do with baseball.

Today we are about to start the second season in FC Cincinnati’s existence. For long time fans of the sport here in the Queen City, this whole thing still feels like a fairytale. We have seen team after team pop-up, only to disappear as quickly as they arrived. But this time, this time it feels different. Let me take that back, this time it is different. It is hard to walk around the city without running into an FCC shirt, hat, jersey, stickers, whatever. Maybe it is all down to a fantastic color combination. But what I think happed in 2016 is that our city has fallen in love with our team.

Last season was all about attendance records and tickets sold. And boy, how much fun was that? Stories from around the world were written about our fans, our passion, and our success as a well-run lower division club. And in a city that has loads of pride in itself, we sure did eat it up. And for good reason; in Cincinnati, we haven’t had much to root for on the sports front in quite a long time. The Reds are starting to look like the perpetual rebuilding team I grew up with, again. And the Bengals are, well, the Bengals, and everything that comes along with that baggage. So please excuse a city for patting itself on the back when it comes to a feel-good story surrounding our newest team.