Football fans believe the Bengals have to walk to Mordor in order to practice and it's hilarious

Odysseus spent 10 years getting back to Ithaca from the Trojan War. Frodo and Samwise trekked well over 1,000 miles from The Shire all the way to Mordor to destroy the One Ring.

And the Cincinnati Bengals have to walk *checks notes* one width of a city street to get to practice. Simply insane.

We really, really, really need the regular season to be in full swing. For now, I'll explain what's going on here.

A city street separates the Bengals' stadium from their practice fields and the jokes are flying

Yep. While most clubs have practice and training facilities located far away from their home stadiums, the Bengals have every located within two blocks in the middle of downtown Cincinnati. Paycor Stadium and the Kettering Health Bengals Practice Fields sit adjacent to one another. Personally, I think the convenience is kinda nice.

But wait, there's a street that divides them!

Central Ave, which runs vertically in the grid of the city, creates a divide between both locations. The team traverses the southern intersection between Central and W Mehring Way. Here's what it looks like:

I know, it's despicable just looking at it. That's at least 0.1 miles of ground to cover.

And what's worse: They have to *gasps* be escorted across the street? To avoid very light traffic??? Do they not know these are professional athletes just trying to do their jobs???

Quick pause from the sarcasm. As a Cincinnati native, that street is never busy outside of when events are happening such as, I don't know, a Bengals game? Traffic density during a weekday afternoon is about the same as a country road in the middle of Kansas.

The visual of players like Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase having to walk approximately 50 feet to get to the practice field entrance has been used in the news cycle before, but returned more prominently this week when Chase made his return to practice amid a contract hold-in . It got to the point where the team's PR department has now prohibited pictures or video of players making the walk being taken from the practice field side of the street.

And whenever there's an oddity about the Bengals, the Pat McAfee Show is all over it. ESPN's popular show spent their usual daily segment covering the Bengals' frugality talking about the ban, and even (jokingly) taking some accountability for it after making light of it in the past.

"This is potentially our fault," McAfee said in jest. "And we'd like to let everyone know, we thought it was cool!"

McAfee's reach is enormous, so naturally, the masses gathered to take advantage of the Bengals' newfound insecurity.

My favorite response is the suggestion that the team should build an overpass walkway from the stadium to the practice field.

Yeah, good luck getting Hamilton County on board with that. The county does own Paycor Stadium and the land that its built on, after all. What's the pitch here? "The internet is making fun of us and we'd like it to stop?"

Speaking from a personal note, I can think of no better example of the Bengals and their fans needing to take a deep breath and just laugh. Just laugh, for once! Not every single aspect of the team needs to be defended with all the oxygen in your body. The players are grown adults. They can walk across a street a couple times a week with the help of a traffic cop.

There are gonna be chronically-online degenerates addicted to hating your favorite thing, especially when big personalities use you as a gag. There isn't a thing you can do to counter it. All you can do is just take the joke. It's just football!

I'd advise you to try it out, and maybe touch grass, or in this case, walk across a street to do so. Make sure to look both ways.

Related: Bengals continue to put their money where their mouth is with latest Paycor Stadium announcement