Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Ryan Finley calls a play during an NFL defeat. Photo / AP
Some people dine out on the success of their sports team.
Jeff Lanham, superfan of the Cincinnati Bengals, gets to live on top of his own diner because his team is so hopeless.
Lanham's living arrangements turned sour on a whim.
His wife Chrissy was on the phone at the Hog Rock Café defending the Bengals 0–4 start to the season in early October.
In an attention-seeking moment, Lanham proclaimed he would live on the restaurant's roof if the Bengals lost their next match.
Unfortunately for him, Chrissy Lanham shared this news live on WKRC, a TV station which does reports from the café during the NFL team's away games.
Jeff has been on the roof ever since, the Bengals continuing their winless start to the year against the Oakland Raiders yesterday to now be 0-10 for the year.
"I said it, so it's my fault, but she kind of put salt in the wound by saying it live on Channel 12 News. So now I'm living it," the 42-year-old Lanham told the Washington Post. "Until they win, I'm stuck on the roof."
Initially, he needed a mate with a tree felling truck helped him get to the roof, although he has since moved one floor down.
He lives virtually all day every day in a 12 square metre tent with a heater, complete with TV. It's so cold he hardly goes out apart from clambering down to use a shower and toilet.
"You just get bored as hell up here watching TV and Netflix, but there's literally nothing else for you to really do now that it's like 20 degrees," Lanham said.
"I just turn my heater on, strip down to my boxers and lay in my sleeping bag for most of the day."
A former star Bengals star named Ickey Woods visited and they watched a game together. Of course the Bengals lost.
"My husband isn't really the type to get star-struck or anything like that, but I could tell that getting to meet one of his team's best players meant a lot to him," Chrissy said.
"This process has gone through stages for me personally, because I can obviously visit him whenever I want to, but it's just not the same as having him with me at our home.
"Being the upstanding man that he is, I know that he'll never break an agreement, so I'm just praying that the Bengals win so he can come back home."
There is hope.
The Bengals have still to play the Jets and Dolphins, two of the NFL's worst teams.
But true to his word, if the Bengals become just the sixth team in NFL history to go winless in a season Lanham will return to the roof in 2020.
"I'm so ready to come down; it's miserable up here," he said.
"I did not plan on being up here this long. This definitely wasn't no business move, I can tell you that.
"The only reason I'm even up here is to silence the haters' mouths. I never want anyone to be able to say that I wasn't a man of my word."
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