JD Harmeyer and Jonathan Blitt Reflect on Their Super Bowl Experience
“He goes to a dark place, man,” Jonathan says of JD watching the Bengals lose
February 14, 2022
The wild ride of the Cincinnati Bengals incredible season has come to an end. After watching them lose Super Bowl LVI in person 23-20 to the Los Angeles Rams, Bengals super fan JD Harmeyer and Stern Show staffer Jonathan Blitt were on hand Monday morning live from the West Coast to report on the experience. “Thank you for sending me. It’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me,” JD told Howard before reporting on the comforts of SoFi Stadium. “There’s no bad seat at that stadium … You can see the whole field.”
With that out of the way, Jonathan recalled how tense it was observing JD during the game. “I can’t deal with the ups and downs of JD watching this game—it’s brutal. Really brutal,” he admitted to Howard and co-host Robin Quivers. “He goes to a dark place, man. I’m telling you. It’s really depressing, and you don’t even want to touch him or look at him or talk to him … the emotions get so low with him that it’s scary a little bit to me.”
“I felt like an idiot because I basically cried three times,” JD said of how he reacted even when the Bengals were doing well. “Whenever something really good happened, I would start to get emotional …. and I had to compose myself … I was like, ‘You got to get ahold of yourself, you look ridiculous right now.’”
Blitt also noted some of JD’s physical reactions during the game. “There was standing rocking, there was sitting rocking, and then, when he gets down, he gets very still and he internalizes all of these emotions,” he reported. “They just sit there like a rock, and you feel it … “This guy has the weight of the team on his shoulders – it’s insane. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
When he went out to dinner with JD and actor Ryan Phillippe, Blitt was taken aback by both their friendship and the attention his colleague received at the restaurant. “That’s a friendship that’s really kind of blown my mind … We met for dinner and Ryan showed up and they’re like two peas in a pod,” Jon said before revealing it was as if JD was the star that evening. “The waiter flipped out. He was blown away by JD. This guy knows everything about JD, everything about the show … He could give a shit about Ryan—he was just all about JD.”
Being that Jonathan has a reputation around the office for pranking people, it should come as no surprise that he’s spent a considerable amount of their trip messing with JD. And, while he didn’t tell an entire restaurant that his co-worker is a drug dealer like he has in the past, he did tell several strangers at the airport that it was JD’s first time flying. “He told every single person that we would walk by,” JD explained. “It started with the baggage claim lady … he’s telling the security person, then we get to like our gate, he’s telling people there, and then we get on the plane, he’s telling the flight attendant … it was literally nonstop.”
“It sounds exhausting hanging around with Blitt,” Howard responded.
Blitt and JD also went for a hike up L.A.’s famous Runyon Canyon—but it didn’t go so well. “I’m worried about JD and his exercise,” Blitt said of JD who, at around 220 lbs., did struggle during their outing. “He’s very out of shape and it worries me.”
“It was all fucking uphill,” JD defended. “I never heard of Runyon Canyon … I thought it was just like, you know, it was like a little sort of even walk around a park.”
Even so, while JD did experience soreness, it had nothing to do with the hiking part–it was how bunched up his boxers got. “I was irritated in certain areas that I couldn’t walk properly,” he admitted to Howard.
