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Come Fan with UsSaturday, June 20, 2026

Never forget that Bruce Arians drank paint as a child ... twice

Nom nom nom.

NFL: Super Bowl LV-Opening Night
NFL: Super Bowl LV-Opening Night
Handout Photo-USA TODAY Sports
James Dator
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.

Part of the Super Bowl tradition is decoding how the incredible minds and talents of football got their teams to the finale of the NFL season. It requires smarts, tenacity, and in the case of Bruce Arians, maybe drinking paint.

I’m not saying that drinking paint will turn you into a legendary NFL coach, but I’m also not, not saying it. All I know is that among the relatively exclusive group of head coaches to reach the Super Bowl, paint drinking Bruce Arians is one of them.

This is both a story you’d expect to find on The Onion, and an onion of a story — which is to say it has layers. The amount of parental neglect and poor decision making it takes to have a child drink paint not once, but twice is beyond staggering. Just when you think the weirdness of this story is done here, it gets worse, courtesy of NFL.com.

“My older brother would always get a big glass and drink it in front of me all the time. Daddy was painting the kitchen one day, and I saw that big creamy white bucket, just grabbed it started drinking it.”

Pause for a sec here, Bruce. I have some questions.

  1. Did you think milk arrived to the house in steel buckets?
  2. Did you think your father was painting the walls with milk?
  3. So you drank paint, were poisoned, had your stomach pumped and your reaction after that was “hmmm, I need to try that paint again.”

I do not advise that anyone drink paint. It’s a dumb idea now, it was an even dumber idea when there was lead in paint. However, to commemorate the first paint-drinking head coach to win a Super Bowl (should the Buccaneers prevail) I believe we need to drench Arians in paint, instead of Gatorade. It just makes too much sense.

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