The Cincinnati Bengals are headed to the Super Bowl this year, and as a result we're being treated to a host of articles and online recipes about "Cincinnati chili," the glaringly misnamed culinary perversion that flows from southwestern Ohio like a river of bad influence. This dish puts more-or-less traditional chili con carne on top of a bed of spaghetti, after which it is topped by shredded cheese and often raw white onions.

You may be convinced that you should cook Cincinnati chili this Sunday in a show of solidarity or festivity with the Bengals. You should not. Cincinnati chili is weird and quite gross. It has all the hallmarks of what we might, in a fit of charity, call "college cooking": It's a hodgepodge of ingredients slopped together on a plate with no discernible tradition or meaning or cohering theme, the sort of thing a 19-year-old might grub together in an effort to seem cookish.

Each facet of the dish is, on its own, fine. Pasta is great. Chili is supreme. Pasta with rich, luxurious meat sauces—think Italy's bolognese, or Japan's niku miso—is heavenly. None of these things is objectionable in and of themselves.

But the particular combination of Cincinnati chili is a bizarre mishmash of things: Shredded cheddar, plain cooked noodles, Mexican-spiced chili, often Oyster crackers on the side. It's a barrage of mixed signals and whiplash culinary U-turns. Nothing is ever settled on a plate of Cincinnati chili: You never know quite what it is you're eating (except that it's from Cincinnati).

If you want a great Super Bowl dish, just try good old-fashioned chili itself: Soak some dried beans overnight, grind some short rib in a food processor, simmer it all together with a rich blend of spices for several hours, load it up with toppings: Viola, you're a game day hero.

But don't be fooled by the siren song of Cincinnati chili. It's bad news. We have been misled.