Suppose I were to offer you a special magical jersey. It’s the jersey of your favourite professional sports team (if you want a particular number or name on it, cool, I can do that for you.)
What makes this jersey special is that as long as you are wearing it AND you watch the game, either in person or on TV/streaming, your team is guaranteed to win.
“Watching the game” doesn’t mean you can’t miss a single second. As long as you make a good faith effort to watch a full game, that qualifies. If you miss a bit to go use the restroom or get a drink or your kids need attention for a few minutes that doesn’t matter. You watch the game wearing the jersey, your team is absolutely guaranteed to win. No rules lawyering here. Listening to a game on radio does not count, not does just watching the last inning/period/quarter. If you’re a few batters or minutes late watching, or you have to take off just before it ends that’s fine. Good faith effort is what counts.
There is no other effect on the universe from this magical power. Your favourite team had no hand in this, by the way. It’s my invention. I shall tell no one else you possess this amazing magical item and no one shall, or even could, know unless you tell them. They have no idea you have the power to control the outcomes of their games. No other jersey like it exists or ever will exist and its powers are completely unopposable.
The chances of your favourite team winning games where you do NOT use the magical jersey to control events are not in any way affected; they will be entirely determined by the skill level of your favourite team and their opponents as per normal.
You cannot transfer this magic to anyone else and have them do it for you. It only works for you.
Your magical jersey lasts for as long as you can keep it from falling apart; if it gets a rip or a chicken wing stain on it, no problem. The jersey is an authentic licensed jersey and is of high quality.
So… what would you do? I put a lot of thought into this. Think about it before answering.
Me too. I wouldn’t wear it every single game. But I’d put a fair bit of money down early in the season on them winning the championship. And wear the jersey just often enough to keep them from being mathematically eliminated. I wouldn’t want anybody else to get the idea that betting on them is a sure thing. Ruins the odds bookies will give me as the season progresses, for sure.
Hopefully this is considered seeking clarification and not an attempt at rules lawyering, but what if the game is tied when you have to leave just before the end of regulation, or into OT?
Anyway,gotta go with T_O_W_P and @Ponderoid…I’d likely try to make some bank from it. As Ponderoid says, I’d wear the Jersey judiciously so my team wins just often enough.
I’ll take that jacket, but not for my Yankees. They’ve got a pretty good fighting chance. If instead I had it for my NFL team, the {\color{blue}\mathbf{GIANTS}}, a lot less games to commit to and they need the help a lot more.
On a philosophical level, it’s a fascinating question. Wearing the jersey guarantees winning, but if a win is guaranteed, how excited can you really get about it?
On a more practical level, though, I’d be monetizing that. Can you maybe give me an NHL jersey? Then I can just quit my job and watch that team’s games for a living, while not diminishing my enjoyment of sports I care about? Certainly the team that I always win money betting on would be my favorite team in some meaningful sense of the word, even if not the sense you had in mind?
If I wore the jersey 20-40 times or so during the regular season, I’d more or less guarantee the Blue Jays would make the playoffs (depending on their baseline quality) AND I’d make life changing (but not suspicion-arousing) money.
But then I’d leave it off during the playoffs. I think. It’d be hard not to save them if they were up against it…
Taking this exceptional offer in good faith, what guarantee can you offer that in addition to the magnificent, authentic, hallowed, empowered Geelong jersey that you are about send me, that you won’t (unknown to me) also send a cursed, purile Carlton jersey to my sister, or a besmirched, woebegone Hawthorn jersey with equivalent power to my younger brother?
One nice thing about this scenario is that you wouldn’t even need to lie about it.
“Say, why are you betting so much money on the Browns?”
“See, I’ve got this magical lucky jersey, and whenever I wear it, the Browns always win.”
“SURE they do, buddy, of course, now let’s see that money you’re putting down.”
But seriously, I can accept the existence of magic, but I don’t trust it. It’s easy enough to verify that wearing the jersey causes the team to win (it might take a few years to get enough data to be sure, depending on the sport, but it’s straightforward). But I only have your word that that’s the only effect. How can I know? Maybe wearing the jersey causes my team to win AND causes a malaria outbreak somewhere in the world, or something. With a nigh-infinite number of possible side effects, it’s impossible to check all of them, and with magic, you can’t rule anything out.
Right, so in the case of a title deciding derby when both teams have supporters attending in good faith and each wearing your magical jerseys … what happens please, your august sporting omnipotence?
Part of me thinks that I’d just HAVE to make a bet like “the Cubs will go 162-0 during the regular season” just because, without magical influence, there’s essentially no chance of that happening for any MLB team without there being magic involved. And I’d make that bet before the season starts, so the outcome of each individual game wouldn’t be a separate wager.
No, it would ruin the point of watching sports in the first place.
Although, if you also gave me a time machine that let me go back to change games that have already happened, well, I would have no qualms about using the jersey to change that 2000 Super Bowl when the Ravens humiliated the Giants.
Maybe it remedies a malaria outbreak somewhere, or something.
If you for some reason want to play How Can I Know about some hypothetical second effect — instead of working with what you’ve got — then shouldn’t you be concerned that, like, the bestest effect everer might remain on the shelf with the jersey that’s gathering dust while you refrain from making money that could go to [checks notes] treating malaria?
In the OP’s described scenario, my team would be guaranteed to win a championship any year I wanted. I only need to wear it about 3/4 of the time in the regular season, and for every single playoff game/series.
So, this opens up, what I think, is the bigger can of worms: As Thing Fish pointed out, at what point would diminishing returns kick in? I’m not sure, as a Cowboys fan, that I’d want them to win 10 Super Bowls in a row, for instance. That would ruin the league, ruin the fun, etc. So this creates a scenario where it’s worth it for me to intentionally refrain from wearing the jersey once every few seasons, or every other season, to make things more parity-ish.
Oh, and - since the OP specifies that the magic jersey only works as long as it is intact, then I will choose it only for my favorite NFL team, since that’s the sports league with the fewest games - and hence, the fewest games I need to wear it for. The jersey may only need 1 wash per year if worn for 10-13 NFL games in a year. I would never wear it for my Texas Rangers because it would wear out much more rapidly when I need to don it 100 times in a single year.
