Bud Light has some commercials where fans are doing weird things in order to help their teams’ performance on the field (e.g., wearing socks with two different colors, holding their bottle with the label facing the field, etc.) Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” is playing, and at the end, the screen says “it’s only weird if it doesn’t work.”
Saturday I was watching the Florida Gators play the evil Florida State team in football. I was working on a jigsaw puzzle as I was watching, and the Gators took a 13-0 lead. Then I got tired of working on the puzzle. FSU scored 20 straight points to take the lead. Finally I made the connection, and I started working on the puzzle again. The Gators scored 24 consecutive points to take a 37-20 lead! FSU scored a meaningless touchdown on the last play, but my jigsaw puzzle was really the key to victory.
I wear hats for the teams I want to win sometimes. So it worked every time I wore their hat and they won. They don’t always win, so maybe it’s not foolproof.
Actually the Gators won because I turned off my TV when FSU went ahead in the 3rd quarter. I surfed the net aimlessly and only returned for the last couple of minutes. By then Florida was comfortably ahead, but FSU did score a late TD. FSU probably wouldn’t have even scored that late TD if I had stayed away a little longer.
I have a story that is sort of the opposite, of superstition backfiring. One of my best friends for a number of years was a big 49ers fan and hated the Packers. This was during that period where the 49ers were making the play-offs every year and got knocked out more often than not by them. For some reason that I don’t quite understand, his hatred was largely focused on Antonio Freeman, to the point that he even said he’d disavow the 49ers if they traded for him or he signed him in free agency (hey, who said sports fandom made sense?).
I don’t remember the specifics of the game, may have even been a 49ers vs. Packers game, but he decided he’d go all superstitious and try to end Antonio Freeman’s career. So he went and found some book on magic or curses or something and performed a full ritual, burned his image in effigy, the whole deal. So we got together to watch the game that day and he starts to have a great game then… BAM! he takes a vicious hit running across the middle of the field. My friend starts getting excited as he’s laying there after the hit. Even the announcer says “I don’t think he’s getting up from that one.” Just as my friend said he thought his curse worked, he just hopped right up. He then went on to have a great game, even made one of the best circus catches of his career to win the game. So my other friend and I made fun of him about how his curse had backfired and, had he not done it, he wouldn’t have “magically” gotten up from that vicious hit.
I don’t remember what year it was, but the Yankees were undefeated when leading after 7 innings. They were playing Boston and it was late in the game and the Yankees were winning. The announcers went on about how the Yankees were undefeated in that situation. Sure enough, they lost. I think that was the only game they lost that year when leading after 7 innings.
In 1996 I watched the first two games of the World Series. I gave up after that and never watched another inning of that series.
Oh, goodness I have too many to list. Specifically for this college football season I have worn the same Notre Dame t-shirt every week (it says “Play like a champion today” on it).
Additionally, I have watched every single ND game either on my own TV or live in person. So last week when a fellow ND fan friend of mine invited me over to watch the USC game at his house, I had to decline because in previous seasons, ND is 0-3 in games I have watched at his house. He is having a championship game party that I will have to decline also.
My sporting superstitions never work, no matter what colour I dye my eyebrows. I can only conclude that opposing fans are, on average, more superstitious than those of the teams I support. This is also why the Orpington Empiricists have never won the cup.