VERY SUPERSTITIOUS
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| Cody my Cava-poo loves the Saints |
Wear those lucky socks! Paint your face! Arrange you’re seating, don’t change your underwear….whatever it takes to make sure your team comes out on top!
I love the wonderment of sports superstitions and the fans that practice it!
Sports fans are passionate. No matter your sports de jour, we are alike under the jerseys and fan paraphernalia.
Are you the super fan who clings to ritual habits to promote fair tides for your favorite team?
Down in my neck of the woods, in south Mississippi, near the boundary of Louisiana we follow our NFL team, the New Orleans Saints.
When Sunday rolled around, it was my dad’s cooking and watching the Saints that brought the family together.
Usually, it was watching them lose. No matter of superstitious activity could help that. I grew up use to losing.
Life stopped for those games.
No phone calls...no interruptions...only watching the football game... and you dare not visit or drop by during this period of time...unless you were there for the game.
As more wins and better coaches came along, the Saints and we fans began to taste victory more and more and then when we gathered, the intensity of superstitions exploded!
When our black and gold boys had a victory, it meant trying to recreate the same scenario for the next game, including attire. One game the Saints played particularly great and for some reason my Mom was wearing an outfit with a leopard print. So, that season, for every game she was pressured into wearing that God-awful pantsuit from fabric-print hell.
Plus, if you attended the winning game at my parents house -- you had better be present the next week or you could jinx the outcome!
In the nervousness that the football game provokes, (nervousness is really a nice word for rage, fear, panic, stress and vulgarity).....my brother grabbed a wooden, hideous statue off the television entertainment center and rubbed its head. (Not sure where Mom got the ugly statue...probably the same place she purchased the leopard outfit.) The next play the Saints intercepted the ball! That poor statue was rubbed down to a nub after that.
No one kept up with the statistics of how many plays it affected positively but at least in our minds ...it worked!
As the years went by, we found new rituals and gimmicks. Once when we were in a tight spot someone shouted out that it was lucky to rub a redhead’s head. My husband was lucky enough to be the only Ginger in the room and had to submit his head for timely rubbing! Why? Because the first time we tried it something spectacular happened on the next play.
I am happy to say my husband has very thick hair and no balding from the abuse!
When the team had a terrible loss, played awful and embarrassing, my brother and cousin decided that wearing Saints shirts was unacceptable for the next game. They began a winning streak so the superstition was upheld until the Super Bowl run. You did not dare show up in a jersey or you had to change or go home.
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| Saints at a Tennessee Titan game....its ok to wear Saints gear to a live game!! |
Since this phenomenon of sports superstition is prevalent, Bud Light paid homage to we fans that have our peculiarities. It is all good fun. We seriously don’t believe that we all have magical power…but if we did, and we did not do these things then we would let our team down!
Bud Light commercial Very Superstitious
I wonder if one team’s fan base has more superstitious rituals than the other teams fan base if the winner of the game is determined by the balance of power???
What is sports superstition? It is defined by a ritual or behavior that either the athlete or the sports fan performs with the belief that this specific activity will influence the performance or outcome of the player or team.
It’s anything. It’s birthed out of imagination, repetition, and success of an activity. A great win can be evaluated by how the victory was achieved. Forget great play calling, excellent execution of plan and talented athletes….its all about the fan’s success in carrying out their magical recipes!
Click for top ten sport superstitions
The movie, Silver Linings Playbook starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper had Robert DeNiro with insanely superstitious tactics for his Philadelphia Eagles that had me in hysterics. It felt like a familiar place.
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| Superstitious Deniro |
And, it’s not just us little peons doing strange things to win. Big name athletes participate in Sports
superstition such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. But Jason Giambi went so far as to wear a golden thong to get out of a batting slump and who knows why? But it worked for him!
Heah, Brees, gold is our color! If the Saints start losing we might have to request the Giambi golden thong solution!
A whole team can be cursed such as what happened in the 1969 pennant race when the highly favored Cubs were on the field and the ominous black cat ran out causing the Mets to win the game, the pennant and the World Series!
Let’s put a few large dogs around the Mercedes Super Dome….just in case.
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| The family portrait...when its OKAY to wear jerseys. |
As for my New Orleans Saints turnaround, it took the flushing of the city by Hurricane Katrina to wash away the curses of a Voo Doo Queen, of course aided by a feller named Sean Payton and co-conspirator Drew Brees.
These days, we have become accustom to winning and frankly, I don’t wanna go back to losing seasons...but the ebb and flow has hit us and the last few seasons were not bright and shiny....but disappointing.
But, should I complain when most of my life we were excited by a few wins in a season? Should I dare be sad when not going to the playoffs is the low bar set....
Well, maybe our lack of success lately is because Mom lost the leopard suit?
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