In Case You Missed It: My Jinxing Ability

I don’t know if anyone reading this follows me on Twitter, however, if you do, you may have been confused by a few of the tweets that I posted during the Super Bowl a month ago:

And then, a few short minutes later — I believe after Brady was picked off for the 2nd time, the Seahawks looked like they had the game figured out — I posted this final tweet of the evening…

I did take considerable heat from a couple of people, afterwards, who took the opportunity to make statements into how wrong I was — “that’s why they play the whole game” “it’s never over ’til it’s over” etc. — but I should clear something up: while I did turn the game off at that point, that gesture was 90% a jinx attempt.  The other 10% was just in case the Seahawks ended up winning that I didn’t have to see them celebrate again — I cannot stand them.

I did stop watching the game and began cleaning up after Average Bowl (a very muddy flag football game a group of us played that morning) but my truest of hope was that, if I stopped watching the game, then the tide would turn in favor of the Patriots.  Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I’m incredibly superstitious when it comes to these sorts of things; I’ve toned down the superstition this season, but there was certainly a part of me that thought — seriously — that my viewership could have a real impact in the game (plus, the white jersey had won 9 out of the last 10 Super Bowls… now 10 of 11… so I had that going for me, too).

Regardless, I would periodically check back on the score and, for awhile, nothing happened — the Seahawks were still up 10 — and so I’d change the channel and go back to my laundry or shoe-cleaning tasks.  Then, I checked back and the Patriots had scored; now it was just a 3pt game.  IT. WAS. WORKING.  So, I changed the channel and kept busy with other things.  A decent amount of time later, I checked the score again AND THE DAMN PATRIOTS WERE NOW WINNING BY FOUR!!!! HUGE!!!! So I changed the channel and tried to guess, based on the game clock, when it’d be safe to check back again.

Well, I ended up checking back moments after Baldwin/Kearse made that crazy circus catch to put Seattle into scoring range.  I figured it was over and so I might as well watch the end — I mean, if they have crazy circus catches off of legs, while falling down, and landing on his back…. they’ve got the Football Gods in their favor.

Lynch then ran it to the 1yd line and I had my finger on the power button, ready to hit it the moment that he crossed into the end zone on the next down — yeah, I figured that they’d hand the ball off to him from the 1yd line and let him bulldoze his way for the 3.5 feet that was needed for the likely game-winning score.  We all know what happened next in the game — Wilson threw a quick slant that got picked at the goal line and the Patriots went on to hold onto the win.  However, what few people know, since I was watching the game by myself, is that I went BALLISTIC with celebration when that ball was picked off!!

The only and best way to describe it was that I was like Jimmy Valvano after winning the NCAA championship — running around my living room, looking for someone to hug and share in this moment.  I ended up hugging and twirling Spaz (he wasn’t a fan of it, though) before I was able to get back to watching the final moments of the game repeatedly saying aloud: “Are you (expletive) kidding me?!?!”

It was the greatest way that the game could have ended, as far as I’m concerned.  I recall our loss from the shadow of the goal post two years back, but — somehow — throwing 3 straight incomplete fade routes to Michael Crabtree was not the most gut-wrenching way to lose a Super Bowl: an interception on the goal line definitely tops that.

If Wilson completes that pass, then he gets hailed as a god by the people of the Pacific Northwest and then I have to endure months of TV coverage about how great he is, and his stupid insurance commercials — I don’t know if they’re nationally televised or just regional ones, but they are very annoying; not campy annoying, like Aaron Rodgers’ commercials, but just generally annoying.  The fact that it was picked accomplished two things: 1) it kept Wilson on a mortal level, and 2) generated some of the best NFL Memes that I had seen ALL SEASON.  The Internet was an amazing place following that game.

Thanks for reading.

-Ryan.

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