lollardfish: (Default)
lollardfish ([personal profile] lollardfish) wrote2004-12-25 07:12 am

Rules for Sports Heartbreak

1. Futility - Whatever the ultimate goal is, you can't have won it within recent memory, and preferably not at all, ever.
2. Competativeness - Your team must be pretty good. You must have had realistic shots at success. Otherwise, your team falls into the 'loveable losers' category.
3. Predictability - Just before failure hits your team, you've got to know it's coming. You've seen this before. You expect the worst. You know just how the collapse is going to go.
4. Repeatability - Your team needs to fail spectacularly again and again and again. One big collossal meltdown doesn't cut it.

Go Vikings.

[identity profile] minnehaha.livejournal.com 2004-12-25 03:55 pm (UTC)(link)
1. I presume they lost a big game.

2. Since when is there pro football on Friday?

B

[identity profile] mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com 2004-12-25 04:18 pm (UTC)(link)
1. The Vikings lost to the Packers 34-31, on a field goal with two seconds left... I believe this means that the Packers win the division title over the Vikings, and at least one home game in the playoffs. I'm sure that [livejournal.com profile] supergee will do a much better job of writing about all of this on Monday or Tuesday...

2. Since there is no high school or college football to compete with, and since the NFL, like nature, abhors a vacuum in the TV schedule, and since Friday was a day most people were going to have off, the Vikings-Packers game was scheduled on Christmas Eve. I'm not sure that there's any day of the week that hasn't seen an NFL game...

[livejournal.com profile] davidschroth (hijacking [livejournal.com profile] laurafish's account)

[identity profile] lollardfish.livejournal.com 2004-12-25 06:31 pm (UTC)(link)
It's the third time this year the Vikings have lost to a field goal at the end of the game by having absolutely no defense. It's utterly predictable. The Vikings, though, are really finding a way to be among the great heartbreakers of pro-football, and are one superbowl loss away from eternal woe.

[identity profile] mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com 2004-12-25 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Does this mean you're switching your allegiance from the Sox to the ViQueens?

[identity profile] lollardfish.livejournal.com 2004-12-25 06:37 pm (UTC)(link)
So Shannon got me the book _Faithful_, written by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan. Last spring they decided to keep diaries and trade emails about the Red Sox season, in order to turn it into a book. Fortunately for them, it was the most improbably wonderful season one could choose to do so. I'm on May 28th ...

There's a little email exchange in April where the authors opine about the nature of winning just one championship, and how it changes not only the views towards the future, but also your understanding of the significance of the past.

Take the Eagles - They have lost three straight NFC championship games. If they win this year, with this dominant team, those losses are just preparation, motivation, etc. If they lose again, though, those earlier losses are even worse.

I've liked the Vikings since I moved here, and especially since the loss to Atlanta in the 15-1 year. It was a good 'Red Sox' moment. The 42-0 destruction by the Giants 2 years later confirmed it. And now that the Red Sox have won ...


... I'm still a diehard red sox fan. I track every off-season move. I can't wait for opening day. I'd like to go to Spring Training. But there's room in my heart for the following teams (in order of importance)

1. Red Sox (World Champions, 2004)
2. Vikings (Heartbreakers!)
3. Buffolo Bills (Heartbreakers, but no good lately so there's no pain)
4. Celtics (World Champions many times over, lately sucky)
5. T-Wolves (On the rise. Jury still out)
6. Indiana University Basketball (NCAA champs many times over. In rebuilding phase)
7. Twins (World Champions 87(?) and 91. Lately stuck in a rut of competance without excellence, due to financial constraints).

If the Vikings played the Red Sox, I'd root for the Red Sox.

[identity profile] neogrammarian.livejournal.com 2004-12-25 10:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Um, go Cubbies?


(sorry, can take the girl out of IL, but...)

[identity profile] lollardfish.livejournal.com 2004-12-26 05:16 am (UTC)(link)
The Cubbies are just beginning to take up the reigns of proper Sports HeartBreak.

See, for many years they were loveable losers - the dregs of the National League. If they won, you felt grand, but you didn't expect it. Recently, they have begun to turn this around and are on their way (that goat curse thing was all well and good, but it didn't have enough actual GAME self-destruction to add up).

But now they have been a pretty good team for awhile. They have some great pitching, hitting, and a Red Sox shortstop. You had a big lead in the 8th inning in Wrigley, and blew it (Bartman et al.). You're on your way! Now get to the Series and lose it terribly.