“Are you serious?” asked Lovie on a cold December night in 2007.
“Well, kinda,” I admitted.
“You’re blaming it on that?” Her question gave me pause. I knew it sounded ludicrous, but still.
“I don’t know if I’m blaming it on that, but I’m not ‘not blaming’ it on that, either.”
“You’re king of the double negatives, you know that?” Again, pause. She had a point.
“I’m not ‘not king’ of double negatives,” I offered.
The issue? Tennessee’s loss to LSU in the SEC championship game. The cause? My brother-in-law and his wife.
“And what, exactly, did they do, again?” asked Lovie.
“They popped the bubble.”
“You’re a joke,” she said as she stormed out of the room.
Maybe, but that didn’t change one simple thing. Whenever you’re watching a big-time ballgame and things are going well for your team, it behooves you to keep the viewing environment as similar as possible until the conclusion of said game. Any modifications could instantaneously change momentum.
Which is exactly what had happened. UT was battling valiantly against a heavily favored LSU squad–all knotted up at 14 midway through the fourth quarter when my brother-in-law and his wife came over to catch the end of the game. By popping by, they also popped the bubble and I knew it, but I tried to shrug it off. Minutes later, Erik Ainge threw a pick six that gave LSU the deciding score.
I know. You think I’m an idiot. And I’m good with that. But guess what? Over a year later, it happened again. I was watching the Tennessee men’s basketball team trying to win their first SEC tournament championship in over twenty years when, with just seconds left to play, my brother-in-law texted me his optimistic belief that the Vols would, indeed, pull it off. The next instant? Tennessee turned the ball over on an in-bounds play and was forced to foul with just seconds remaining. We lost by three.
For those of you who think I’m hating on my brother-in-law, nothing could be further from the truth. He’s not the sports freak that I am, so it’s not like he knows about the bubble. Plus, I had a part in the debacle, too. Had I simply ignored the poorly timed text, my bubble would have remained in tact, and Tennessee would have won their first SEC tourney since the Carter administration.
Still think I’m crazy? Maybe this’ll help. Early in the 1998 football season, I sensed that Tennessee had the intangibles needed to run the table and win a national championship. I got this notion from a gutty road win against a Donovan Mcnabb-led Syracuse team coupled with an aura given off by an orange Tennessee pen. For the rest of the year, I kept that pen with me at all times, never actually using it, only clicking it neurotically during each and every game. It came to be known as the PNCP—the Potential National Championship Pen.
On a cold and drizzly afternoon in November, I sat in Neyland Stadium, soaked to the bone, and watched despondently as Tennessee’s title hopes seemed to be falling by the wayside. We had been down 21-3 and mounted an impressive comeback, but, barring a miracle, that comeback would fall short. With less than two minutes remaining, Arkansas was up by three and had the ball. The Vols had no timeouts left and were unable to do anything other than watch the Razorbacks run out the clock. I turned to the PNCP.
Click, click, click, click.
Click, click, click, click.
Arkansas quarterback Clint Stoerner rolled out for a naked bootleg, and did something every Vol fan will remember for the rest of his or her life. He stumbled to the ground, fumbling the football in the process. Tennessee recovered the ball and scored the winning touchdown four plays later.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNsT8k4mBNA]
Six weeks after that, the PNCP and I were in Arizona proudly watching Tennessee win the first ever BCS National Championship.
How you like me now, huh? RECONGNIZE, bitches.
I know. You still think I’m an idiot. So does Lovie.
Y’all can say what you want, but I’m not gonna change. If I were gonna, it would have already happened. But it hasn’t. Which means I’ve gone through more lucky hats than you have pairs of shoes.
.jpg)
Thanks, JCO. We'll easily take care of Ole Miss now.
So why am I telling you this? Simple. I had a dream last night that Wayne Chism asked me to write a post about superstition because he thought it would bring the Vols good luck in today’s SEC quarterfinal match-up with Ole Miss. And who am I to turn down big Wayne Chism?
So, if we win today, will it really be because I put up this post? I don’t know that I’d go so far as to attribute the win directly to my blog.
But I’m not gonna not attribute it to my blog, either.
And by the way, if you think this post is unbelievable, it’s NOTHING compared to the Great Vol-Burger Debacle of 2003 which I write about in my book Tales from the Trips.
About john cave osborne
