Oh Yes, They Call Him The Streak

Saturday I wore my J.J. Flanagan jersey. It was my dad's. I wore it partly out of sentimentality, but mostly out of a primal need to break my mojo hex. I have expressed numerous times my tongue-in-cheek belief in what Dave Barry has described as "concern rays." I try and laugh it off when asked directly. That's silly superstitious stuff. It's not the kind of thing that grown-ups do. Except for by the hundreds of thousands every weekend.
That would include me, I'm embarrasses to say. When I heard Kevin Costner tell Tim Robbins in "Bull Durham" that you never mess with a streak, he wasn't telling me anything that I hadn't already known, way down deep in the fiber of my soul. I know that from August to January, it is vital to the success of the team that I wear my Denver Broncos wind jacket. Back when they were on their way to their second consecutive Super Bowl win, a friend of mine pointed out that the stitched logo over my heart read "B-P-O-N-C-O-S." Go Bponcos? But I couldn't switch jackets. You don't mess with a streak.
Not unless the streak is of the negative sort. The past couple of weekends have not been nice to the college teams I support. The universities of Colorado and California have been struggling of late. I have been sporting a series of Cal T-shirts in hopes of re-igniting the fire under both squads. They didn't have the effect I was hoping for. Saturday, I switched to the University of Colorado home jersey, circa 1983. The California Golden Bears won in Los Angeles for the first time in years, and the Colorado Buffaloes upset the previously unbeaten Kansas Jayhawks. Ah, the power of a licensed wardrobe.