With baseball playoffs, football games and hockey openers broadcasted almost every day of the week, the fall season is a great time for avid sports fans. And with Quinnipiac being located midway between New York and Boston, there are some hardcore fanatics right on campus. But no matter what team students root for, many have game day rituals to help their teams go all the way.
Walking around campus, one would notice numerous students wearing some sort of major league team apparel every day. T-shirts, jerseys, sweatshirts, sweatpants and numerous team logos and mascots are scattered throughout campus.
But what about those crazy fans: the ones that deck out their side of the room with team memorabilia, and overflow their closet with the excess?
“I have Philadelphia Eagles posters, a jersey, long sleeve shirt, sweatpants, polo, a necklace, earrings, pillow and slippers,” said Alyssa Mills, a freshman business major.
Others have more common ways to pay homage to teams.
“I always wear my Sox hat when the Red Sox are playing” said James Ford, a senior print journalism major.
Memorabilia and jerseys are not the least of sports fans’ everyday lives.
In fact, it is inevitable to see a game on in many dorm rooms on weekends.
True fans even start to think their actions will affect the teams they cheer for, even if it means wearing the same clothes, eating the same food or sitting in the same spot whenever their team is in action.
“During the ALCS of 2004 (when the Sox won) my friends and I sat in the same chairs and even drank the same drinks once the Sox started winning,” Ford said.
Jon Leach, a freshman broadcast journalism major, has similar beliefs. “When I am watching the Giants and they are on offense, I sit on one side of the room with my hat on forwards. When they switch to defense I sit on the opposite side of the room with my hat backwards. I think it gives them good luck,” he said.
Kate O’Connor, a freshman political science major, asks for a little help when her team is down. “I asked God for A-Rod to hit a home run in the ALDS game against the Indians. Two minutes later I look at the TV and he hit a home run!”
As fans notice correlations between their actions and the outcome teams, they can be driven to make unlikely things routine.
John Chagaris, a senior broadcast journalism major, recalls a superstitious situation while announcing for the Cape Cod baseball league.
“Whenever I watched an episode of ‘Desperate Housewives’ the morning of a game, the team I was announcing for would win. If I slept in late or decided not to watch ‘Desperate Housewives’ then they were always destroyed,” he says. “It got to a point where one of the catchers on the team unleashed on me and made sure that I had episodes on my iPod.”
If a ritual falls short and a beloved team loses, fans can take it personally.
“I wore black for a week to mourn when the Mets lost last October,” says Leach.
