Superstitions in the athletic world are as common as dry ice on an ice cream truck.
While at Alabama, quarterback Joe Namath had a pregame ritual of taping his cleats. In one college game, he didn’t, and he suffered a knee injury in that game. From that day on, including his pro career, Namath never missed taping his shoes.
In the National Football League, where a dress code was strictly enforced and resulted in his white tape on black shoes prompting weekly fines, the Jets found a way around the problem. To avoid weekly costs, the New York Jets equipment manager had Namath wear white shoes … he was the first pro football player to do so. Namath figured initially the weekly fines were worth not taking a chance of not taping his shoes and suffering an injury because of it.
Irrational? Sure, but superstitions are not supposed to be rational, they are designed to add a sense of doing whatever it takes to win for an athlete. Bill Parcells, one of the most successful coaches in NFL history, had a unique way of justifying superstitions. He said, “It is not so much that doing something makes a difference, but I have noticed if a player skips his superstitious behavior, he is likely overconfident and doesn’t perform as well.”
Fred Biletnikoff, the Oakland Raiders dynamic wide receiver, had a ritual that required he put on his left shoe first. Before a preseason game against the Dallas Cowboys in 1974, he was done getting dressed on the stool in front of his locker at the Oakland Coliseum and a couple of his close allies on the team punked him.
“Did you see that?” Pete Banaszak said to Ken Stabler while observing Biletnikoff.
“That was surprising,” Stabler said while shaking his head and eyeing his favorite target.
“What?” Biletnikoff asked, not understanding what his two teammates were referring to. After some additional banter back and forth, Banaszak said, “It probably doesn’t mean anything, but I think you put on your right shoe first.”
“No, I didn’t,” Biletnikoff instinctively responded. Yet, both Stabler and Banaszak continued the ruse while they headed out of the locker room. I watched all this with a simile knowing what the two were up to, and then observed Biletnikoff stripping down, having trainer George Anderson cut the tape off his ankles and wrists, and begin the process of dressing for the game from the jock strap on.
Biletnikoff thought Snake and Pete were messing with him, but he was taking no chances.
Al Davis, one-time owner of the Oakland Raiders, had a superstition that when Billy Eckstine sang the National Anthem before the game his beloved Silver and Black won. The Raiders were 5-0 in games that were preceded by an Eckstine rendition of our anthem. That is why Davis had instructed his entertainment director, Del Courtney, to have Eckstine perform before the 1974 AFC Championship Game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
As it turned out, Eckstine couldn’t clear his schedule in Las Vegas and the anthem was sung instead by Sarah Vaughan … and the Raiders lost to the Steelers and Pittsburgh went on to win their first ever Super Bowl two weeks later. If Eckstine would have been able to make the date with the Raiders would football history have been rewritten?
I have superstitions. Most are not long-standing ones, but things that pop up in the moment like a particular sweatshirt or, as happened this year, a treat for my dog. I have a close relationship with Rosie, my eight-year-old four-legged friend. This year, on a Saturday game between the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns, I had one treat for her left in my pocket and had my fingers on it when Baltimore runningback Derrick Henry broke loose in the closing minutes of the Ravens win over the Browns.
The Ravens had opened as a 17-point favorite in that game, the line had swelled to 20 points on the closing number, and John Harbaugh’s team led by 18 before Henry scored the touchdown that moved the final score to 35-10. I had advised the game to be bought when Baltimore was favored on the opening line, and debated whether they were still a viable play with the number up to an uncommon 20 points for an NFL game?
We pulled the trigger for clients and advised them to lay the bloated line, which covered while I was feeling the dog treat in my pocket. Instantly, I figured that was a blessed treat and Rosie would have to chomp on another because this one was my lucky charm.
Since I have held that treat in my pocket over the final two weeks of the regular season and throughout the playoffs, our point spread record on early lines is 14-4-1, 13-6 on closing lines. I have stored that dog treat, or should I say lucky charm, up high enough in our bedroom to make sure Rosie doesn’t get it. You know it will be in my right pocket tomorrow for Super Bowl LIX.
We are taking no chances.