Weirdest Sport Superstitions, Curses & Rituals

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Sue 0:00

What if I told you some of the greatest athletes in the world believe their success might depend on what they eat, what they wear, where they sit, and even which foot touches the ground first? Sounds ridiculous, right? But here's the thing. If you did something before the biggest win of your life, and then you won, would you risk not doing it the next time?

TFTO Intro

Sue 0:25

Welcome to True Fan True Opinions. I'm Sue. Around here, being a true fan doesn't mean blindly agreeing with everything your team does, it means caring enough to tell the truth. So let's talk sports, like fans do.

Crazy Rituals and Superstitions

Sue 0:41

Sports are full of routines. Some make sense, and some make absolutely no sense at all. Athletes have them, teams have them, and fans? Oh, we definitely have them. So let's have some fun with the weird, the obsessive, the gross, the downright unbelievable side of sports. And along the way, I'll decide, believe it or baloney. So let's get into some of the weirdest, strangest, and just maybe plain gross things athletes did throughout their career. So Glen Hall, hockey player, goalie, he convinced himself that he could not play at his peak unless he was physically ill. So he would just force himself to vomit, to puke in the dressing room before almost every single game. And don't forget, guys, he had a Hall of Fame career. Many games, many playoffs. I hope he didn't forget the cleanup crew at Christmas time since he left them gifts throughout his career. There's some baseball players that don't wear batting gloves. And Moises Alu would intentionally urinate on his own hands during spring training and throughout the season to harden his skin and prevent blisters. Yeah, I'm not sure about you guys, but that to me is a little gross, and I don't care how well I was hitting, I would probably invest into some batting gloves. And then there's Cindy Crosby, and you guys all see it after every game. During his post-game interviews, he's wearing the same sweaty, grimy baseball cap, a Reebok baseball cap. And he's worn this since his rookie season 2005. And he refuses to let anyone touch it. And then he's also got another ritual routine, the stick rule, he calls it. He never allows anyone to touch his hockey sticks after he personally tapes them, believing it drains the good goals out of them. And we all know he's had amazing, great goals in his time, and he's still not done. So yeah, don't let anybody touch them. Serena Williams, one of my all-time favorite athletes, she would wear the exact same pair of socks if she was on a winning streak. And we all know the career she had. All the grand slams, all the single titles, the double titles. I'm sure her bag equipment stunk. And also, you guys probably remember seeing her before she served her first serve. She had to bounce the ball exactly five times. And then if she had a second serve, she had to bounce it exactly two times. I mean, I guess I understand the bouncing of the ball a certain number, but the unwashed socks, yeah, that's a little gross for me. Jason Giombi, he has one of the most hilarious, bizarre superstitions in baseball history. It's called the Golden Thong Slump Buster. So with Giombi, if he was entering and having a severe batting slump, not just a little one, but a big enough one, he would put on a gold tiger stripe thong under his uniform. Really a sight for sore eyes. He swore that the undergarment was legendary and it never failed for him to get a hit. Now, when he was playing with the New York Yankees, all his teammates knew about this ritual, and he didn't mind sharing the luck. It's been noted that Derek Jeter even put on the golden thong. He was having some kind of slump. I think he was like 0 for 32 in 2004, early 2000s. And as soon as he put it on, his first pitch that game, he hit a home run. So obviously, there was something to this golden thong. Now, those were some of the weirdest, strangest, even gross rituals that I've heard

Next Level Rituals

Sue 4:41

about. And then there's been some other routines that are more to the extreme and obsessive. And we're gonna talk about a couple here. Now, Raphael Nadal for tennis was very obsessive. He had a certain routine and it happened every time. So he would place two water bottles at his feet precisely parallel with the labels facing the court. It had to be exact. He never stepped on the white court lines when changing ends between games. And his pre-serve routine, he performed a strict sequence of touching his shorts, both shoulders, nose, ear, eyes, before every single serve. And it never changed. And Patrick Roy. And we know he's famous for talking to the goalposts, having conversations with them. And we've seen other goalies do that. But with Patrick Roy, he would actually skate out to the blue line during stoppage, turn around, and skate backwards towards his net while staring intensely at his posts, thanking them when pucks hit them and asking for their help. So not just a little top-top, thank you very much, but a full-blown conversation. He also strictly refused to step on any of the ice lines, including the red line, blue line, goal lines, all the lines. He would deliberately leap or overstock them during warmups and intermissions, during the exits, coming on and off the rink. So anytime he was on the ice, putting on his goalie gear, he had a very precise sequence and it never vary. And before games, he would spend long periods in the dressing room bouncing a squash ball against a wall, and this was to help him with his hand-eye coordination. But it was also a habit and it became a pre-game ritual. Now you might think to yourself, that's pretty extreme. But yeah, I'm gonna tell you about another person who beats everything that Patrick Roy did. So there's Wade Boggs, right? You guys all know him, great baseball player. And he was known as the Chicken Man. Boggs ate chicken before every single one of his 2,440 career games, which earned him the nickname Chicken Man. His wife kept a recipe book with dozens of different chicken dishes to prevent him from getting poured of the diet. No doubt. That's a lot of chicken. And during his pregame infield practice, Boggs insisted on taking exactly 150 gram balls, not 132, not 166, exactly 150. Now he definitely had a number thing because for the batting cage, he had to walk in precisely at 5.17 p.m. for his night games and then proceed to his running game, and that was precisely at 7.17 p.m. And before every single at bat, he would use the tip of his bat to draw the Hebrew symbol Kai, meaning life, into the dirt of the batter's box. And after the final out of every inning, he would always sprint along the exact same path to the dugout, stepping over the foul lines very carefully. Now the ones I mentioned were more of the weirder, stranger, even gross, obsessive uh rituals, routines that athletes have, but there is others. Uh people know about Tiger Woods always wearing that red shirt on Sundays. Patrick Mahomes, he wore the exact same pair of red underwear from Lululemon for every single game of his NFL career since his rookie season in 2017. And then there's the great Wayne Gretzky. He had a hyper-precise routine as well. That included putting his gear on strictly from left to right. He coated his stick blade in baby powder, drinking four specific beverages in exact sequence between periods, and intentionally missing his very first warm-up shot wide to the right.

Believe it or Baloney? Michael Jordan

Sue 8:57

And then there's Michael Jordan and his college shorts. In this little segment, I'm gonna call it believe it or baloney. So the story is that Michael Jordan, when he played with the Chicago Bulls, he wore his University of North Carolina practice shorts underneath his official Bulls uniform for good luck. And it's probably the main reason why NBA shorts became longer and baggier in the 1990s, because he didn't want anybody to see them underneath his shorts. Now, wearing college shorts under his NBA shorts make this great Michael Jordan a better player. Is it a believe it or baloney? Well, for me, I'm going to say believe. Not because I think the shorts have magical powers, but if wearing them gave Jordan even 1% more confidence, why stop? Confidence matters.

Team Routines, Rituals, and Superstitions

Sue 9:54

And then we have the teams, right? Rituals, routines, superstitions, whatever you want to call them, they're not just for the personal athlete. Teams get involved as well. So one of the most widely practiced superstition in all professional sports, mostly hockey, is the playoff beard. So this is basically when players stop shaving from the first day of the postseason until the team is either eliminated or they win the championship. What a lot of people don't know is when it started or why it started. So the tradition was started in the 1980s by the New York Islanders. And that was during their historic run of four consecutive Stanley Cup championships. So yeah, you went four in a row. Why stop, right? Now, Dennis Potvey, he attributed the tradition to pure exhaustion and scheduling during those playoffs. The team had to play four games and five nights in the first round, and it was just something that just kind of happened, he said. And now it's one of the biggest superstition rituals that you see in hockey. Now, all teams in all sports have their team warmups, they have their pre-game runs, everything that they go through. Well, there's a famous team in New Zealand, the All Blacks, and they do a traditional dance called the Hakka, and they perform this dance on the pitch directly in front of the opposing team. And it's strictly to project dominance over the other team to challenge them. And if you haven't seen this before, I recommend to YouTube it and look it up. It's New Zealand All Blacks and it's the Hakka traditional dance. And there's other team warmups like in hockey. The starting goaltender is traditionally the very first person to step onto the ice for warmups. Skating out before the goalie is considered a massive taboo. And this is learnt and done at young ages. You see it in junior hockey and peewee. I bet they even do it in beer leagues. In soccer and football, they rely on highly structured, repetitive lap patterns and dynamic stretching lines where team captains or veterans always lead the line. We know that the baseball players they tend not to step on the baseball lines when running in and out of innings. Unless, of course, it's during live play, because you know, you have to make that play. But other than that, you never step on the lines. Same as in soccer, many players will deliberately step on the pitch using the right foot. And hockey players, we all know, they like to tape their stick a certain way each time, every time. Now, before getting onto the soccer field, the pitch, the courts, the ice, there's ritual superstitions in the way they get dressed, putting their uniforms on, to the locker rooms, to the tunnels. So getting ready for a game, a lot of players put on their gear in a very certain way. And if they deviate a little bit from this, they're gonna think they're gonna have a poor performance. Now, a lot of athletes are very superstitious going from left to right, and it's as big names as Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, there's Rain Greske, they strictly put on their left sock and then their left shoe before even going to their right side. And going to hockey players because they have so much gear to put on, they have a certain weight that they put it on every time. They follow like an exact sequence, right? Such as like putting the shin pads on, then the socks, then the pants, then the skates. Never varying the order by even a single second. And then there's the locker room and the stadium tunnel. This acts as a final transition point for the preparation to battle, right? For the big game. Of course, there's gonna be unique rituals. Like the locker room seating, it is sacred. Rookies never dress in the stalls of veteran leaders, it just doesn't happen. And the pregame playlist is usually controlled by one designated player. There are some teams that also have like a physical object in their tunnel that every single player must touch it before walking out. Famous examples include Liverpool players touching this is infield sign, or the Nordane football team slapping the play like a champion today sign. The unwritten rule against stepping on the team logo in the middle of a locker room floor is one of the most sacred and protected traditions in professional sports, especially in the NHL and in NFL. The central logo is viewed as the heart, soul, and the history of the franchise. So stepping on it with dirty shoes or skates is seen as an act of direct disrespect to the team, its current players, and the legends who wore the jersey before them. You're talking about the players, coaches, trainers, even the media members. They all know they can't walk on this logo. They avoid making contact as much as they can. And if somebody walks over this logo, even by accident, they are usually met with immediate, aggressive shouting from the players. And don't let it happen a second time because you will be banned from the room. And just like the athletes, some of these superstitions, rituals are a little more obsessive, a little bit more strange, a little bit more even dedicated to the ritual from teams. Um, and there's two in particular. One is the France national team for football, and this was during their win during the 1998 FIFA World Cup. And just a reminder, it was on home soil and they won. So, of course, you're gonna keep this ritual going, right? So before every single kickoff, their star defender would walk up to their goalkeeper and kiss his shaved head for good luck. Also, every single player is sat in the exact same assigned seat on the team bus while they were traveling between matches. And the famous song I Will Survive was played in the dressing room right before every game, every match. So, like I said, it was on home soil and they won. So why not? And then there's the Detroit Red Wings, uh, the legend of the octopus. Right? We all know it. They throw octopus on the ice. Wow. Just a quick little story. It happened in 1952. There was a local fish market owner, and they believed that a dead octopus could serve as a good luck charm. So because an octopus has eight tentacles, they believe it perfectly symbolized the exact eight playoff wins that was required to win the Stanley Cup. This is back in the day when there was only six original teams and they didn't play like so many rounds, four rounds, they only played two rounds. So when the Red Wings went a perfect eight and oh to win the championship that year, the superstition was validated in the minds of the fans, convincing them that the octopus possess good luck power. Over the last several decades, the act has become a heavy ritual. So fans boil the octopuses to prevent slime from sticking to the ice. They smuggle them inside the stadium, the arena, inside their pants and their jackets. And then they throw them at highly specific moments during the game. So, like typically right after the national anthem or following a critical playoff goal. Now, the team ice manager, Al Sopoka, he created his own sub-ritual by picking up the octopuses and throwing them over his head just to get the crowd all rowdy and crazy. This action became so iconic that the team's official purple mascot is named Al the Octopus. Believe it or baloney, the don't touch the conference trophy superstition in hockey. So the logic to this is hockey players believe that because the Stanley Cup is the only trophy that truly matters, celebrating or hoisting a lesser prize is an arrogant act that offends the hockey gods. Believe it or baloney? Well, for me, I'm actually leaning towards believe on this one. Not because it's a curse, but because I love what it represents. It tells your team the job isn't finished yet.

Curses

Sue 18:31

Now we can't talk about superstition and rituals without talking about curses. And in sports, yeah, there's a bunch of curses. One of the most famous curses is the curse of the Bambino. And for the ones that don't know, in 1920, the owner of the Boston Red Sox traded their superstar, Babe Ruth, who is named the Bambino, to the rival New York Yankees. And it was to like finance a Broadway play or something. Now, before the trade, Boston had won five of the first 15 World Series titles. And then after the trade, they went on an 86-year championship drought. Meanwhile, the Yankees transformed themselves into a dominant baseball empire, winning like 26 World Series titles from like 1920 to 2004. So, of course, this played on the minds of the Boston Red Sox fans, right? It was such a curse. Now, they did break the curse after decades of heartbreaking and different bizarres playoff collapse, but they finally broke it in 2004 by coming back from a 3-0 deficit against those Yankees to win American League pennant, and then they went on to win the World Series that year. And then there's the Bobby Lane curse with the Detroit Lions, and this happened in 1958. The Lions traded a Hall of Fame quarterback, Bobby Lane, to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Furious about the trade, Lane famously declared that the Lions would not win for 50 years. Well, here comes the Jinx, right? The Lions, who had been a dominant powerhouse in the 1950s, immediately collapsed into a multi-decade spiral of losing seasons, draft buses, playoffs failures, including a historic 0 and 16 season, 2008, which was exactly 50 years. Now, technically the curse expired, but I believe Detroit Lions are still cursed because they're still not really a good team. And then there's the Madden curse. This is for NFL, the EA Sports. So in the late 1990s, EA Sports started to feature individual NFL superstars on the cover of their Madden NFL video games instead of John Madden himself. For nearly two decades, almost every player selected for the cover suffered a devastating season-ending injury or a dramatic drop in performance the very next season. So some of the famous victims, and I have a list here. So there's Garrison Hearst, and that was Madden 1999. He broke his ankle shortly after the release and missed two full seasons. There's Michael Vick, Madden 04, fractured his fibula in a preseason game just days after the game hit the shelves. Unbelievable. Sean Alexander, Madden 07, broke his foot the season after winning MVP and never rushed for a thousand yards again. Basically, the game just ruined his career. And then Rob Grigonski, Gronk, Madden 17, he suffered a season ending back injury midway through that cover year. Now, not everybody suffered from this curse. There was Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady that had great years, even one, when they were on. The cover of the game Madden, but for the majority, it yeah, it was a curse for a lot of these stars. Then, of course, there's the trial maple Leafs. Oh, the Leafs, you guys have two curses. So the first one lasted about 11 years, but it was a very eerie one. So in 1951, Bill Barico scored a diving legendary overtime goal in game five against the Montreal Canadians to win the Stanley Cup. Just four months later, the 24-year-old defenseman went on a weekend fishing trip to northern Quebec. The small plane he was on just vanished into the wilderness. Then a myth grew that the Maple Leafs were cursed, would never win another championship until his body was found. Then in 1962, a helicopter pilot spotted the plane wreckage in this dense forest. And what's spooky is that the Leafs won their very next Stanley Cup in 1962, the exact same year his remains were finally discovered. Which the 11-year curse was now broken. The great tragically hip made this story into a great song. And you guys know it, it's called the 50 Mission Cap. And of course, the Leafs being the Leafs have another curse, and it's called the Harold Ballard Curse. Dave Keon was a legendary, really the best team captain who led the Leafs to four Stanley Cups, including their last one in 1967. However, when Ballard took full control over the team in the 1970s, he publicly bashed, just it was nasty, towards Keon in the media and refused to give him a fair contract raise. We're talking about their best player, the team captain. So when Keon's contract expired in 75, Ballard refused to re-sign him. And because of the rules at the time, the Leafs still control Keon's NHL rights. So Ballard intentionally set the trade compensation price so high that no other NHL team could afford to sign him. So it forced Keon, at that time 35 years old, he was a superstar. It basically forced them out of the NHL and he had to go play for the WHA. So of course Keon is just pissed, right? He's just bitter. So he completely cut ties with the franchise, with the Leafs. For decades, he refused to participate in alumni events, declined invitations to the closing of the Maple Leaf Gardens, and refused to let the team honor his number and honor in quotation marks. So now Brendan Shanahan in 2016 made it right by retiring Keon's number 14. Fun fact though, back then Leafs only honored jerseys. So Shanahan had to change the policy to retiring jerseys so they can add Keon's number to the rafters. Which to me, I believe the Leafs are still curse because they really haven't done anything, even with his number retired. Now there's a curse called the Seven Cats. It is one of the most elaborate and desperate stories of superstition in soccer history. It stems from this intense rivalry between two Argentine clubs whose stadiums sit less than like 400 meters apart. So in 1967, the racing club was at the top of the football world. Now the other Argentine club, and with their crazy fans, they were so jealous. It was allegedly that they worked with a local witch and aided by the sympathetic night watchman, they broke into the racing's stadium. They buried the corpse of seven dead black cats underneath one of the goalposts to doom the club's failure. And you guessed it, immediate slump. They lost their final match of 1967, 4-0, to that club. So in 1980, the desperate coach Juan Carlos Lorenzo ordered the pitch to be excavated. They dug up six cat skeletons, but the seventh one was still missing. To break the hex, the coach buried six dead toads in their place. Yeah, and that didn't work either. So in 1983, the racing club was relegated to the second division after losing to, yep, you guessed it, the independent Argentina Club. In 1988, a priest threw holy water over the pitch during a mass procession attended by over 100,000 desperate fans, but they lost their very next game. 1999, the club had completely gone bankrupt. In 2000, highly superstitious manager Merlot took over and refused to accept that the final cat could not be found. He demanded a massive stadium redevelopment. They completely tore down and excavated the concrete surrounding the pitch. Deep inside the rubble and concrete, construction crews finally uncovered the seventh cat skeleton. With all seven cats removed, the dark cloud lifted. And the racing club went on to win the 2001 title, ending their agonizing 34-year championship drought. So I guess unlike the Leafs, some curses do break. And then there's the Drake curse. And this one is just to me is kind of funny. Um and it's actually kind of factual. So the curse with Drake is that anytime he takes a picture with somebody, something happens to this player, to this athlete. So I'm gonna mention a few of the well-known ones. Anthony Joshua boxing. He posed with Drake and vowed to break the curse. Weeks later, he was knocked out by Andy Riaz in one of the boxing's greatest upsets. Connor McGregor, MMA. Drake joined McGregor's entourage and stood on stage during the weigh-ins. And McGregor just got submitted by that opponent. There's Serena Williams. She dropped a shocking semifinal match at the US Open to an unseated opponent after Drake began attending her matches. And Drake wasn't just limited to players, there was teams. There was a soccer team, a college football team, a college basketball team. There was even a soccer team that on social media text out it was banning its players from taking pictures with Drake until the season concluded. And God forbid, if Drake even gambled, betted on a team or a player, they would lose as well. And one of the biggest teams was Argentina in FIFA. I feel bad for them. It happened twice. The most recent was the 2026 World Cup final. He betted $1.5 million for Argentina. Well, we know Argentina fell to Spain in extra time, so that left Drake empty-handed. Argentina in the 2022 World Cup, he betted a million dollars. Now, Argentina did win in extra time, but the bet was required to win in the 90-minute regulation time. So he still didn't win. And I can go on more with Drake. Um if you're still curious, check out the DrakeCurse.com website. It's actually pretty funny.

Believe it or Baloney? Curse of Billy Goat

Sue 29:40

Now time for Believe It or Bolognay. So the story is the curse of Billy Goat. So during game four of the 1945 World Series against the Detroit Tigers, the owner of Billy Goat Tavern was asked to leave Wrigley Field because the odor of his pet goat, Murphy, was bothering other fans. Outrage, William Siannis, the owner of the goat, reportedly declared, them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more. Now the Cubs finally broke the 71-year-old curse. And I remember this. It was in 2016. They defeated the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in an epic game seven. I remember it. It was one of my favorite players at the time, Anthony Riesel. He caught the ball for the final out of the bottom of the 10th inning, and then he put the ball in his back pocket before running out to his teammates to celebrate. It was a World Series that was watched worldwide. Millions of people watch it. We were all wondering, is the curse gonna be broken? So the curse of Billy Goat. Believe it or baloney? I'm gonna say baloney. It's an incredible story, but I think decades of really bad baseball for the Cubs had a lot more to do with it than one angry fan and a goat.

Rituals and Superstitions: Giving fans power and control

Sue 31:00

For the fans, rituals are a way to cope with the lack of control over their favorite team's destiny. Are they rituals? Are they superstitions? It's whatever it's gonna help your team win. And we have like the wardrobe commitments. If a team is on a multi-game winning streak, fans will refuse to wash their lucky jersey or shirt, believing the wash cycle will rinse away any luck. You got the inside out rally cap. These fans are in the stadium or even at home. They'll turn their baseball caps inside out and backwards to spark a late game comeback. I've seen it. I've done it myself. Then there's the lucky socks and underwears, where you wear a certain sock underwear, usually very old, and you only wear it for game days. And then everybody at home, right? The family, they must wear the exact same team gear on game day. And that's including the toddlers, the infants, even the family dog. If the dog doesn't have its lucky bandana on, by kickoff, the family considers the game compromised. Then you got the home couch rituals. This is where fans will sit in the exact same spot on the couch, refusing to move, or even go to the washroom if their team is on a scoring drive or if they're winning. There's even family members or friends, if they are deemed bad luck, they are actively banished to another room if the scoring starts to slip. Like they're not even allowed to be in that room and watch TV. And speaking of the TV, some fans go as far as having the volume set on a specific number, even or odd, depending on your favorite player's jersey number. And then there's the standing during power plays. Like you are not to sit on that couch while your team's on a power play and you're just waiting for them to score. There's no relaxing. And then what family and friends decide to eat and drink during a game, that's not random. That is a very calculated move for good luck. There's like eating the exact same meal, so like specific wings or your favorite restaurant for your pizza before or during every game of the playoff series. It has to be that specific pizza. And God forbid, if it's a devastating loss, you're never eating that food again. Like I know of this family that banned a certain brand of chips for years until their team was back in the playoffs. And same goes for beverage, for drinks, right? You're forcing yourself to finish a drink or crack open a new one at a highly specific time of the game to change the team's momentum. Man, I've done that so many times. And nowadays, there's even the unwritten rules of the superstitions of texting your friends, your family members. Like the ultimate sin is texting someone saying, We got this in the bag, or it's game over before the clock even hits zero, before the buzzer goes off. That's just changing the positive energy, the momentum that your team has, and you're just giving more energy to the losing team and for them to have just that amazing comeback. It's just a big no-no texting someone and saying, Are you watching this no-hitter when the guy's in the seventh or eighth or ninth inning? You just don't do that. Now, if your team is losing badly or struggling, you can on purpose text your friends a very negative comment like, We are completely doomed, or there's no way we're gonna win this. And then it's like reverse psychology, right? That's to trick the sports gods into improving your team to change the momentum. So fans wearing the same jersey helps their team win. Believe it or baloney. Bolognay, total baloney. Now, having said that, did I wear my Blue Jay jersey through the entire playoffs last season, right up to game seven of the World Series? Yes. Yes, of course I did. Did I make sure neither my wife nor I washed it between wins? 100%. Do I wear my Josh Allen t-shirt every single Bills game and refuse to wash it until they lose? Absolutely. See? Even when we know it's baloney, we still do it.

Confidence Matters

Sue 35:23

Now, I'm no scientist, and I certainly don't play one on this podcast. But after years of playing sports and cheering from the stands, I think I got a pretty good idea why we do these things. One, we want control. Sports are so unpredictable. A bad bounce, a referee's misscall, a sudden gust of wind, or her freak injury can instantly ruin months of preparation. Our brain hates helplessness. So to cope with high stakes uncertainty, the brain searches for a locus of control. By performing a familiar control ritual, like piping a stick a certain way or sitting in a specific chair, eating the same food, the brain tricks itself into believing it has a direct hand in shaping the unpredictable outcome. So to have control, we need rituals. And rituals make us feel like we're doing something and it calms us down. It's a form of psychological conditioning. Athletes use pregame routines to transition their minds from a state of chaotic stress into the flow state or the zone. They perform the exact same physical sequence before a play. So, like when I was talking about Rafael Nadal, about him organizing his water bottles a certain way every time. This shuts down overthinking and anxiety, clearing the mind to focus purely on instinct and physical execution, which then tricks the brain into a state of absolute confidence. And confidence matters. If a lucky routine or a ritual makes you believe you'll perform better, sometimes that confidence is enough to take you to the next level. A confident athlete will trust your instincts and muscle memory. The brain filters out negative noise, which then the athlete has more efficient energy and his focus is 100% on the task at hand. And confidence helps to tolerate pain and fatigue. It allows you to trust your body and let you just to play through whatever you're going through. Fans aren't any different. We, the fans, experience the highest level of sports anxiety because we have zero physical impact on the game's outcome. We're not playing, we're not coaching. We don't influence the game, but our brains like to think we do. So when you're high-fiving your buddies, eating the same snacks, or wearing lucky socks, these rituals, these superstitions, these routines, they act as a release valve for intense stress, which then allow us to feel like an active participant rather than a helpless observer. So after looking at all of this, maybe there's more to these crazy rituals than we think. Maybe they don't change the game, but they can change the person. And after spending this whole episode talking about the strange things athletes, teams, and fans do, and if I'm gonna be completely honest, I'm just as guilty as they

Sue's True Moment

Sue 38:24

are. And now it's time for Sue's true moment. You know, after spending this whole episode talking about all the strange, weird, and sometimes downright ridiculous things athletes and fans do, I really can't judge any of them because I've been doing it myself for years. When I played softball back in the day, I had my own rituals. I had to have that Mars bar just before first pitch. I had to have exactly three handfuls of sunflower seeds in my back pocket before I took the field. And for tournaments, I only wore new socks before every game, never washed right out of the bag. Did they actually make me play better? Probably not. But try telling me that before the game. There was something about doing the same thing the same way. It made me feel ready, comfortable, like I was ready to play. And apparently I didn't leave all that behind when I stopped playing. Because I'll never forget the Raptors playoff run in 2019. Game seven against Philadelphia, Kawhi Leonard takes the shot at the buzzer. You know the one. And it hits the rim once. Not twice, not three times, but four times, and it finally drops. And I was drinking a certain drink when I was watching that game. So naturally, when the Raptors move on, guess what I made for the next game? Yep, the exact same drink. And then I made it again and again. Every game. Because at that point, I'm not taking any chances. And we all know how that story ended. The Toronto Raptors became NBA champions. Now, did my drink have anything to do with the Raptors winning the NBA championship? Of course not. But would you have convinced me to stop making it during that playoff run? Not a chance. And maybe that's what I realized during this episode. I don't think these rituals are really about believing that a drink, a shirt, a seat, or some little routine has magical powers. They're about how much we care. When you're playing, you want to feel ready. You want that confidence. And when you're a fan, you want to feel like you're somehow part of it. You can't take the shot. You can't throw the pitch. You can't score the goal. But you can have your rituals. And sometimes those silly little routines become part of the memories we have of the biggest sports moments of our lives. Do I believe my drink helped the Raptors win the NBA championship? No. But hey, they haven't won one since I stopped making

TFTO Outro/Signoff

Sue 41:00

it. So maybe I need to rethink this whole believe it or baloney thing. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of True Fan True Opinions. If you enjoyed today's conversation, I really appreciate it if you follow the show, leave a review, and share it with another sports fan. And don't forget, I want to hear your thoughts. Did you agree with my takes? Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments or on social media. Until next time, keep sharing, keep believing, and remember chin up, don't give up. I'm rooting for you.