{"id":8171,"date":"2010-01-24T10:45:29","date_gmt":"2010-01-24T15:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=8171"},"modified":"2010-01-24T10:45:29","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T15:45:29","slug":"perspective-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=8171","title":{"rendered":"Perspective Needed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the reasons I&#8217;m a committed fair-weather fan is that\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.830wcco.com\/pages\/6190169.php?contentType=4&amp;contentId=5454156\">people like this drive me nuts<\/a>; in this case, a guy describing the effect of the Vikes&#8217; last big playoff choke had on his &#8220;life&#8221; (emphasis added):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Gary Anderson ruined it for us. Laces out man, just blew it,&#8221; said Vikings fan Abby Binder.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think I was in seventh grade, I remember it pretty vividly. Gary Anderson, <strong>he ruined my life<\/strong>,&#8221; said John Ayres.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was in college, I was in Iowa City, Iowa. I will never forget that day. It was a horrible, horrible day. So I&#8217;m looking for redemption tomorrow,&#8221; said Mike Stevens.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ms. Binder and Mr. Stevens:\u00a0 <em>they are a football team<\/em>.\u00a0 Mr. Anderson: get a grip.<\/p>\n<p>The article goes on to note that some of the fans are resorting to superstition&#8230;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To make sure the Vikings clobber the Saints, some fans will count on superstition to get a win.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wear my number 40 Kleinsasser jersey for every game,&#8221; said Nicole Schellenberg.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not really a superstitious person, but last weekend against Dallas I did wear my Jared Allen jersey, so I will be sure to have that on tomorrow night,&#8221; said Stevens.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;unaware that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?page_id=5033\">Berg&#8217;s Fourth Law of Media\/Sports Inversion<\/a> replaces superstition with empirical science:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Berg\u2019s Fourth Law of Media\/Sports Inversion<\/strong> \u2013 The Vikings will be contenders until the moment the local media actually believes they will be contenders. At that moment \u2013 be it pre-season or Week 12 \u2013 the season will fall irredeemably apart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With that in mind, everyone sing along with me; they gonna choke.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re gonna choke bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the reasons I&#8217;m a committed fair-weather fan is that\u00a0 people like this drive me nuts; in this case, a guy describing the effect of the Vikes&#8217; last big playoff choke had on his &#8220;life&#8221; (emphasis added): &#8220;Gary Anderson ruined it for us. Laces out man, just blew it,&#8221; said Vikings fan Abby Binder. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-rare-sports-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8172,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8171\/revisions\/8172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}