thepeopleseason | Don't anger the Weauxf Gawds!

I've got a bad feeling about all of this.

Back a couple of years ago, I spent a lot of time hanging out on Usenet with the denizens of rec.sport.football.college discussing the various goings-on in National College Football.

Now college football fans, like most sports fans, are a ~~cowardly and~~ superstitious lot. One of the longstanding theorems of college football is that the so-called "Weauxf Gawds" listen to the boasts (or "woofs," or as my LSU alum friend Cap'n Ken might spell it, "weauxfs") of a particular team's fans, and the most over-hyped, over-praised team, the team with the most arrogantly presumptuous fans and players, wins a nice little smiting from the Weauxf Gods care of the other team.

You can see this in action by observing the punishment they meted out to Sebastian Janikowski after he scored a field goal to put the FSU Seminoles up 29-25 with under three minutes to go, and then mocked the Gator Faithful with their own Gator Chomp. The Gators' Doug Johnson would hit Jacquez Green on a 63-yard pass with under two minutes left, setting up the game-winning touchdown. Smoted.

So back when the Florida Gators were an actual MNC contender, hanging out on RSFC was part of something I termed "re-wallowing in our winningness"--essentially, enjoying what everyone has to say about your most recent drubbing of the next team.

But, again, my own superstitions dictate that most "pre-wallowing"--seeing what everyone says about the team beforehand, their chances of winning, their star players--tends to favor the other side.

Where am I going with all of this?

I don't know if I'd call it pre-wallowing, but I've done a lot of reading prior to this election.

It's practically unavoidable. I have a yen for one particular side to win, and I can't help reading all of the press about it.

It doesn't really help that the press keeps weauxfing for the team I want to win, either.

Please don't smite the nation, Weauxf Gawds!