Can’t wait to see the Bills at the Super Bowl
Both my sister Leigh and I are lifelong Buffalo Bills fans. Which basically means that every single year, Leigh and I spend a lot of time tip-toeing around our own superstitions, and bracing ourselves for disappointment. Four Super Bowl losses in our childhood, a 17-year playoff drought, and plenty of other fan-related trauma will do that to people. :-)
If you’re a sportsfan, you know how this works. The cardinal rule of fandom is: don’t jinx your team. So if I’m wearing my Bills jersey when they win a game, I have to wear it for EVERY game thereafter until they lose. And we definitely can’t say things like “When the Bills go to the Super Bowl” or even “IF the Bills go to the Super Bowl” because that kind of hope could jinx the team… and break our hearts.
But after last season I had a minor epiphany. After something like thirty+ years of strictly following the Superstition for Sportsfans playbook I finally thought to myself, “Why are we doing this?”
First of all, we all know that “jinxing” your team is not a thing. What I wear or say clearly won’t impact whether my team will win or lose. (Otherwise, it would have worked already!)
“Superstitions are behaviors human beings use to gain a sense of control over certain events in their lives. Thus, sport and its inherent uncertainty provide fertile ground for superstitious behavior,” is how this National Library of Medicine research abstract titled Jinx, Control, and the Necessity of Adjustment: Superstitions Among Football Fans starts out.
Yeah. That sounds right.
So other than the concept of trying to give ourselves a sense of control over something we have zero control over, even worse, this fearful mentality can sometimes take the fun out of being a fan. Every year we hold ourselves back from even hoping. What kind of fun is that?
So in the spring over beers, I casually dropped a bomb on Leigh:
“You know, I feel like the Bills are definitely gonna make the super bowl this year.”
Leigh was aghast. She looked at me like I’d told her I was running away to join the circus. “What? No. No, Steve, you can’t say that.”
“C’mon, Leigh,” I said. “You and I both know that what we say or do has zero effect on the Bills. Really, we’re just trying to protect ourselves from disappointment… and maybe being embarrassed in front of our friends. And what’s the point of that?”
She stared back at me, incredulous.
“Think about it,” I added. “If they lose, it’s going to suck anyway. So if we don’t protect ourselves from disappointment, how much more will it suck? Maybe 10% more? If I have to be 10% more disappointed after having more fun all year, that’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
She still looked hesitant.
I gave it one last Hail Mary.
“Ok, Repeat after me, I can't believe how much fun it's gonna be to watch the Bills in the Super Bowl.”
Slowly, Leigh repeated it.
Then I repeated it.
Then we repeated it together.
“I can't believe how much fun it's gonna be to watch the Bills in the Super Bowl!!!”
By now we were laughing our heads off and feeling totally amped up. And we agreed - why rob ourselves of that kind of easy, all the time, every day fun over something we can’t remotely control?!
She was IN.
Now, we have a new ritual. We text each other probably every few days with messages like, “Still can’t believe the Bills are going to the Super Bowl.” Or things like…
A 10%-joking, 90%-serious text from Leigh around a long-planned idea of getting tattoos about being proud of being from Buffalo.
I gotta say, it’s a small thing — but it makes us happy every single time. It’s like a little shot of joy. In fact, it’s so good I can’t believe it took us this long to do it.
To us, 360+ days of joy completely outshines the 1-5 days of disappointment that comes when the Bills season ends earlier than it will this year. (see what I did there)
My experience rooting for the Bills has made me think about how many times in life we avoid taking risks, doing our best work, or even just living peacefully — all because we want to protect ourselves from disappointment.
The big risk in this “disappointment-avoidance” mindset isn’t just that we miss out on joy, it’s also that we risk setting the bar too low. (Science Direct: Blessed are those who expect nothing: Lowering expectations as a way of avoiding disappointment)
Outside of sport, my current example is: as a leader in the non-profit space, I see a tendency to avoid setting aggressive targets, because people are afraid of not meeting them. But if we don’t set them, we won’t get them! Similarly, I see a reluctance to make use of funds and resources out of a similar scarcity mindset — the mentality is, what if we spend the money and we don’t get any more of it? But of course, if you don’t make use of the resources you have, what good are they?
Believe me, at some point in their career, all athletes experience some kind of crushing disappointment. That feeling sucks. But it’s survivable. It’s also worth it: because if we don’t hope, if we don’t strive, if we don’t reach for the things we really want… well, then we’ve given up before we’ve even started.
The fact is, we might win, and we might lose. We might reach our targets, or we might fall short. We might achieve everything we dreamed of, or we might not. That is the nature of life: there is so much that we don’t have control over.
But we can control our own actions, and we can control our mindset.
We can choose to spend the season anticipating our own disappointment, or we can choose to enjoy the experience of rooting for our team and believing they can win the Super Bowl. (It helps when Vegas thinks this, too, I must say. And it’ll be interesting to see how this link ages!)
We can choose to live on edge and frightened in a permanent pandemic hangover (great piece in Psychology Today), or we can choose to appreciate the opportunity to socialize and travel again.
We can wonder and worry about getting every single detail right before taking any action, or we can choose to give our 100% to the (likely imperfect) plan we’ve got — at work, in life, and just about any playing field you can imagine.
So go ahead, make fun of me if my Bills lose. (I know some of you will!) But till then, I’ll keep rooting for them and have a blast every day doing so.
I can’t wait to see them at the Super Bowl in Phoenix this February!
– Steve
