I have upset the football gods.

[dshill]

I've been playing a multiteam dynasty of some of the teams I think are the most fun to play with. It's late in the season, and I was playing as Texas Tech vs Florida Atlantic. We were up by a bunch midway through the 3rd quarter, and usually I'd run out the clock, but my roommate said, "lets see how many points you can put up." I really didn't care, the game was won, and it was an offline dynasty anyway, so I didn't have to answer to anybody, and I ended up winning 82-10.

Ever since then, I cannot win a game for the life of me. The next was South Carolina vs Troy, and Troy just massacred me, something to the tune of 37-10. I couldn't stop the pass, no matter what coverage I called, they were able to get consistent pressure and I couldn't get the offense going for the life of me. I was upset, because I'd gotten USC to #17 in the polls, and there were only two weeks left, but I thought, huh, must be one of those weird games, and upsets happen all the time, so it's not that big of a deal.

I played as Wisconsin at Michigan. I expected to win the game, although playing at Michigan is always a bit hard. They jumped to an early 10-0 lead, but I was able to respond and, towards the end of the game, was up 21-10. Then the wheels came off: I fumbled in the red zone, Michigan took it 80ish yards for a TD. Next offensive series was a three and out, I punt, Michigan answers with a long streak route against a blown cover 3 for a touchdown. As I go into two-minute mode to try to get the winning score, and a defensive lineman in coverage on a zone blitz makes an almighty leap of the gods, picks it off, and returns it for a TD.

So I think I'm paying some sort of karma for running up the score against FAU. Both games are games I should have won. I don't believe in predetermined upset programming in the game, but now I'm starting to wonder a bit. But then again, both games were lost because I made a bunch of idiotic decisions -- throwing to covered receivers, poor playcalling, etc. You know, the kinds of things that make upsets in real life. But I like blaming karma instead.