Sports Oddity

There's a very odd phenomenon in sports, one that just played out in the NFL playoffs. The big story was, of course, Peyton Manning and the Colts getting the monkey off their back by winning the Super Bowl. Yeah for them. Go Colts. But what's weird is how they did it and how similar it was to other teams who had monkeys on their posterior sides.

The Colts had to go through their nemesis, the Patriots, who had beaten them like a drum for a few years, at least a couple of times in the playoffs. Moreover, they had to beat the NFL's big man, the NFL ursa major, Tom Brady, who had just won a game for the Patriots against the Chargers that the Patriots never, never should have won. Now that's not very unusual. To be the best, you frequently have to beat the best. When Steve Young finally got the 49ers to the Super Bowl, they had to go through the Cowboys team that had beaten them the previous two years. Back in the early '90s, the Pistons first had to get through the Celtics after years of trying to get to the NBA Finals, then lost to the Lakers, then had to beat the Lakers. Michael Jordan's Bulls then had to get past the Pistons to win a ring. So going through the best team to win a ring obviously isn't that unusual.

What's unusual is how teams with monkeys on the backs go through the most spine-wrenching contortions to do it. Specifically, the monkey-laden teams dig themselves big holes, deep dark holes and then climb out of them in unreal, karma-changing ways. The Colts, of course, got themselves down 18 points to the Patriots in the first half of the AFC championship game and then came back to win in the biggest comeback in the history of that game.

This kind of thing goes back a very long way. For example, the Dodgers lost to the Yankees in the World Series in 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953 before finally beating the Yankees in 1955. How did they do it? They lost the first two games in 1955 and then came back to become the first team to come back from a 2-0 deficit. The Cowboys had beaten the 49ers twice in the NFC championship game in the 1970's, in very painful fashion (I believe that, in one of those games, the Cowboys scored two touchdowns in the last couple of minutes to win by about four). How did the 49ers finally get to the Super Bowl? They had to beat the Cowboys with Joe Montana hooking up with Dwight Clark with 57 seconds left. (And, as I recall, all of the calls went for the Cowboys in that game, too.) After the Dodgers lost the 1974 World Series, and the 1977 and 1978 World Serieses (serieses? seria?), they had to come from 2-0 down again to win in 1981.

And, of course, there's the mother of all comebacks, the Red Sox coming back to beat the Yankees in 2004. OK, no team had ever come back from 3-0 down in a 7-game baseball series. It hadn't happened in the NBA and only once or twice in the NHL. Not only that, but the Red Sox were a run down in the bottom of the 9th with the best postseason closer ever, Mariano Rivera, pitching. That is a bad, bad, bad situation. And how did they dig themselves out? Dave Roberts stole second base. The Red Sox stole a base?!? They never steal bases. And the rest is history.

It's just very weird how teams with the monkey on their backs seem to have to go through gut-wrenching, soul-bearing crises against their worst enemies to win. And woe is to the team that doesn't pull it off. The Kings missed their free throws in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals against the Lakers and their bodies fell apart in 2003, 2004 and 2005 until finally their players lost the mojo (and parts of their knees). Damn, that sucked.