In a recent survey of NFL players conducted by Sports Illustrated, followers of the Green Bay Packers were voted the most knowledgeable fans. The egos of the Packer faithful were satisfied by such flattery. When it comes to football, all signs of ignorance are frowned upon. Anti-intellectualism is tolerated, perhaps encouraged, in matters of politics and the arts, but no sports fan in Wisconsin is going to call you an egghead for knowing Aaron Rodgers’ career touchdown-to-interception ratio in the red-zone. To Packer fans, if you’re not sure how many linebackers are featured in a 3-4 defense, you don’t need to be patiently informed; you need to watch the game in the other room. No one congratulates you for owning the ability to explain the difference in penalty yardage between roughing the kicker and running into the kicker; that’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to know.
However, this display of mental acuity sometimes veers into areas of superstition and even psychosis. To cite the worst example: cases of domestic violence and spousal abuse spike dramatically in Wisconsin in the wake of Packer losses. The same dope who insists a screen-pass should be dialed-up to counteract the blitz schemes of the Patriots really believes his wife deserves a beating because the Packers tackled poorly, gave up too many yards, and lost the football game. Inside the fanatical, lowlife brain, a clear relationship is detected between bashing the face of the only woman who ever wanted to sleep with him and exacting punishment on the Packers for their failure. The brain works with viscious diligence and then blitzes like a head-hunting linebacker when it arrives at such senseless conclusions.
I have never hit a woman, but as a Packers fan, I am not above similar defects in logic. When it comes to following sports, brainpower certainly has its downfalls. For instance, I can tell you the winners of the last 20 Super Bowls, but for almost three hours of my life, I actually believed the Packers were going to lose because of a mishap that happened in my underpants 60 miles southwest of Lambeau Field.
Donald Driver fumbled in the first quarter of the Packers’ week 17 game against the Bears. The same was true of my anus. And I honestly thought both accidents could hurt the Packers’ playoff chances.
***
About 40 hours after I had contaminated myself with so much beer and champagne, my headache was beginning to ebb but my guts were still in a state of turmoil. My stomach felt a weight like mixed concrete churning restlessly. I was still getting over a nasty cold and—with a tinge of guilt—I hazily recalled sipping and passing around bottles of champagne. I wondered how many poor saps woke up sneezing the morning afterward on account of that.
But I was all done dwelling on that unpleasantness once pre-game coverage of the Packers-Bears match-up started. At that point, I focused on the impending battle between two factions of jocks who didn’t at all like each other.
The Packers needed a win to secure the 6th and final seed in the playoffs. A loss would end their season. The Bears had already earned a first-round bye and stood nothing to gain or lose in terms of playoff seeding, but years ago, their head coach, Lovie Smith had vowed in his inaugural press conference that beating the Packers was his ultimate goal.
Accordingly, Smith did not rest any of his starters. The grandeur of division rivalry trumped the rationale of preserving the health of key players as Smith opted for the lineup that gave his team the best chance of winning a game that—for logical intents and purposes—meant nothing to the Bears.
But, of course, sports followers have been known to elude matters of logic. Lovie Smith and I offer proof of that.
On the cusp of the opening kickoff, I was alone in my parents’ well-furnished basement, recovering from my cold and too much drink. In retrospect, it was for the best that I was isolated. As a moderate obsessive-compulsive, I felt the disgusted need to be quarantined once the Packers started their opening drive at their own 25-yard line.
Yes, sweet retrospect. In retrospect, too, I did not jinx the Packers—as I had initially feared—when I splotched a shart into my boxer shorts just as the ball was booted off the tee to mark the start of the game.
If you don’t already know, a shart occurs when you squirt liquid shit into your underpants. The term was coined when some genius realized the first two letters in the word “shit” meshed well with the last three letters in “fart."
Hence: Shart—a bit of slang that Webster might reluctantly define as a "mishap of flatulence."
The instant before a man sharts, if he even suspects the awful notion, one of two thoughts comes to him. 1.) “This can’t conceivably become a shart.” 2.) “If this turns out to be a shart, I can live with that.” The former sharter in question is guilty of hubris and ignorance. The latter can be charged with a disregard for decent hygiene. Either you believe your righteous anus couldn’t possibly fall victim to a butt-muddling of that magnitude or you’re a slob of an adult with no real qualms about shitting himself. In regard to sharts, it doesn’t matter which team of thought you support; you can’t win.
“You can’t win.” That was a fitting sentiment as Aaron Rodgers and the Packer offense hurried onto the field to convene for the first huddle of the game. I, too, was hurrying at this moment in time—to the bathroom, chagrined and convinced that I had inflicted a bad omen on my favorite football team.
I had other matters to tend to when the Packers’ opening drive sputtered and the team was soon forced to punt. With crippled poise I unfurled several squares of toilet paper and swabbed the smelly ink blot, swearing I would never forgive myself if that smarmy dirt-bag Jay Cutler somehow managed to carve up the Packers’ secondary. I flushed the toilet and ran a go-route to my bedroom for a change of both underwear and jeans. In no time I returned to the couch—panting, humbled, and filled with dread. Thankfully, the Bears did not fare much better on their first possession.
The Packers’ offense, which was so potent the previous week at home against the Giants, continued to struggle. If memory serves, the ball was jarred loose from Driver’s possession on the Pack’s second drive, moments after he snared a catch on the Bears’ half of the field. The Bears did not capitalize on this turnover. They failed to convert a key third-down and again punted it away.
To quickly summarize the first half: Both defenses performed with stout tenacity, thereby frustrating fans of football’s true exclamation mark: the touchdown. Bears’ kicker Robbie Gould, the offspring of a Keebler elf and a Romanian figure-skater, made a 30-yard chip-shot in the second quarter. The Packers, sadly, couldn’t even move the ball into range to attempt a field goal.
A stingy defense notwithstanding, for the Packers, life was imitating shart.
Nerve-wracked and miserable, I couldn’t stand watching much of the third quarter. Apparently I missed interceptions thrown by both quarterbacks and a few confounding play calls near the goal-line that led to a Packers field goal rather than a touchdown.
No matter. The score was tied when I mustered up the resolve to watch the fourth quarter. As I hunched forward intently, wringing my hands, I promised myself the game was as new and untainted as the boxer shorts I had on. Sure, Rodgers had thrown a pick and Double-D had fumbled and I had sharted, but what did that prove? Our perseverance would mean nothing if the three of us weren’t prone to occasional follies. How petty our dedication would be if triumph was inevitable. We were men bound not by perfection—for that is a gift the Good Lord refuses to share with his creations—but rather a common cause: the pursuit of a Super Bowl victory, and nobody—especially not that smug underachiever Jay Cutler--was going to stop us.
My batty brain was running a swift 40-yard dash.
Sure enough, though, the Packers prevailed. They managed only one touchdown—a short pass from Rodgers to veteran tight-end Donald Lee--but that score proved to be the last of the game. Cutler led a steady two-minute drill downfield, converted a handful of first-downs, but on the fringe of the red-zone, with less than a minute to play, he was intercepted by Pro-Bowl safety Nick Collins.
And so the Packers were headed for the playoffs. The abysmal condition of winter in Wisconsin would not be fully realized for at least another week. We were grateful.
That shart was evidently not a jinx but a good luck charm, and that worried me. I gulped gloomily and realized that I had set a precedent. If my sharting during the opening kickoff really amounted to a good luck charm for the Packers, would I be willing to do the exact same thing the next week when they played the Eagles in the playoffs? What if I felt no horrid indigestion just as the game started? Think of the consequences! Oh, God—the Packers wouldn’t stand a chance against Michael Vick and the Eagles if I didn’t shart at the precisely right moment in that game, too…
My brain was running another swift time in the 40-yard dash. It was an effort that would rightfully make the runners at the Special Olympics shake their heads and cringe.
***
The Packers defeated the Eagles in the first round of the playoffs, even though I didn't bless their cause by staining my underpants. The week after that, they played the Falcons in Atlanta and went on to beat them, too. I watched the game with my friend Willy, at his parents' house with his family.
The potent offense the Packers had showcased against the Giants resurged as Rodgers and his great quartet of receivers embarrassed the Falcons’ D on their own artificial turf. By the 4th quarter, the Packers had an insurmountable lead. We were elated. Willy marveled at the team’s Super Bowl chances. He told us that the NFC champion would be granted home jerseys for the upcoming big game because the previous NFC champions, the Saints, wore road jerseys in last year’s Super Bowl. The appeal of wearing home jerseys, he said, alternates on an annual basis.
His mom shook her head at this bit of trivia.
“You know too many stats,” she said.
She's right. And here is another gratuitous stat for you, football fans: The Green Bay Packers are undefeated when I shart during the game’s opening kickoff.
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