Sports Karma's gonna getcha
Overexposure leads to loss?

Something I find myself frequently thinking about, musing about, tossing around in my head enough to drive me mad, is Sports Karma. Call me Gary Busey but I honestly believe there is such a thing. Take last night's Red Sox game for example.

Gary Busey - a man with some interesting theories of his own who would be really into talking for nine hours with you about Sports Karma

One of the rules of Sports Karma is that over exposure of an individual prior to a sporting event leads to that individual, who has probably been on a pretty nice tear up to that point, under preforms in said event.

I first spotted this 'trend' at a young age sitting at the breakfast table reading my Dad's newspapers. Flicking through the sports section I would glance over an article on some soccer player who was playing well at the time and who had a big game that afternoon. Invariably, that player would be completely invisible for the duration of the game, or worse yet, stink up the joint. Later on in life, as age crept in and I started to see things more clearly, I realised this was down to Sports Karma.

Wakefield - The Sports Karma Gods, angered by the proliferation of articles on him on the day, decided Tuesday night wasn't going to be Timmy's night

Well sure enough, there was simply way too many articles about Tim Wakefield doing the rounds yesterday before his big start against El Tigrés. The poor fella didn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of beating the Tigers with the weight of Sports Karma on his back. Pretty much every single baseball related web entity had an article on how Timmy is pitching like he did in his amazing 1995 season. ESPN, the Boston Globe, the Herald (which, lately, print pretty much the same thing every day anyway) and even Fox Sports had pieces on how the knuckleball is fluttering pretty well these days. Timmy had less of a chance than Imus at the Women's NCAA final four.

Athletes who draw attention to themselves, or have attention forced on them, prior to a sporting event, generally fail to live up to expectations in said sporting event. That, kind reader, is going to go down as Sports Karma rule number one.


The rules of Sports Karma;

1. Athletes who draw attention to themselves, or have attention forced on them, prior to a sporting event, generally fail to live up to expectations in said sporting event.