No superstition in college sports is a bad superstition. If it is working or has had a history of working, keep doing it. If one day during warmups two players accidentally hold while reaching for the same water bottle, you know that those two are holding hands every game if the teams walks out of that one with a W. So that’s why I’m fully behind the Wright State baseball team adopting a deer corpse as a mascot ever since they started winning after their bus struck and killed a deer on the way to a game.
Via Sporting News:
“The Wright State baseball team turned its season around shortly after the team bus struck a deer. On its way to play Northern Kentucky on April 24, the bus hit and killed a deer. After sweeping their next two series, they figured the deer was good luck, and they’ve been taking a stuffed deer head with them ever since.
“They named him Gary Croswell,” Wright State coach Greg Lovelady recently told the Dayton Daily News. “The bus driver’s name was Gary, and Croswell was the name of the bus company. It’s taken on a life of its own. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”
The Raiders had lost four times in April before the accident but have lost just four times since while winning the Horizon League title and setting a school record with 45 victories.
“It was really a weird turning point,” Lovelady said. “It’s hard to say that’s the reason, but ever since then we’ve been playing really well. The energy’s been different.
“It’s kind of part of our team right now. Something to have fun with and enjoy in the dugout and break up some of the monotony. Kids will get behind anything if they’re having fun.””
You know what, coach, I don’t like you outlook here. This isn’t weird. This is dedication. You should be happy your boys found something to rally behind, because you obviously weren’t cutting it. How does that taste, coach? You got replaced by a deer carcass. In all honesty, I’m not sure if these guys went as far as I would have gone. If I were on this team, I wouldn’t have stopped at getting a stuffed deer to carry around. Fuck that. We’d be going deer hunting every time we climbed onto that bus on our way to the game. We’d leave the day before if we had to. We would never show up to another game without our bus covered in dead deer like a Jackson Pollack painting. And the championships (which I’m assuming these guys are going to make)? We’d hit two deer. Maybe three. We’d set out for that game two weeks early just to be sure that our bus looked like the floor of a deer slaughter house. Because that’s how winning’s done. (Also: Love that they named the deer after the bus driver. Probably the best thing that’s ever happened to the dude. Probably went home that night and told his wife how all the college kids love him and how they named their mascot after him. Winners with hearts of gold. That’s what we all want from our athletes.)