College football’s most vexing curses, from haunted Heismans to graveside gridirons

It was nighttime in New Orleans, on Jan. 13, 2019, shortly after the commence of the fourth quarter of the Higher education Soccer Playoff National Championship. Within the Superdome the video game was a rout, the LSU Tigers surprising the defending national winner Clemson Tigers 42-25 in a activity that didn’t truly feel approximately that shut.

Outside the house the stadium, in a concrete courtyard with a view of the exterior video board that showed the recreation on the major monitor as if it were a travel-in horror motion picture, an more mature girl gyrated and pointed at the picture higher than her, a candle at her ft. Her neck and chest were draped in an unlimited looping of necklaces, rows of purple and gold beads and a further layer of … hold out … was that … indeed, it was … a variety of animal enamel. She cackled and clapped her fingers, a single of which held a violet and yellow peacock feather as if it were a conjurer’s wand and exclaimed, “It labored! It labored! It worked! The orange tigers lose!”

Justification me, ma’am, what worked?

She pointed at the candle, fondled her jewelry, and shrugged make any difference-of-factly, her twitchy gesticulations by no means ceasing. “The curse! The curse!”

2 Similar

This Sunday, as All Hallows’ Eve comes, it shall do so amid the misty midst of a incredibly occupied faculty football weekend. The darkness creepily rolling around America’s campus gridirons like Crimson “The Galloping Ghost” Grange as the stroke of midnight is listened to across the time zones from The Plains and Stillwater to the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast. Halloween shall be lurking in the pre-Sunday shadows, waiting for fans as they file out of stadiums and into the night time. In some cases, like at Clemson, they will even stroll via stadium-adjacent cemeteries as they depart. (That presents a complete new which means to “Death Valley,” would not it?) No question several of individuals followers will action out of people coliseums emotion cursed by themselves, as this season of upsets proceeds to befuddle and befall practically every single rated group, producing many a residence area truly feel far more like a haunted property.

So, it must surprise no 1 that the record of higher education soccer is packed with curses. Immediately after all, the activity is 152 decades previous, born in 1869, just as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary experienced added the term “witch hunt” to its pages and the similar year that magician Howard Thurston, aka the King of Levitation and a man who posed with cartoon devils on his marketing posters, was born in Columbus, Ohio, incredibly in the vicinity of the present place of Ohio State’s “Horseshoe.”

“Oh, I never feel there is any way that there’s not some type of curse or black magic, or whichever you want to connect with it, unfold all more than college football. Just based on the length of time we’ve been playing and all the sort of odd characters in this recreation and all of our superstitions that all us weirdos have mainly because we believe it may possibly win some soccer game titles,” Mike Leach, Mississippi Point out head coach and a published historian, explained previously this drop. “I mean, just merely based on exactly where we built these schools and in which we built these stadiums, regardless of whether it really is a place in a area with a background of tapping into otherworldly stuff, or just some guys 200 years in the past indicating, ‘Oh, this is sacred floor to a men and women who have been below for a thousand a long time? Regardless of what, let us put a college below.'”

LSU supporters may well have experienced some extra aid on their aspect for the Tigers’ “curse-busting” national title victory about Clemson in January 2019. AP Picture/Sue Ogrocki

Choose, for occasion, The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. The military college that has lengthy played in the FCS Southern Conference has received only 4 league titles since becoming a member of the SoCon ranks in 1936. The initially two arrived in 1961 and 1992. Over the upcoming fifty percent-dozen many years immediately after that 2nd title, a quantity of bodies were being found all over the location of Johnson Hagood Stadium, initially beneath a area where by boosters collected prior to Bulldogs home online games, then below the parking good deal. Archaeologists and historians finally uncovered the stays of practically 350 people all through the stadium grounds.

In a storyline ideal out of “Poltergeist,” it appears to be that when the city leaders approved the developing of the stadium in the 1940s, they realized that plot of marshy land was also the web-site of a Accomplice period maritime cemetery and mentioned that the bodies would require to be moved ahead of the stadium was created. In its place, some shady contractor decided to take out only the headstones. See? “Poltergeist.” As Craig T. Nelson, upcoming “Mentor” of the Minnesota State Screaming Eagles, screamed at one more sketchy builder, “You son of a b—-, you moved the cemetery but you left the bodies, didn’t you?!”

Soon following their discovery, some of the continues to be have been moved to a nearby cemetery amid a lot outdated-timey pomp and circumstance (which is how they roll in Charleston) whilst most were being moved into storage. But in 2008, several had been returned to the stadium website and marked with a memorial plaque. Oddly sufficient, from the time the to start with stays had been eradicated in ’99 right until the mass return in ’08, The Citadel averaged a file of 4-8 and concluded previously mentioned .500 only at the time, the same season that talks commenced about how to move the stays back to Johnson Hagood.

Eli Manning can take on his have version of his brother’s signature present to examine what makes school soccer a way of lifestyle across the country. Join Eli as he travels to some of the most nicely-recognized and historic college soccer establishments and meets with giants in the activity to better comprehend what helps make higher education football these a nationwide feeling. Stream on ESPN+

“When you are dropping, you commence looking for nearly anything you can possibly locate or do to make it prevent,” mentioned Archie Manning. The former Ole Miss hero resides in New Orleans, the place he quarterbacked the legendarily poor Saints of the 1970s and has prolonged lived about the corner from wildly common mystical novelist Anne Rice, she of “Job interview with a Vampire” fame. So Manning sees a good deal of witches and warlocks strolling up and down his street, and not just on Halloween. “Even if regardless of what you do to close a curse doesn’t get the job done to make it stop, you can still usually level to the curse as the serious challenge, you know, so perhaps men and women will assume it can be anything other than you.”

Prior to its initial sport as a member of the SEC in 1992, South Carolina supporters experienced a magic gentleman with a huge cauldron execute a “chicken curse” therapeutic ceremony in entrance of Williams-Brice Stadium, hoping to conclusion a ten years of Gamecocks heartbreak that had bundled all the things from a steroids scandal to the unexpected loss of life of head coach Joe Morrison.

In 2007, maybe the wildest year university football has ever witnessed (prior to this a person?), the so-named Curse of No. 2 was unleashed. No much less than 7 instances over the final nine weeks of the year, the second-rated staff in the AP poll missing. 7 occasions in a 13-week year! In addition, the very first- and 2nd-ranked groups both of those misplaced on the exact weekend 3 occasions.

“We ended up suitable in the center of that,” previous Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti recalled in 2019. “We conquer Arizona Point out at our spot. It was a large video game. They were rated sixth and we were fourth. School GameDay was there. We gained and I bear in mind contemplating, ‘Oh person, let us be ranked 3rd this 7 days, just in circumstance.’ But we ended up ranked 2nd … and we dropped at unranked Arizona the subsequent weekend. I was mad, but at minimum I knew we were not on your own.”

Tennessee was so cursed by the now-demolished Georgia Dome that the Vols not only lost 3 straight SEC championship activity appearances there (2001, ’04, ’07), but all through that similar stretch they also lost three straight Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowls there (’02, ’04, ’09), and to rub some added Chick-Fil-A sauce into their wounds, they also suffered a slew of disappointing early-round SEC basketball match eliminations on the flooring of the dome.

“I recall we were being going there in ’07 and someone on the personnel who had been there for these other two SEC championships and Peach Bowls,” recalls Duke head coach David Cutcliffe, who was Tennessee’s offensive coordinator in ’07. “We were performing the walkthroughs and he reported, ‘You believe they would permit us perform this wherever else? Are there superior college stadiums or parking loads available?'”

And then there’s the Drake Curse that has been accused of getting down NFL and NBA teams every time the audio superstar dares to attend their games although donning their jersey. That unstoppable supernatural athletics pressure even managed to seize “Controlla” of school football’s most unstoppable pressure. Following the Canadian donned an Alabama jersey and gave the No. 1 staff in the land a pep speak, the Tide promptly were being trounced by Clemson in the 2019 nationwide title activity, 44-16, the worst beating at any time taken by a Nick Saban Bama squad.

Get your thoughts ideal!
Commitment from – @Drake repping Bama!#OutworkYesterday#RollTide pic.twitter.com/Pv0nK6JEjt

— Alabama Soccer (@AlabamaFTBL) January 3, 2019

“Yeah, I don’t know if the Drake Curse is true,” stated previous Alabama wide receiver and 2020 Heisman Trophy winner DeVonta Smith, who was a sophomore in that Clemson game. “But if he would not want to use our gear prior to a major recreation once again, that would be neat. Just in situation.”

Ah certainly, the Heisman, the bronze manifestation of college or university football’s most notorious affliction, the curse that bears the title of the quite trophy to which it is connected.

“I really don’t think in the Heisman Curse,” reported Tim Tebow, winner of the 2007 Heisman as a sophomore at Florida. “But then once more, we did gain two nationwide championships and they came the decades just before and right after I received the Heisman. But I do not consider in the Heisman Curse. I you should not. For authentic.”

There are those people who emphasis their Heisman Curse conversation on the load of winning faculty football’s most coveted unique award as it pertains to failed NFL occupations, but that is not where its true powers of soccer foredooming can be identified. That impression is a great deal more quick. The previous two honorees, Alabama’s Smith and LSU’s Joe Burrow, led their groups to national titles. But it took the four Faculty Football Playoff wins they essential to receive those rings to finally give the inhabitants of the Heisman Residence a winning history in their bowl appearances.

Considering the fact that Jay Berwanger won the initial Heisman Trophy in 1935, 65 of the 86 winners have played in postseason bowl video games. Their report is 34-31. Through the 1980s, Heisman winners went 2-7 in bowls and ended up denied a 10th bowl physical appearance when Andre Ware’s 1989 Houston workforce was positioned on NCAA probation. In the BCS/CFP era, Heisman winners are 4-8 in national championship game titles, and prior to 2009, they have been 1-6. Postseason lifetime was particularly rough from 2003 to ’08, when Heisman winners went 1-5 in bowls and per the formal NCAA tally that lone get — Matt Leinart and USC more than Oklahoma in ’04 — was vacated for rule violations.

“Am I the originator of that phrase ‘Heisman Curse’? I truly feel like perhaps I am,” Ohio Point out legend Archie Griffin claimed with a snicker. He is even now the only two-time winner of the rigid-armed trophy. But at the conclusion of both equally of his Heisman seasons — 1974 and ’75 — his teams have been stiff-armed in the Rose Bowl, suffering losses to USC and UCLA that equally denied the Buckeyes at least a share of each and every year’s countrywide championship. It was the meeting of two vintage school soccer curses, the Heisman Curse and the Woody Hayes Rose Bowl jinx. In eight appearances at the Granddaddy of Them All, Hayes was 4-4 and right after the Jan. 1, 1976 video game, he under no circumstances received an additional Large 10 title or made it back again to the Rose Bowl.

Archie Griffin’s Heismans didn’t help the Buckeyes split via in the Rose Bowl or acquire a nationwide title. AP Photograph

“That one was the heartbreaker,” Griffin admits of the ’76 sport. “We had overwhelmed UCLA really very easily before in the calendar year, but when we went back out there for the Rose Bowl we had a whole lot of interruptions. That is the 1 video game I usually want back.”

If he could have it again, probably he may make some kind of curse-busting ritual? Immediately after all, there is hope out there. Kentucky is at last continually good at soccer all over again for the initial time given that it ran Bear Bryant out of town in 1953. On Sept. 25, soon after NC Condition defeat Clemson for the initially time in a decade, Wolfpack head coach Dave Doeren announced, “The curse is broken.” And even The Citadel managed to at last acquire an additional Southern Meeting title with back-to-back again championships in 2015 and ’16.

We reached out to a number of mystics who offer these types of expert services, Reikis and psychics and even a coven of witches, all assuring us of their talents, in one sort or an additional, to “Distinct your Black Magic, curse, spell, unfavorable entity & hex (in 3 periods or fewer),” from Sonic Nova to Psychic Hanna to Ray Scott at SorcererForHire.com. But the most eye-catching pigskin-ish offer you was built by a team known as the 7Witches Coven. They can cast a “Barrier Blaster Spell” that speaks straight to any college soccer curse that could possibly ail you. From the web page: “A little something is in the way. Some drive is blocking you from attaining one particular of your ambitions. It may possibly be person-built, or it may well be circumstance. It may even be Magickal. What ever the induce, the Barrier Blaster Spell can help you crack by to the other facet. You know that if you can lastly get past this obstacle, you can prosper.”

Right?! That is like a Knute Rockne locker place chalk talk for the mystical arts. And any cursed mentor or participant can faucet into the 7Witches electrical power for only $37.77.

“I have not been requested to assistance an athlete or a group quit a curse, but I have found some teams and players who have been cursed, equally in the previous and recent soccer gamers and groups, so it does materialize,” observes Ray Scott, the Pacific Northwest-based Sorcerer for Employ the service of, detailing that curses stem from three origins: people, utilizing the occult as a weapon, demons (“the worst type”) and what he thinks applies to most athletics curses: “self-designed fears of staying cursed.”

“All curses search for to demolish anyone or one thing. Nothing at all constructive will come from a curse. Myself, I give a no cost reading through, so I can figure out what is going on. I just call ’em like I see ’em. No pun intended.”

So, what say you, Archie Griffin? Probably go back to New Year’s Day ’76 soon after recruiting some enable from a person with ties to a different dimension? Say, an fascinating female wearing a tooth necklace outside the Superdome?

“No, I consider I might just make guaranteed we bought into the conclude zone additional than at the time. But … properly … Ok, if I am getting genuine, I consider some individuals from back again in the working day, we’d be open to any other ideas as well.”