Living in Indianapolis Colts territory has been painful in at least one respect: My Chicago Bears are usually pre-empted by arcane NFL broadcast restrictions. Whenever the Colts play at home, I won’t see the Bears that afternoon. I have to rely on the Sunday and Monday night games, the Colts bye week, and Colts road games … which all translates to about 2 of every 5 games, in an up years for Chicago. I don’t have the $$ for the NFL ticket kinds of cable packages, which means I check out the game updates on the internet and live vicariously through others in the prime market.
Monday night, though, was a chance to shine. The undefeated Bears going into Arizona to face a tough Cardinals team (albeit 1-4) in the shiny new state-of-the-art stadium. It got off to an awful start, with local phenom Rex Grossman missing on a wide-open bomb with the first pass and misfiring regularly the rest of the game. Not only did the Bears allow their first first-half TD(s) of the season, but the offense looked awful. Rex finished the game with 6 turnovers and never got untracked. Worse, for my bye-depleted fantasy team, my starting runningback (Cedric Benson) was involved in only a couple plays and never had a chance at the 2 TDs I needed from him to upset our fake league’s own undefeated squad.
I’m a believer in sports karma. I had on my Walter Payton 34 jersey at the start of the game, to inspire Benson, and had to switch it with the Bears down by their biggest margin in the third quarter. I also hit mute on the inane commentary — what the hell was Charles Barkley doing yapping about a football game for 15 minutes of game time?? — and let the Bears play speak for itself. And, I ate lots of candy. The combination of these things sparked the Chicago defense to two scores and the special teams to the winning one. Go Bears.