The Super Bowl Curse

WARNING:  If sports is a subject that easily bores you, feel free to skip today.  Really, I won't mind!

So here we are at the end of another Fantasy Football season- our 22nd, as a matter of fact.  And I have a tail (tale) of two teams here.

The Greenwoods were an original member, founded back in 1997.  In fact, they won that very first Super Bowl over my own KCAs, 31-27.  But times changed, and when Laurie entered our league, I thought it would be easier to cut the league down to 8 teams from 12, and the Greenwoods went into hiatus.

In 2005, the league re-expanded, and I launched a team called the State Ducks.  At the time, I had a shirt that said State Dock Marina, KC changed it to "State Duck", and months later history was born.

In 2011, after several seasons of not being able to get Shenan to join in the draft, we split her teams up (we were four of us running three teams each; now we were three of us running 4 each).  One of the replacement teams was bringing the Greenwoods franchise out of mothballs.

The Greenwoods have been pretty successful- they have run up a 64-32 record since returning, and won 5 of the last six Purple Division championships.

The Ducks haven't quite been that golden, by contrast.  They've finished last twice, while winning 4 division titles in the Gold Division- but only one Super Bowl appearance, a loss in '08.

The Greenwoods, on the other hand, have follwed those five of six division titles with five of six Super Bowl appearances.  Note, I said "appearances."

They lost to Laurie's Elks twice- 40-28 in '13 and 47-33 in '14.
Then, after skipping a year, they lost to the B2s 27-14 in '16 and to the Clock BBQs (KC's main team) 46-17 last year.

This year, they went to the final game yet again, but it was a near thing- Scrappy's team, the Fiery Beagles brought a 52-18 score back to 54-46 in the division final.  In the meantime, the Ducks had to play through the wild card level to get to the Super Bowl, posting 40-25 and 40-6 wins in the playoffs.  So we come to this year's game.

This was a hideous year for injuries across the board.  I counted at the end of the regular season (week 12) 17 players on our rosters that were lost for the season at one time or another.  As we came into the game, the Greenwoods had four players out- RB James Conner, WR Marvin Jones, starting K Graham Gano, and backup QB Andy Dalton.  The Ducks, by contrast, were down but one man- RB Corey Clement.

They got through the early games with the Greenwoods having come back from a 13-point deficit to trail the Ducks 19-13.  They got a big game from backup-cum-starting K Robbie Gould, who put up 14 in an OT win for his 49ers over Seattle.  But a TD from Chris Carson in that same game , plus 4 points from New England's defense put the Ducks up going into Sunday Night, 29-27.


The Ducks had all their players done.  The Greenwoods, needing a measely 3 points, had New Orleans QB Drew Brees and Carolina RB Christian McCaffrey yet to go on Monday night.  Should have been an easy come-from-behind win- and the end of the "Greenwoods curse".

Final score, New Orleans 12, Carolina 9.  The Panthers' only TD was from a little used WR, and Drew Brees improved his record to 4-0 in games he threw no TD passes in.


Final Score:  State Ducks 29, Greenwoods 27.  Greenwoods now go to 1-5 in the Super Bowl, and the curse rolls on.