That simple declarative sentence contains a novel’s worth of angst for fans of the Riders (and possibly for fans the Stampeders, too, but I can’t speak about that, not being one of those LOSERS!…oops, sorry, did I type that out loud?).

Roughrider fans, often said to be the greatest in the country, are passionate about their team. They want them to win. They really, really want them to win. (Please, God, let them win!)

And yet, deep down, they fully expect them to lose.

This, science tells us, is precisely why they enjoy watching the Riders play so much.

A new study from Ohio State University has found that when sports fans watch their favorite  team play, they enjoy the experience most when their excitement is mixed with a strong helping of fear and maybe even a soupcon of near-despair.

The researchers studied fans of two college football teams as they watched the teams’ annual rivalry game on TV. They found that it was the fans of the winning team who felt at some point during the game their team was sure to lose who, in the end, felt the game was the most thrilling and suspenseful.

Or, as Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, co-author of the study and associate professor of communication at Ohio State University, puts it, “You don’t want to be in a great mood during the whole game if you really want to enjoy it…We found that negative emotions play a key role in how much we enjoy sports.”

For the study, which appears in the December issue of the Journal of Communication, the researchers studied 113 college students who were watching the 2006 football game between the Ohio State University Buckeyes and the University of Michigan Wolverines. Ohio State was ranked number one and Michigan number two that year, so added to the classic rivalry was the fact that the winner would go to the national championship game.

At halftime, Ohio State was up 28-14, but with 14 minutes to go in the final quarter, Michigan closed the gap to 35-31. With five minutes to go, Ohio scored, making it 42-31; but with two minutes to go Michigan closed the gap again to 42-37, and then made a two-point conversion to make it 42-39. A field goal would have tied the game, but Michigan needed to recover an onside kick…and failed.

From the researchers’ point of view, it was a perfect game. Not only did their team win, the game was close enough to cause serious doubt in their fans that Ohio State could hold on.

The students participating in the study (from Ohio State, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State) completed questionnaires ahead of time indicating which team they were cheering for and how committed they were to it.

They then watched the game on television, wherever they wanted, and logged onto a website during each of the commercial breaks (24 in all) to answer questions about how likely they felt it was their favored team would win, how suspenseful they found the game, and how positively or negatively they were feeling.

The results: negative emotions made for a more enjoyable game.

“You need the negative emotions of thinking your team might lose to get you in an excited, nervous state,” Knobloch-Westerwick says. “If your team wins, all that negative tension is suddenly converted to positive energy, which will put you in a euphoric state.”

Naturally, participants who were fans of one of the teams found the game more suspenseful than those with no strong allegiance, but the intensity of fan commitment didn’t matter: “super fans” did not find the game any more suspenseful than less committed fans.

So, Rider fans, and Stampeder fans, too, if you really want to enjoy the big game on Sunday, you first need to convince yourself that your team stands a good chance of losing.

Fortunately, as a long-time Rider fan, I think I can safely say this will not be a difficult challenge.

UPDATE: In response to this column, I received the following email:

Dear Edward,

While snowed in at Rogers Pass in early Fall of 1988, I watched my first CFL game on TV as the Roughies took it in the shorts.  I remarked to my wife that the team in green needed some fans.  Journeying on to Vancouver, I went into a sports store and informed the salesman that I wished to purchase one of the green and white caps with the S on it.  “Oh, my gosh,” he replied.  “Why not get a cap of a winning team?”  “Give me the green one,” says I.   Well, guess which team won the Grey Cup the following year.

Of course, I place no special significance on my joining the legions of loyal ‘Rider fans.  But, the initial result was something to behold, eh?

Although we live seven months of the year in Reno, my wife and I own a condo in Canmore, and attend games in Calgary when the Roughies are in town.  Oh, do I ever get a kick out of the Rider Nation fans.  All their quaint, colorful costumes.  And the noise they make.  You would think we’re watching the game at Taylor Field.

Kent Austin did it again in 2007.  I went ballistic.  What a great victory for Saskatchewan and the fans.  Again this year, the road to the Grey Cup goes through Regina.  Go ‘Riders!

And, thanks for the great science columns.

Max Andrew

Reno

First came the CFL Western semi-final game at Mosaic Stadium, where noise, reflected and focused by the stands, played at least some role in the Riders’ victory—and utterly failed to carry from the halftime stage in the end zone to our seats near mid-field. (It doesn’t seem to matter where they place the stage, either: the sound was just as bad at halftime at the last Grey Cup Regina hosted.)

The acoustics of B.C. Place were in the news the following weekend, and crowd noise at Rogers Place in Toronto got mentioned more than once in connection with Sunday’s Grey Cup. (Which, in case you haven’t heard, the Riders won. No, really!)

Meanwhile, I’m currently in rehearsal with Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon for an upcoming production of Beauty and the Beast, to be performed in a brand-new theatre that we haven’t even seen the inside of yet. We won’t be wearing microphones, so the theatre’s acoustics are going to be of great concern to all of us.

Acoustics comes from the Greek “akouein,” meaning “to hear.” It can just mean the science of sound, but usually refers to the application of that science to the construction of spaces that enhance the hearing of speech or music.

Acoustics are notoriously difficult to get right, because sound bounces off everything in the space: floor, ceiling, walls, chairs, audience members, light fixtures, fire extinguishers…everything.

Although American physicist Joseph Henry produced the first thorough scientific treatment of acoustics in 1856, lots of halls with poor acoustics have been constructed since: the acoustics of any large space are so complex that even with modern technology and knowledge, there are no guarantees of getting it right.

The three main elements that determine a space’s acoustics are size, shape and building materials.

In a large room, sound takes more time to travel to the walls and ceiling and back again, so the sound reverberates longer: in a large cathedral, for four to five seconds. That’s great for organ music, not so great for singers or speakers, whose words get lost in the echoes.

For opera, a reverberation time of around one second is preferred. Symphony orchestras prefer a reverberation time of 1.5 to two seconds.

Most concert halls are shoebox-shaped, with the stage at one end. The close-in side walls reflect sound quickly back into the audience, amplifying it while maintaining clarity. In horseshoe-shaped halls, short balconies on the sides serve the same function.

Finally, building materials matter: carpet and other porous materials absorb sound; hard materials reflect it.

The importance of building materials to acoustics was emphasized earlier this year when researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology finally figured out why the ancient Greek theatre at Epidaurus, carved out of the side of a hill in the fourth century B.C., has such amazing acoustics: it seats 14,000, yet every audience member can hear a whisper from anywhere on stage. (I’ve been there; it’s almost spooky.)

The researchers discovered that it’s not the angle of the slope or the curve of the seats that does the trick: it’s the limestone the seats are made of. The slightly porous limestone acts like a filter, suppressing the low frequencies of voices (thus minimizing crowd noise) while reflecting high frequencies.

Even though the limestone also filters out the low frequencies from the actors’ voices, listeners don’t realize it because their brains reconstruct the missing frequencies, a phenomenon called virtual pitch. (We experience the same thing when talking to someone on a telephone.)

Did the Greeks know something we didn’t figure out until 2007? Apparently not: they tried to recreate the design elsewhere with limited success, because they used other materials (such as wood) for the benches.

In other words, they got lucky. Modern acoustical engineers try not to rely on luck…but they’ll take it if they can get it.

Oh, and for the record, I don’t believe anyone has tried filling the 14,000 seats at Epidaurus with Saskatchewan Roughrider fans.

Somehow I suspect there’d still be plenty of crowd noise, limestone or no limestone.

Unfortunately, this was as close to winning as the Riders were all night.

More (and better) photos here.

One interesting demonstration will be the forward pass.  A football moving through the air has inertia–the universal tendency of objects in motion to remain in motion (and objects at rest to remain at rest).  If not for gravity and air resistance, it would simply sail away in a straight line and never come down.

Gravity, however, pulls the ball down from the moment it leaves the quarterback’s hand.  The quarterback’s goal is to balance the momentum he gives the ball with the rate at which gravity will pull it down, so that the ball descends at just the right moment to a point on the field occupied by a receiver. A long bomb is thrown both up into the air and very hard to maximize the distance it travels.  A short bullet pass is thrown almost horizontally, because gravity has little time to work on it.

Aerodynamics comes into play during the pass, as well.  A ball will travel further and straighter if it’s spinning around its long axis.  If it’s not spinning, the air rushing up under its tip as it descends causes it to tumble, and it falls from the sky quickly.  Spinning stabilizes a football through “angular momentum.”  A spinning object resists having its axis tilted.  That’s why it’s easier to balance on a fast-moving bicycle than a slow-moving one–the spinning wheels don’t want to be tipped.

Another demonstration of physics to watch for is the punt.  Punters try to balance hang-time with distance.  The higher the ball is kicked, the greater the hang time.  Kicking the ball at a 45-degree angle gives you the greatest distance, but not much hang time; kicking the ball straight up in the air gives you the best hang time, but no distance at all.  Most kickers choose something in between.

Many of the demonstrations Sunday will involve collisions between players.  These collisions illustrate mass, momentum and friction. 

When two football players collide, both players push each other, but the one with more mass is affected less. Fortunately for runners, who usually mass less than those trying to stop them, objects with greater mass are much harder to accelerate, and also resist changes in direction.  That makes it possible for the lower-mass runners to dodge around their tacklers–sometimes.

To demonstrate Newton’s Third Law, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” players push the ground with a foot to change direction.  The ground pushes back, forcing the player in the opposite direction.

 Tacklers in Sunday’s scientific extravaganza will demonstrate one of three different aspects of physics each time they face a runner.  The tackler’s goal is to rob the runner of his momentum.  The first way to do that is to hit the runner directly.  If he’s moving fast enough and weighs enough, he’ll win the ensuing transfer of momentum, absorbing the runner’s momentum and passing on enough momentum of his own to knock the runner down.

The second way to get rid of the runner’s momentum is to transfer it to the ground by knocking the runner’s feet out from under him.

The third method is to knock the runner out of bounds.  This is often the easiest choice because, while a runner with a great deal of momentum is hard to stop, he’s easy to steer.  A push redirects his momentum toward the sidelines.  The runner has to push at the ground to correct his trajectory.  If he’s close to the sidelines, he probably doesn’t have time–and ends up transferring his momentum to a photographer, cheerleader or TV camera.

To protect themselves from the effects of the sudden deceleration brought on by such transfers of momentum, Sunday’s scientific experts will wear helmets and pads.  Both prolong deceleration to minimize the forces involved, and spread the forces that remain over a lot of skin, minimizing tissue damage.  Prolonging deceleration is particularly important to the skull, because the brain moves somewhat independently of it.  If the skull stops too suddenly, the brain can slosh forward, causing concussion (or worse).  Slowing deceleration minimizes that sloshing.

Which is not to say that a lot of brains won’t be getting sloshed Sunday in Vancouver, as other highly trained specialists conduct their own demonstration of the effects of ethanol on the human nervous system, but that’s a topic for another column.