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

UPDATE: Listen to the actual interview!

****

Souvenirs seem to have some strange mesmeric power over travelers. You visit a place with beautiful scenery, a long and fascinating history, great restaurants and a vibrant night life, and somehow you decide the best way to remember it is to buy a dish towel.

So, Ed, that’s a very odd collection of objects you’ve spread out on the table here. Is that really a cream pitcher in the shape of Winston Churchill’s head?

Yes, it is, and it’s the perfect example of the sort of thing I thought we’d focus on this week. Nancy Goodfellow, my wife’s grandmother, grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, in the heart of the region of Staffordshire that’s famous for its potteries. So it’s perhaps not too surprising that, when she and her husband, Sam, went back there to visit, they returned with souvenirs from those potteries.

Which is what this is, I presume. It is indeed a cream pitcher in the shape of Winston Churchill’s head. He’s wearing a Navy hat and has a stubby cigar clamped in his mouth, and on the bottom of the pitcher it says, “We shall defend every town, every village and every city, Churchill Premier 1940.” Then, over on the side, you see the name Burleigh and, of course, Made in England.

This is what’s called a character jug, and it’s the descendent of something called the Toby jug. Toby jugs first appeared in the early 18th century, and showed a seated man with a mug in his hand, wearing a tricorn hat which made a pouring spout. He may have been named Toby after Sir Tobey Belch in Shakespeare’s 12th night, or he may have been named after Toby Fillpot, the central character in a popular song from 1761 called “Brown Jug.”

In any event, Doulton revived the Toby Jug in the 19th century, and then expanded into a line of character jugs. The first character jugs were introduced in 1934 and featured fictional characters, beginning with John Barleycorn, but in 1936 the first jugs based on real people appeared, and they’re still being made today.

Their popularity led other potteries to make them, too, which is where Burleigh came in. The company began life in 1851 as Hulme and Booth. In 1862 William Leigh and Frederick Rathbone Burgess formed a partnership and changed the name to Burgess & Leigh, which the current name is a contraction of. During the war and after, the company put out a lot of Churchillania, including this. The designs were created by the company’s chief designer, Earnest Bailey. And interestingly enough, a collection of pieces that belonged to him were auctioned off in Hanley, England, Monday and Tuesday of this week.

I don’t know if this piece was made in 1940 or if the date on it only reflects when Churchill made the featured quote. I’d like to think the former, because I ran across a newspaper item that said, in reference to Burleigh ware, “A 1940 jug of Churchill, crouched down with cigar, fetches around pounds 160.” Where’s the Antiques Road Show when you need them?

That’s not the only pottery item you have here. There’s also a Scotty dog and…is that an airplane?

Yes on both accounts, and again, these were undoubtedly purchased as souvenirs during a trip to England. But before I talk about them, I want you to look very closely at the nose of the dog. See anything?

I’ve been looking at this thing for months, because it’s been on my desk upstairs, but only when I started researching it did I discover that the dog, which admittedly looks a bit cross-eyed, is staring at a ladybug on its nose. So it took the Internet to point out what was under my own nose all this time.

This is one of the animal figures made by Beswick, another famous Staffordshire pottery firm, but one that, unlike Burleigh, no longer exists: it was purchased by Royal Doulton in 1969 and the brand name was phased out in 2002. Anyway, Beswick, founded in 1894, became famous in the post-war years for its animal figures, modeled by Arthur Gredington. They were very popular through the 1950s and 1960s, and are quite collectable today.

The airplane is a First World War monoplane, maybe not too dissimilar to the one that Sam flew in–and was shot down in–as a navigator. The propeller broke off of it at some point, but is still ratting around inside. It was made by a company called A&S, which stood for Arkinstall and Sons. A&S was one of several companies in the early 20th century that made this kind of crested china, meaning that it has–as you can see–the crest of a particular town on it, in this case Three Bridges. Since Arcadian China was only made until 1924, this must have been made sometime between 1914 and 1924. I suspect Sam bought it because it was an airplane rather than because of any particular interest in the town of Three Bridges. And if you think a military aircraft is an odd choice to render in porcelain, you should see some of the other World War One pottery memorabilia I ran across in my research, including machine guns, binoculars, airships, German bombs, artillery shells, aerial torpedoes and (my favorite) a lovely ceramic hand grenade.

But you’ve got other stuff besides pottery. What else have you uncovered?

Here’s an interesting one. It’s a tiny totem pole is labeled, “Made in Canada by Ellen Neel and the Totem Carvers – Kwakiutl Indians.”

Ellen May Neel was the granddaughter of famous totem pole carver Charlie James. She was born in Alert Bay, B.C., in 1916, and by the age of 12, with his instruction, was able to carve well enough to sell her totem poles to tourists who came to her home town of Alert Bay. She moved to Vancouver in 1943 with her husband, James Neel, but in 1946 he suffered a stroke and could no longer work full time. Ellen became the primary bread winner for a family of six children, and recruited them into making souvenir totem poles for the tourist trade. She set up shop in Stanley Park in the summer. She was commissioned to create a few large poles (there’s one today at the University of British Columbia) but much of the family output consisted of little poles similar to this one for the tourists.

I posted this on my blog a few months ago and received a comment from Neel’s granddaughter saying this was definitely not an Ellen Neel piece, since the “design work is completely incorrect and clearly that of an amateur”; however, a later anonymous commenter indicated he or she had been told by one of Neel’s daughters that since her children were not skilled artists, she had to “dumb down” her own work in order to simplify them so they could be made and sold more cheaply. “Neel knew the forms were not really right, but it was more important to her that she be able to feed her family,” this commentator said. Neel died in 1966. She was only 49, and she’d struggled for years in poverty before that.

Whether this totem was purchased in Stanley Park or was one of the 5,000 tiny totem poles she once made for Hudson Bay Company, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting piece of Canadian art history, all the same.

Presumably you wouldn’t say the same about these Saskatchewan Roughrider ashtrays.

Two of them, green, with a player wearing number 88 on them. They go nicely with these small marble bookends in the shape of footballs.

Sam and Nancy had Roughrider season tickets beginning, I think, in the 1950s, tickets that were passed on to Margaret Anne’s parents, and which we now keep renewing every year. And those aren’t the only Regina souvenirs to be found here.

I think my favorite is this: it’s a small dog that looks like a wood carving (though I think it’s plastic), sitting on its haunches, with a camera pressed to its nose (the artist apparently unable to figure out how to have the dog hold it to its eyes with that big muzzle in the way). And on the bottom, it says “Souvenir of Regina.” Because what says Regina like a camera-toting dog?

But just as we’ve got all these souvenirs of Staffordshire, I’d like to think that maybe someone in England has one of these…and is even now looking at it and wondering what on Earth he’s just turned up in his mother-in-law’s house.

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

More (and better) photos here.