Her heart had barely stopped pounding after her beloved Indianapolis Colts advanced to the Super Bowl 10 days ago when Stacie Rodrigues logged on to her computer and added a tagline to her MSN Messenger screenname: "Colts-Bears Super Bowl: A wedding hangs in the balance."It was a joke, but Stacie's bridesmaids weren't laughing. "My friends saw that and they were like, 'Bull! After all the glueing we did with the invitations, there's going to be a wedding!' " recalls Rodrigues, a 24-year-old social worker from Delhi, Ont.
Put yourself in the shoes of Stacie's husband-to-be, my friend Jeff Dertinger, sports editor of the Simcoe Reformer. He bleeds Chicago Bears blue and orange. "It figures," he says. "After 20 years, my team finally gets into the Super Bowl, and it's against her team -- and the Colts are heavily favoured."
Talk about double-edged dreams. Jeff's built a pretty nice life -- 26 years old, getting paid to cover sports in the area where he grew up and enjoying life with a mate who more than tolerates that on Sundays from August till January, he loves one woman and 53 heavily padded men. He'll enjoy what many fans of numerous NFL teams (cough, Minnesota Vikings) have given up trying to imagine when the Colts and Bears finally tee it up for Super Bowl 41 on Sunday night.
Only his fiancée, Stacie, who decided to become a fan a few years ago when she "realized I was being ignored" on football Sundays, is devoted to the Colts and their quarterback Peyton Manning. To some sports fans, cheering for Peyton Manning is like cheering for Microsoft.
Why, Stacie, why? "When I decided to get into football, I didn't know anybody except Peyton. Sports Illustrated was always writing about him, and they were always talking about him and (wide receiver) Marvin Harrison on TV, so I started learning about him... it was really just repetition for me so I felt like I knew what I was talking about.
"And the Colts had better colours, nice girly colours -- a pretty blue."
Don't take Stacie lightly, though. Her commitment to the Colts' cause -- and simultaneously to Jeff's Bears -- more than makes up for the late start.
'KEEP THE LUCK GOING'
"This is going to sound insane, but Stacie's really big into superstitions," Jeff says. "We haven't taken our Christmas tree -- which is blue and white -- down because we don't want to change anything that's worked for us. We still have our Colts and Bears Christmas stockings up because we have to keep the luck going. I kid Stacie by telling her it doesn't matter now because since both teams are in the Super Bowl, now they cancel each other out."
How much are the duelling Dertingers actually in this together? In the third quarter of the NFC championship on Jan. 21, the Bears were reeling slightly after the New Orleans Saints cut a 16-point lead down to two. Watching at home while Jeff worked away at the Reformer sports desk and tried not to look up at the TV too much, Stacie slipped on his orange Brian Urlacher replica jersey (he'd worn the blue one to work).
The rest -- along with the Saints' chances -- was soon history. Chicago pulled away to win 39-14.
A few hours later, with the Colts down 21-3 early against the hated New England Patriots in the AFC final and everything going wrong for Indy, Stacie broke out the orange jersey again in hopes of changing Indy's fortunes.
"I went under the covers on the couch. My friend Kelly had the we're-number-one foam finger, I made her keep it on, I said 'we can't move.' I didn't even get up to pee until the end of the game."
Meantime, she says, friends who three months ago might not have known Reggie Wayne from Wayne Newton were calling to ask: " 'It's not going so well for the Colts... what can we do to change it?' " Coincidence or not, Manning led Indianapolis to a 38-34 comeback win in one of the great games in NFL playoff history.
Friends and the whole fam damily is "intertwined in our little rivalry," as the bride-to-be puts it. It's a a couple of deep kickoffs away from What side are you on? For instance, Jeff says his sister Chrissy, who is Stacie's maid of honour, is "giving Stacie a hard time. She says I deserve to see my team win because I've been a fan longer."
"A lot of my friends have become football watchers," Stacie says. "The last few Sundays we've been doing our wedding invitations, I've had people over and we've all been watching. During the Bears' first playoff game (vs. the Seattle Seahawks on Jan. 14), it was so close and everyone over at our house all stopped to watch. We kept saying, 'Jeff's going to be so ticked if they lose.' "
When Robbie Gould's field goal in overtime won the game for Chicago, Jeff, in the middle of his Sunday shift at the paper, did what he calls a "big running Tiger Woods fist pump across the office."
Whoever wins on Sunday probably won't affect the memories Stacie and Jeff will have. Come Sunday, they'll gather with friends, watch the game, talk a little trash and that should be enough.
"It's good karma," Stacie says. "Our favourite teams are both in the Super Bowl the year we're going to get married."
In the spirit of this whole boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy loves football, girl falls in love with football saga, it seemed rude to ask for a prediction. Stacie figures that finally beating archnemesis New England will have the Colts in good position to get back to the big game in future years. Jeff is hoping the top-ranked Bears defence rules the day, knowing all the while the boys in Vegas figure the smart money should be on Indianapolis.
Speaking of Vegas, does the couple have a bet on the game?
"Oh no," Stacie says. "I have my pride on that line, and that's enough."
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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