As soon as I saw the first shot of Clinton Portis jogging down the passageway leading from the locker room to the field during the opening moments of ESPN’s broadcast of the 2008 Election Eve Monday Night Football showdown between the 5-2 Pittsburgh Steelers and the 6-2 Washington Redskins, I knew something wasn’t quite right. How did I know this?

Clinton’s burgundy jersey.

Knowing that the Skins not only almost always wear white jerseys at home, but also during their recent playoff runs have usually complimented those white jerseys with matching white pants, a combo I’m not too in love with but tolerate due to the winning that usually goes along with the ensemble, the fact that Mr. Portis was seemingly out of uniform gave me a moment of pause. Then the camera pulled out to a wider shot and revealed something I’ve never witnessed once during a lifetime of being a Redskins fan: the monochrome look: burgundy-on-burgundy.

As much as I liked the all-burgundy look, I was concerned about why freshman Head Coach Jim Zorn and the boys would want to tempt fate on a national stage for one of their biggest games of the season. A couple seasons back, the Skins found their winning ways with the all-white getup, so I had to question if now was the time to try anything different. Such is the nature of superstitions in sports. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and that goes for uniforms, daily habits, shaving, and whatever else the Monkey Mind wishes to associate with success.

In the case of my beloved ‘Skins, there is no doubt in my mind that the players associate white-on-white with winning. Burgundy-on-burgundy, while cool, is an unknown, and perhaps the preseason would have been a better time to fiddle with things like uniforms, especially in the case of the Redskins, who have been none too successful wearing any uniforms other than their plain old regular boring outfits that they’ve been sporting since the early ’80’s. The last time they wore throwback unis, they suffered a horrible defeat at the hands of the soon to be Superbowl Champion New York Giants at Fedex. The only other time in recent memory that I recall the ‘Skins wearing alternate or throwback digs was during the Steve Spurrier era, and we all know how that went. Now that Skins lose again in alternate threads who knows how long it will be before management decides to change their outdated look?

Will the “Redskins Rule” Continue to Hold in ‘08?

My diatribe on unis out of the way, there is another huge sports superstition still surrounding this game that has nothing to do with textiles, and that is the fabled “Redskins Rule.”

Discovered by Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau in 2000 (and slightly amended in 2004) the Redskins Rule has accurrately predicted the outcome of 17 straight Presidential elections, dating back to 1940 (before which the Redskins were not called the Redskins, nor based in DC) which is either an eerie unexplainable connection between sports and politics or an oddly random occurrence that is at least mildly interesting.

The Redskins Rule states:

If the Redskins win their final home game preceding the US Presidential Election, then the Party of the winner of the previous election’s popular vote will win the current year’s Presidential election.”

To put that into context of the Monday night contest, since the GOP won the popular vote in 2004, if the Redskins were to beat the Steelers, the Republicans would win the election in 2008. What a way to conflict a fan if the fan has an interest in politics.

Prior to 2004, the Redskins Rule read simply that if the Redskins win, the incumbent Party wins the election and if they lose, the challenging Party wins. Case in point, while I was in Cincinnatti for a Bush campaign event I was covering for my documentary Swing State Ohio in 2004, I found myself in a sports bar rooting against my Redskins who faced the Green Bay Packers at home just days before the election, in order to ensure a Kerry victory. My team lost but that dissatisfaction was enlivened by the prospect of Kerry winning the election a few days later. When Kerry lost, many thought that for once in over 60 years the rule had proven false. But Hirdt had another look at the data and realized that the connection between the fate of the Skins and the election was not quite as direct, hence his refinement of the rule to take into account the popular vote from the previous election, as stated above.

So I will accept this loss at the hands of a quality opponent like the Steelers because Redskins Rule will undoubtedly prove true yet again in 2008.

And maybe, just maybe, whoever made the decision to scrap the sure-win white-on-white for monochrome burgundy is an Obama supporter and was doing all he could to ensure a Democratic win, outside of attempting to convince players of possibly many political stripes to throw the game for the good of the country.