Call it the voodoo of victory.
It is strange. It is powerful. It is downright mystical, and it seduces great swaths of University of Maryland basketball fans around this time of year.
As they fanned across College Park before last night's opening- round game in search of their totems, these high priests and priestesses of superstition were sure that they could conjure a victory for their Terrapins in the NCAA tournament by wearing a lucky shirt or sitting rigidly on a magic bar stool or sliding on their class rings precisely one minute before tip-off. Their compulsive attachment to incantations and charms was rewarded yesterday with an 85-70 victory over Siena at MCI Center.
None of the amateur mystics suffers more for good fortune then Dale Dickerhoof.
A cloud follows Dickerhoof around. He brings gloom and misery and anguish to any unfortunate team he watches in person.
His friends have exiled him to the parking lot, with the sad wretches who can't get in -- even though he has season tickets. They've been known to run out to the parking lot when the team is doing poorly and interrogate Dickerhoof to make sure he has not set foot in the arena.
He sits in his car, listening to the game on the radio. He even sat alone in his rented ride after flying to Charlotte for this year's Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
"It's hard," said Dickerhoof, 52, a University of Maryland alumnus and major in the U.S. Park Police. "They do very well when I'm not there."
Bernie Brew is another such cursed soul. He runs the Maryland Book Exchange across the street from his alma mater, serving faithfully for 35 years. But he is a bad seed, and he knows it.
One year, he missed the first four games of the basketball season, and the team won every time. The choice was clear. He had to step back. He gave away all the rest of his season tickets, and the team ended up undefeated at home for the year.
He makes up for his absences by laying claim to a piece of R.J. Bentley's, a popular pub near campus. He ropes off a section by the bar before each game and calls it the FOB Lounge, short for the Friends of Bernie. He sits in the same magic seat game after game until his beloved Terps lose one, then he castigates himself with self-banishment to another stool in the lounge until the team rights itself and he is allowed to return.
Susan Wilkes also pays a steep price to obtain a happy outcome for the Terps.
Before each game, she heads off to the mall to buy a new shirt, because she thinks it's bad luck to wear the same shirt to two games. She has attended hundreds over the years, first as the school's head cheerleader in the 1980s and now as a jet-setting fan who flies from her home in Minnesota to the East Coast for games a dozen or so times a year.
Swaddled in her new shirt, she must enter the arena exactly one hour before game time or the basketball gods will frown. She bought airline tickets to attend last night's game weeks in advance, even before the tournament seedings were announced. But when she realized it wouldn't get her there at the appointed hour, she threw out the tickets and bought another set.
"I start to throw out all positive energy," said Wilkes, 40. "I'm a real true believer in positive energy. . . . It's like momentum. The team becomes unstoppable."
It is in search of good vibes that Terps fans turn to the mysterious Testudo, an 80-year-old bronze turtle that guards the entrance to McKeldin Library at the center of campus. Legend has it that rubbing his nose, a grand appendage that juts boldly into the air, will bring good luck.
Generations of seekers have polished Testudo's nose to a golden sheen. It was once just a place to stop before a tough exam. But it has been co-opted by rabid sports fans. They left offerings of oranges when the Terps played in the Orange Bowl. They place cupcakes there when the opponent is a pushover and candles when night falls on a difficult contest.
Yesterday, joggers veered off their paths to seek Testudo; scholars shifted piles of books from one hand to the other to get a better grip on the golden nose; and newcomers to the tradition approached the talisman with tentative hope.
Jay Klein, a 19-year-old accounting major, was drawn to the statue, even though he boasted that luck was not sorely needed for the No. 1-seeded Terps' contest against the 16th-seeded Siena.
"I hate to jinx us," he said smiling and fidgeting.
He paused a moment, shifted his feet. Then he reached out and caressed the nose anyway, just in case.
Copyright The Washington Post Company March 16, 2002
