Well, it finally happened, I’ve gone and gotten semi-famous. A feature piece on D. K. Mano himself in Newsday, another in the NYT, even some ABC network-news exposure. Was it, you ask, my provocative and brilliant fiction? Or all that gnomic, resonant social criticism? Or my agitprop about using colons just about everywhere? Wrong: wrong: and wrong. I’m semi-famous because, as of this moment, I’ve gone to 145 consecutive Columbia football games—and because Columbia has requited my love by losing the last 27 oh-so-consecutively (seven short of a national record, in fact). America loves the big winner. But, if you screw up with sufficient panache and bullheadedness, they’ll cut a cast album of your misery, too.
Last game I didn’t attend, legend has it, was Columbia-Brown 1970— when my younger son, Christopher, had the impertinence to be born around half time. Since that birthday Columbia has gone 25-115-5: the sort of record usually seen from a glass-bottomed boat. “There must be some special pleasure in losing,” my NYT interviewer said. No, thank you, there is not. All this publicity might recommend Columbia to some young quarterback in Arkansas with charitable instincts—but, other than that, any loss is about as pleasureful as an engrossed hematoma. I dream about breaking Dartmouth’s crock at Hanover (we haven’t won there since 1946) or Princeton at Princeton (1945). But, through 1970-71, when my obsession began, we were 9-9 and favored for the title in 1972. Hell, I thought I was following a winner.
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