Wishful inking
— -- This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's September 29 Fansourced Issue. Subscribe today!
HALFWAY THROUGH LAST season's Super Bowl, when Percy Harvin housed an 87-yard kickoff return to put the Seahawks up 29-0, Christopher "Goofy" Kingman realized he had made a mistake. The night before the game, Kingman had gotten a giant tattoo of the Broncos' logo on his back with the words "XLVIII Champs" underneath. "I have a history of bad decisions," says the 29-year-old Tucson native, who also has a tattoo of the Chinese character for "stupid" on his leg. (He thought it said "goofy," like his nickname.) His best friend, a fellow fan who helped him come up with the tattoo, "hates looking at me now," Kingman says with a sigh.
Bold sports predictions have become so pervasive that even the nuttiest forecasts fail to incite controversy. Someone -- an analyst, a gambler, a fantasy football manager -- is always making a pick. But only the truly devout are willing to put their prophecies in permanent ink. When veteran guard Jason Terry tattooed the Larry O'Brien Trophy on his biceps in 2010, correctly predicting a title for the long-shot Mavs, he was hailed as basketball's answer to Nostradamus. When he did the same two years later with the Celtics, who were ousted early in the playoffs, he was mocked.
Despite the risk of humiliation, predictive championship tattoos have flourished in recent months. The trend took root around the Super Bowl, when a Seahawks fan with his own "XLVIII Champs" tattoo became an overnight celebrity. In June, a Michigan man printed a massive Lombardi trophy on his leg, along with the Lions' logo and "2015 Champs." Since then, sports fans across the country have gotten tattoos declaring that the Bills, Sixers and Cowboys will take home titles next year.
Responses generally skew negative. "Someone said they wanted to cut my leg off," says David Morian, owner of the Lions tattoo. Internet scolds called him a jinx, idiot and fame seeker, but Morian, 23, a factory worker who has never been to a Lions game, says he simply wanted to support his team. "Hopefully, it'll give them that extra push," he says.
I waited for my team to win before getting my own championship tattoo -- but that didn't stop me from nearly chickening out. In January 2013, shortly after Falcons kicker Matt Bryant punched in a last-second field goal to knock the Seahawks out of the playoffs, my older brother and I made a pact: If Seattle ever won the Super Bowl, we would get matching ink to commemorate the event. "It would bond us forever," I wrote in an email, my brain still addled by the traumatic memory of Tony Gonzalez muscling his way down the field.
Because my brother and I live in different cities, we didn't fulfill our covenant until this summer, when our family vacationed in Virginia Beach. A month before, my father -- a 58-year-old defense contractor who hasn't worn jeans since the Nixon administration -- announced, much to everyone's surprise, that he wanted in. So the three of us drove into downtown Norfolk one morning, searching for Ocean Mystique's Norfolk Ink Gallery, a tattoo parlor I had found online. An aloof woman with a Bettie Page-style haircut greeted us. "What are you looking to get done today?" she asked.
"Tattoos," my dad said. "We want tattoos."
My brother and I had agreed on a simple design: XLVIII, for the Super Bowl, on the inside of our right biceps. We were escorted into separate rooms. I asked my artist, Matthew, to print out a smaller template of the roman numerals for my tattoo. When he obliged, I asked him to go even smaller. Hands shaking, I stood up, walked outside and paced for a few minutes. Was I making a huge mistake? I managed to calm myself, then returned and let him work.
Days later, I was still thinking about that moment -- how I had panicked, as though suddenly aware that I was forever besmirching my body with a signifier for professional football. But that wasn't it. I was uneasy, I realized, because the tattoo seemed provisional -- a signifier of fidelity, but not faith. Compared to those willing to go out on a limb to profess their beliefs, I felt woefully inadequate. What if Jason Terry had it right all along?
When I mentioned these concerns to my brother, he was bemused. "So do you want to get XLIX?" he asked.
I mulled it over for the briefest of moments. Then I laughed.
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