The Power of Negative Thinking: Curbing Your Enthusiasm for the Georgia Bulldogs in 2010

but you touched upon one of my areas of interest.

The Salisbury steak was named after Dr. James Henry Salisbury, a 19th century American doctor and dietary faddist. Unlike the Reverend Sylvester Graham, who promoted vegetarianism and whole wheat consumption, Salisbury believed that vegetables and starches were bad and that bland beef was the way to health and long life.

The term “Salisbury Steak”, however, did not become popular until after his death.

During the Great War anything German became very unpopular in the United States. Towns changed their names or the pronunciation. Some say that Prohibition finally got passed because Germans were the main brewers in this country.

The hamburger, just twenty years old at the time, was also suspect, and many restaurateurs, afraid of losing business, started calling them “Freedom Fries Salisbury Steaks”. They didn’t invent the term, but they popularized it.

Conan was talking about situations in which you have some input (“if you work really hard…amazing things will happen”). We aren’t players and we aren’t coaches. There isn’t any work we can do that will affect the outcome of football games (although it could be argued that loud complaining may get a defensive coordinator coach fired, which argues against optimism).

I have a few decades of experience with this. If you expect the best, then you are crushed when it doesn’t happen and merely satisfied when it does. If, on the other hand, you expect the worst, then you are cynically vindicated when things go bad but elated when they go well.

The lows are not as low and the highs are much higher if you expect the worst. If you are sufficiently pessimistic, your expectations will be exceeded several times a season unless Bill Curry is your coach your team loses every game.