Basic financial advice always includes the word “diversification,” meaning “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Don’t have all your retirement stocks in your company’s ESOP, don’t have all your mutual funds in the natural resources sector; spread the funds around. When one goes south the others will hopefully be going north, etcetera.

I thought I’d done that with my investments in teams in the National Football League. I became a Washington Redskins fan while living in the DC suburbs in the 1960s, and I became a San Francisco 49er fan because Joe Montana was the best quarterback I’d ever seen.

For the past ten years or so, neither the Redskins (now 5-7 after today’s game) nor the 49ers (4-8 after today’s game) has had any playoff potential at all, much less any chance of getting to the Super Bowl.

So much for emotional diversification.