ANAHEIM, Calif.

I'm not even sure I do -- especially when it comes to sports.

If you're a BYU fan, you're hoping the Cougars have built up enough karma with two stellar seasons and a ton of painful first-round exits to earn their first NCAA Tournament win since 1993 today against Texas A&M.

You're hoping you've done enough as a BYU fan to produce positive karma that will make its way from Provo or Spanish Fork or Salt Lake all the way to Anaheim.

First, a definition: Karma is performing positive actions that result in a good condition in one's experiences, whereas a negative action results in a bad effect.

Karma is the guy who speeds ahead of you on the freeway, and later you pass him getting a ticket.

You can get docked karma points for a disagreeable post on our BYU sports internet site, or you can earn karma points for making a good argument.

Karma is what BYU fans expect will happen on the field or court because of the clean living of Cougar athletes.

Karma caught up to Barry Bonds after years of mistreating people around him and using steroids.

If you're an athlete and you're a guest on Jim Rome's radio show, he passes out "Jungle Karma" to help you in your next contest.

Heck, they've even based a TV show on karma, called "My Name is Earl." Earl decides he wants to turn his life around and makes a list of all the bad things he's ever done. Once he helps the person he wronged, he crosses them off his list.

But karma is not about retribution, vengeance, punishment or reward; karma simply deals with what is. The biggest problem with karma is that the effects may not be seen immediately.

Point is, you just never know when karma is going to pay off -- or collect.

Karma can be cruel, or she can be kind.

How else to explain that former Utah Jazz stars Karl Malone and John Stockton never won a NBA championship, but headcase Dennis Rodman has five rings? How else to explain how a franchise like the Boston Red Sox could go 86 years without winning a World Series (The Curse of the Bambino) but has won two in the past four years?

Babe Ruth? Who's she?

In the words of Ham Porter in the movie Sandlot, "You're killing me, Smalls."

So back to BYU, the NCAA Tournament and karma. The same fans who believe in karma also believe the place they sit in their living room when watching a Cougar game on TV will effect the outcome. They wear a "lucky" shirt during a BYU winning streak and throw it away if the Cougars should lose. They believe they shouldn't talk about BYU playing UCLA in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, because that might jinx the first round game against Texas A&M.

Exhausting being a fan sometimes, isn't it?

BYU's last three trips to the NCAA Tournament have produced losses against UConn, Syracuse and Xavier. But each one of those losses was a winnable game for the Cougars. This year's BYU team is good enough to win a first-round game.

A win in the NCAA Tournament would do wonders for the national recognition of Dave Rose's program.

The time for BYU to collect on its karma points is now.

Only, as we all know, it doesn't work that way. Karma pays off on its own time.

But if you could sit in that lucky chair, or wear that lucky shirt, or even do a good deed sometime today -- you know, help a Ute fan with his flat tire, something like that -- it surely couldn't hurt.

• Daily Herald Sports Editor Darnell Dickson can be reached at 344-2555 or by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it