My beloved Chicago Cubs are in the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets, and I’m telling myself curses aren’t real. Sports curses are the childish superstition applied to absolve teams of bad management, lack of execution or simply a team repeatedly running into superior competition.

Now may be an inopportune time to suggest to Iowa Hawkeye fans that curses aren’t real, though; not when Jordan Canzeri became the most recent victim of the Angry Iowa Running Back-Hating God.

Jordan Canzeri rolled into Saturday’s Top 25 matchup with Northwestern powering the undefeated Hawkeyes at nearly 117 rushing yards per game. He has nine rushing touchdowns and one receiving, and has pretty much been the Big Ten’s best running back not named Ezekiel Elliott.

He’s just a week removed from a personal-best outing in Iowa’s defeat of Illinois.

Iowa RB Jordan Canzeri rushes for 256 yards on a school-record 43 carries in this week's @BMW #UltimatePerformance. http://t.co/mDO4vOGZzz

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 11, 2015

A win in Evanston puts Iowa in the driver’s seat for the Big Ten West title and the Hawkeyes’ first berth in the conference championship game. So, of course, Canzeri sustained an ankle injury in the first half that required the talented senior to be carted off the field.

Ugh.

Injuries are inevitabilities of football, and the 2015 season has been especially rough. Iowa’s hardly exclusive in losing a key component of its team. Just two nights ago, UCLA’s bevy of injuries on defense was badly exposed in a blowout loss at Stanford.

Still, how much misfortune can one program endure at one position — and for how long? Adam Kramer examined the history of AIRBHG a few years ago. The name comes from BlackHeartsGoldPants.com, but the Angry God’s actual existence traces back to 2002 when Aaron Greving quit the team.

Greving’s absence opened the door for a breakout season from Fred Russell, but Greving was the first in a long line of running backs lost for various reasons.

I never want to see any player miss significant time due to injury, so from that perspective alone, I hope for Jordan Canzeri to make a quick return. Additionally, I just really hate the idea of curses and the prospect they might be real.