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- Aug 24, 2011
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I’m sitting at an airport restaurant at McCarron Las Vegas, so this won’t be a full 241, but there’s absolutely no way I’m waiting until tomorrow to talk at least briefly about this game. I watched the whole game from the sports book at Mandalay Bay, There were, by the second half, a few hundred folks watching ever;y game that was on real TV (they don’t show internet games) and the best I could tell I was the only person focused on the modest screen showing gameday at the Rent. Did that stop me from standing, screaming and arm pumping at critical moments in the game? That was rhetorical. I can’t imagine how much more fun and dramatic it would have been in Section 241, but it was nonetheless a great 3.5 hours (even if the length of the game made me bail on my lunch plans and settle for this CPK at the airport). Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
So 6-5, 5-1 at home, bowl eligible, on a 5-1 run and with a good chance to, as I understand the rules, guaranty a bowl berth by beating Army and getting to 7-5. You could have offered me whatever odds you wanted to coming into the season that we’d be 6-5, and I would not have taken them. Thank you to David Benedict for being smarter than me and making an outstanding hire. Thank you Jim Mora for bringing in a staff that made players technically better, and thank you, most of all, for making the players believe they could win games when rational people would have doubted. And mostly thank you to the players, who believed in themselves and their ability to win after having been so incredibly clobbered in three straight games that giving up on the season after the last four years would have been natural.
Sometimes, in sports and in life, winning is less about being good and more about not looking a gift horse in the mouth and taking advantage of your opportunities when they arise. Our record aside, we really have a long way to go before we’re the level of football team that we were in the late aughts and that we want to be. But as I say all the time, better is interesting but isn’t what is important. Wins are important. They were the better football team today, but we got three gifts that, with our effort and ability, allowed us to walk away winners. First, very much like our game in Fresno last year, LIberty clearly had the wrong cleats for the field condition. I remember at least four or five times their ballcarrier went down untouched trying to make a cut. Second, when they were destroying us in the third quarter and were about to put a game in a stranglehold like Utah State did in their run, they gifted us 15 yards and a first down, after they had stopped us on third down, and then gave us another 15 yards on a personal foul later in the drive. Those 30 yards, and that second chance, led to Rosa’s second TD run. Third, and most importantly, up 5, at their own 44 or so, 6 minutes left in the game and fourth and short, you punt. You make us go the length of the field, knowing we need 7 to change the outcome and knowing that our offense is not a big play offense. You don’t go on 4th and 1 and let us win the game with a short field. And yet, inexplicably, a veteran and good coach didn’t play the odds and gave us a short field. And then our O made the season, and the D got its stop.
Much more to say, and I’ll add to the thread another time, but what a great day. Am I a weenie that a conference in Vegas can be made not with gambling or clubs or other trouble but watching a football game on TV? Yes. I don’t care. This was a great day nonetheless. And we’re going bowling, whether it takes a win in West Point on Saturday or whether Benedict gets it done in the office. GO HUSKIES!!!
So 6-5, 5-1 at home, bowl eligible, on a 5-1 run and with a good chance to, as I understand the rules, guaranty a bowl berth by beating Army and getting to 7-5. You could have offered me whatever odds you wanted to coming into the season that we’d be 6-5, and I would not have taken them. Thank you to David Benedict for being smarter than me and making an outstanding hire. Thank you Jim Mora for bringing in a staff that made players technically better, and thank you, most of all, for making the players believe they could win games when rational people would have doubted. And mostly thank you to the players, who believed in themselves and their ability to win after having been so incredibly clobbered in three straight games that giving up on the season after the last four years would have been natural.
Sometimes, in sports and in life, winning is less about being good and more about not looking a gift horse in the mouth and taking advantage of your opportunities when they arise. Our record aside, we really have a long way to go before we’re the level of football team that we were in the late aughts and that we want to be. But as I say all the time, better is interesting but isn’t what is important. Wins are important. They were the better football team today, but we got three gifts that, with our effort and ability, allowed us to walk away winners. First, very much like our game in Fresno last year, LIberty clearly had the wrong cleats for the field condition. I remember at least four or five times their ballcarrier went down untouched trying to make a cut. Second, when they were destroying us in the third quarter and were about to put a game in a stranglehold like Utah State did in their run, they gifted us 15 yards and a first down, after they had stopped us on third down, and then gave us another 15 yards on a personal foul later in the drive. Those 30 yards, and that second chance, led to Rosa’s second TD run. Third, and most importantly, up 5, at their own 44 or so, 6 minutes left in the game and fourth and short, you punt. You make us go the length of the field, knowing we need 7 to change the outcome and knowing that our offense is not a big play offense. You don’t go on 4th and 1 and let us win the game with a short field. And yet, inexplicably, a veteran and good coach didn’t play the odds and gave us a short field. And then our O made the season, and the D got its stop.
Much more to say, and I’ll add to the thread another time, but what a great day. Am I a weenie that a conference in Vegas can be made not with gambling or clubs or other trouble but watching a football game on TV? Yes. I don’t care. This was a great day nonetheless. And we’re going bowling, whether it takes a win in West Point on Saturday or whether Benedict gets it done in the office. GO HUSKIES!!!
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