Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The First Day of Class

The excitement is growing. The students outside my door are loud today. Despite the rain from Tropical Storm Fay, they are having a blast being back at school.

A large portion of the excitement is from the quickly approaching start of the football season. Appalachian State will get its day in the sun on Saturday as it takes on LSU in Baton Rouge. Of course, everyone expects ASU to valiantly struggle against daunting odds, but to in the end fold its tent and accept the inevitable.

That, of course, is to suffer a staggering and embarrassingly one-sided loss to the Tigers.

The entire world of the Bowl Subdivision wants to slap us down. The Mountaineers were audacious enough last year to go to Ann Arbor and beat Michigan. And the football world hasn’t been the same since.

What do I think? Well, coaches can talk too much about the possibilities of getting embarrassed by a school you should easily beat. Sometimes if you over coach, your team reacts in ways you don’t expect when they get their nose bloodied. After all, isn’t that what happened last year when Michigan found out those boys from that small school in the mountains of North Carolina knew how to play football?

So, what’s going to happen Saturday in Baton Rouge? Appalachian State is going to come out a winner, regardless of what the score is. On national TV football fans will see a talented, well-coached group of young men play a game they love to the best of their abilities and when the final gun sounds, they’ll walk out of the stadium with their heads high.

And, who knows, lightning can struck twice.

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