Kids, I know that most of you that read this blog know exactly who I am and continue to read this blog for that reason and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But would you believe there are those that read it simply for the material? I know, it blows my mind too.
I'm looking at you, Latvia.
So, you sons and daughters of the great nation (republic? city-state? tribe?...eh...not worth it) of Latvia, let me give you some very brief background information. I owe you at least the tip of the iceberg...just the tip.
When I was a strapping young lad I attended the University of Central Florida for several reasons: for starters I wanted to better myself, secondly they seemed very proactive in bettering themselves, and finally they had an on-campus Wendy's. I love Wendy's. I don't even give a crap that their hamburgers are square because they are absolutely delicious and they should totally make a Frosty dipping sauce for their chicken nuggets so I can just board myself up in a room with hundreds of them.
Anyways, and it should stand to mention, that this was just a little over ten years ago. My direction was clear: I hated math, I hated "hands on" material, and computer science was out the window when I realized that Minesweeper was not a cool game.
I'm a writer, through and through, and I've always grown up with the "me talk pretty one day" attitude so I leaned towards what I could speak through and that was always obvious for this 115 lb. white kid: Sports.
I joined the journalism program, started writing for the school paper, and started getting sweet gigs like women's tennis and the track and field team. But I embraced it. I had no choice.
Plus, the football team wasn't exactly tearing it up. It wasn't, what we would say, the hot beat. They sucked. And they sucked. And then they sucked some more. Basically they were terrible.
*Quick side note: For those of you that read this that didn't attend UCF and don't have any clue what Spirit Splash is, well it's basically this great opportunity for students to jump around our huge central fountain but it's also a pep rally for the football team. My first Spirit Splash was with Mike Kruczek (pronounced croo-check) and despite starting horribly that year he promised he would win against (insert team here). He didn't, and he also didn't finish the season employed by UCF. Enter interim coach to finish the season and then enter George O'Leary the next year.
O'Leary to me has always been an enigma. He was in the NFL as an assistant, and then was supposed to coach the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, but he "mistakenly" "wrote" "he" "graduated" with "a" "masters" when he really didn't. So he funneled down to UCF.
"Great. Our new head coach of our shitty football team is a liar. That's fitting." - Me, circa 2004
O'Leary did what he could the first couple of years and then he found the age-old response to playing good football: get a running game and a defense and the rest just falls into your hands. In 2007, my last year at UCF, Kevin Smith tore off and became the second-leading rusher of all-time behind some guy named Barry Sanders. We now had our own on-campus stadium, we almost beat Texas, and we were wrecking havoc in the Conference USA (and the collective just sighed and said "yeah, that's a tough conference!" and my response to that is building blocks!).
That's our thing, though. If you were a big name school, or ranked, we would show up and make it a great game but we would inevitably bow out and lose. And that's how it happened each and every time and every single time it happened I was on the edge of my seat.
For the last seven years, I have had nothing to do with the UCF newspaper but I can't help but think back to my days there and just wonder what the guy reporting on the football team was going through with each heartbreaking loss.
I know what I was going through. Almost...almost...and nothing. How many times can you get gut-punched without throwing up? I've thrown up like six times.
Well kids, I wrote all that, to get to this. UCF marched their proud, underdog asses into Louisville tonight to take on the eighth ranked team in the nation and a quarterback that is a favorite for the Heisman Trophy.
And with five seconds left on the clock, Teddy Bridgewater's Hail Mary hit the dirt and I hung my head. I didn't hang my head in shame or even in disbelief--I hung my head because I felt I might cry. They did it. They actually did it. They finally won the game that they couldn't for as long as I can remember. UCF was always the bridesmaid and never the bride--and it happened for so long that I grew a callus on my heart. Yet, I must admit, if that damn ball found it's way into the hands of a Cardinal I might have driven to Kentucky just to burn the whole damn state down. Take that, flatheads.
This is going to sound incredibly corny but I need to increase my female audience. I went to UCF to better myself with a dream in my head and I sit here today, totally different, but with that same dream. Dammit, I want to inspire, and if I can't inspire, I want to make you cry, and if I can't make you cry, then...I guess I'll settle for making you laugh.
UCF's win tonight wasn't just a win for one football team. It was a win for all the alumni, it was a win for all their fans, it was a win for people like me, and it was also a win for the lucky bastard that gets to write about this in the Central Florida Future.
I'm jealous and proud at the same time and I couldn't be happier.
