Fans at Auburn’s bowl game had a fine time. Except, maybe, for the very last guy.
football
31
Dec 11
Chick-fil-A Bowl, Auburn vs Virginia
Ahh, the Chick-fil-A Bowl, where 7-5 Auburn wore their home blue jerseys to meet an 8-4 Virginia team that wore some bad orange jersey-helmet combo. Where there was a shaker and a plush cow toy at every seat. Also, thousands of them were parachuting from the catwalk. It may have been the largest airborne insertion since Market Garden:
Oh, yes, the football game. Auburn won 43-24.
Auburn’s defense had trouble getting to Virginia’s quarterback and the Tigers started slow. Fortunately, when the QB was on target his receivers weren’t helping. And he missed a few receivers. Still, Virginia would finish with 312 yards passing.
Auburn’s starting quarterback Clint Moseley went out early with a bad ankle.
Kiehl Frazier, 10, scored two touchdowns and had 58 yards rushing. He had the team at the goal line to score again at the end of the game, but the Tigers killed the clock. After the game he said he doesn’t really like rushing. Read: he’d rather be a quarterback than a 3.4 yards per carry novelty act.
Perry Jones had 32 yards for the Cavs, who finished the game 123 yards on the ground.
With Auburn’s Mike Dyer suspended indefinitely from the team, the rushing duties fell to Onterio McCalebb, who finished with 180 yards and a score on 13 total touches and the MVP award and the young Tre Mason, pictured here, who had nine carries, 64 yards and this 22-yard touchdown out of the backfield.
Gabe Wright eats quarterbacks. The freshman’s sack, Auburn’s only one of the night, set up a blocked punt safety that helped turned the game in Auburn’s favor.
Auburn’s Barrett Trotter, who started the first half of the season but was pulled for Clint Moseley midway through the Florida game with injuries mounting and a stalling offense, came on in relief tonight. He finished with 175 yards and a touchdown passing, including a beautiful 50-yard bomb. He looked calm and collected, gaining 52 yards on the ground.
More important than his stats and steady leadership, he received a great compliment from his coach after the game. Gene Chizik told reporters that if his own son grew up to be like Barrett Trotter he would have done his job as a father.
And so the season ends, with players playing in their first bowl game — in the first half! — outnumbering the team’s entire complement of seniors. There were only five seniors who have been on the team since they signed out of high school. There are only about 15 seniors all told, including transfers and walk-ons given scholarships, wearing the orange and blue. The numbers were low because of the usual reasons: injuries, attrition, leaving school, coaching changes and so on.
The seniors have seen Auburn football at its lowest and its highest, coaching change turmoil and a national championship. In their last three years they’ve scratched out 30 wins, three bowl victories, an SEC championship, an Outland award winner, a Heisman and a national championship.
13
Dec 11
Sick, making this a photo day 2
I feel better. I feel approximately 45 percent better. That’s not to say I am operating at 45 percent. I’m running at about 17 percent right now. That’s how bad yesterday was.
So Thursday night I felt it coming along. The cold steel bolt in the bottom of my throat, the watery eyes, something was coming up. So I started taking pills.
Kept it up through Friday, but felt OK through most of Saturday. Popped a fever Saturday night just before we got back to the hotel after the game. That fever broke overnight, though. Sunday I felt really good.
And then yesterday when I could feel the ancient indians pulling the soul from my body. Sinuses. Throat. Coughing. Congestion. Periodic minor fevers. I had all of that and more, really it was everything but the flu.
Today the sinuses are much closer to normal. I’m willing to swallow at least once an hour now, so that’s some improvement. I am still fighting off mild fevers, but doing so with ease. The coughing is killing me. I haven’t moved around very much.
And so there’s another picture to take our minds off of it.
This was on display at the USAA tent at the Army-Navy game. This football is from the 1945 China Bowl, played in Shanghai, some 13 hours before the Army-Navy game was played back home. But you have to change your thinking about the Army-Navy game from now to then. In 1945 Army was on their way to a national championship. Navy was a one-loss team and would finish second in the nation. This was at the height of their powers when it came to football respect.
Anyway, this was also 1945. The war was just over. This game was played by a bunch of Army soldiers against sailors of the line. The Navy won. This football was signed by all the members of that team and sent back home. Today it is on display for pictures like this.
But look at that date: Dec. 1, 1945. Who, four years earlier, could have pictured themselves in China?
11
Dec 11
Catching up
The Army Navy edition. We’ve spent the day traveling back home, and so here is as good a place as any to post a few pictures from our big day at the game.
First, here’s a panorama of the field during the march on by the cadets of West Point. Click to embiggen:
Teaching them young with the lightweight .50-caliber machine gun:
Marine One comes in for a landing with the president and vice president:
The traditional “exchanging of prisoners” in the pre-game. The cadets and midshipmen had spent the semester with their opposite academy as exchange students.
Navy’s Kriss Proctor, a prototypical option quarterback, scores the first of his two touchdowns of the day to give Navy their first lead. Proctor’s mother didn’t want him to go to the Naval Academy at first. Her father had spent 18 months as a German POW during World War II. He talked her into it, sat for a few years behind one of the best quarterbacks in modern Navy history and here is now:
Army quarterback TRENT STEELMAN (the Internet requires his name to be spelled this way options to Raymond Maples.
Maples is the first member of his family to go to college. His bio says he’s the first person from his high school to attend West Point.
Steelman’s dad lettered in football at Appalachian State University, his mother has run dozens of marathons and his sister lettered in soccer at Wofford College. Jocks. Also, one of his grandfathers served in the Air Force during World War II, he had an uncle in the Army during the first Gulf War. A great uncle was an interpreter at Nurenberg Trials during World War II in Germany. West Point offers incredibly rich bios.
My favorite player on this Navy team, diving into the end zone. Alexander Teich is a fullback, but he’s smaller than I am. He plays fullback the right way, though, and was a lot of fun to watch run. Football tough, the senior is hoping to join the Navy SEALS after graduation.
And now a few crowd shots:
“Nine dollars for a beer?” asked one happily annoyed fan. “Is there a discount for veterans?”
The vendor could only say “It ain’t me, blame Daniel Synder.”
Daniel Snyder, owner of the Redskins and this park and blamed for most everything else around Washington sports, can take the heat.
Malcolm Brown scores for Army, keeping the Cadets in the game:
And now, more fans:
10
Dec 11
The Army-Navy game
Attending this game was a birthday gift from my lovely bride. This video features two cheers from the cadets and the mids on the field during their march on. It also includes includes one of the finest, and sadly least utilized traditions in college sport, the singing of both alma maters.
And it was a historical day.
This was the first time the classic game had been played inside the Washington D.C. beltway. It was also only the second time that both the president and vice president attended. Navy extended their series-long win streak over Army to 10 games. The Middies chanted “Ten more years!”
Mike Lopresti, writing in USA Today’s special section on the game:
(H)ere come Army and Navy. In a restless sport of frequent doubt and tumultuous questions, they have more answers than anyone. They know what they want to do, they know why they’re there. And they know what’s ahead.
“Everybody on that field has chosen a very unique path in their young lives,” Army coach Rich Ellerson said last week at a news conference.
They will play Saturday with nothing on the line but pride and honor and a sense of achievement, and that will be quite enough. For these Cadets and Midshipmen, each and every day, that is enough.
[…]
It matters because how many other college football Saturday afternoons go untouched by money or excess or misplaced perspective?
It matters because, in an ego-driven sports world, the television screen is seldom so filled with men who understand selflessness.
Attending this game is a great experience. Go if you can.
