The Deregtory

This week we played at Co­lum­bia for their Home­com­ing game. Being sched­uled for an­other team’s Home­com­ing is al­ways an eye­brow-raiser, and it meant one of three things: (1) they were under the im­pres­sion that we were Co­lum­bia alums who were eager to come back for Home­com­ing, but couldn’t be­cause we had a prior com­mit­ment (the game) and they wanted to make things more con­ve­nient for us; (2) they thought we were a prime­time op­po­nent that would draw the biggest pos­si­ble crowd; or (3) they thought they would beat us, and in turn please the old-timers and stim­u­late alumni do­na­tions. We can rule out the first op­tion be­cause it’s sim­ply the dumb­est ex­pla­na­tion I could come up with, and we can rule out the sec­ond op­tion be­cause I am our biggest “must-see” player and I wasn’t play­ing. That leaves us with op­tion three, in which case their plan was about as suc­cess­ful as Hanover Bucks be­cause we rode home Sat­ur­day night with a 24-21 vic­tory in the bank.

Re­al­is­ti­cally, I ac­tu­ally don’t think Co­lum­bia chose to play us on Home­com­ing. The Ivy League foot­ball sched­ule hasn’t changed since like 1886 and I think most schools keep their Home­com­ing around the same date every year. That being said, my four years of ex­pe­ri­ence have con­di­tioned me to ab­solutely count on hear­ing two to three mo­ti­va­tional speeches lead­ing up to an op­po­nent’s Home­com­ing game about how that team doesn’t re­spect us. So if any­body from Co­lum­bia is read­ing this, YOU BET­TER RE­SPECT US MORE NEXT YEAR!!!

The game it­self was very ex­cit­ing. In fact, it would have been a nail-biter had I not made the de­ci­sion last Thurs­day to quit bit­ing my fin­ger­nails. We have de­vel­oped a real knack for mak­ing things more dif­fi­cult than they need to be, and prior to the Co­lum­bia game, we had al­lowed every sin­gle one of our op­po­nents to score on their first pos­ses­sion and to be lead­ing at half­time. Co­lum­bia got the ball first, im­me­di­ately scored a touch­down, and was beat­ing us 7-3 at the half — so things pretty much went ac­cord­ing to the script.

If you have been fol­low­ing this col­umn for the last cou­ple of weeks, you’ll know that our slow starts have been both­er­ing me. That’s be­cause I con­sider my­self a bit of a prob­lem solver, but have been hav­ing some trou­ble crack­ing this case. This week I de­cided to get to the bot­tom of it, and talked to some of the guys around the locker room. I was care­ful in ask­ing ques­tions force­fully enough to col­lect nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion, but also sub­tly enough not to blow my cover … I didn’t want my team­mates to know they were being ex­am­ined. My most com­mon ques­tion was whether play­ers felt ner­vous or “tight” at the be­gin­ning of games. Quite on the con­trary, every­one re­ported feel­ing very loose.

Now I was re­ally lost for an­swers. As such, I de­cided to call a Meet­ing of the Minds. That’s right, I went to din­ner at Wendy’s in West Leb with Alex Johns ’11, Buddy Be­naderet ’11, Tyler Green ’11 and Peter Keshtkar ’11 (who ac­tu­ally isn’t on the foot­ball team and had no valu­able in­sight, but is a good per­son to go to Wendy’s with). Good ideas were fly­ing around like bats in a cave, and sud­denly we had one of those ridicu­lous epipha­nies (like the ones that hap­pen three quar­ters of the way through each Law & Order SVU episode). Clearly if the issue wasn’t our tight­ness … it was prob­a­bly our loose­ness. And the most rea­son­able ex­pla­na­tion we could come up with is that some­body has been slip­ping mus­cle re­lax­ant in to our pre-game ba­nana and peanut but­ter sand­wiches. Rest as­sured I will be stak­ing out the locker room Fri­day night, and if you are the cul­prit, be­ware — I am al­ways vig­i­lant.

For­tu­nately, our sec­ond halves have been as good as our first halves have been bad (that sen­tence is not easy to read aloud). We scored twice in the third quar­ter to take a 17-7 lead, only to watch as Co­lum­bia re­sponded with two more touch­downs to make it 21-17 with about seven min­utes re­main­ing. I don’t know what QB Con­ner Kempe ’12 said in the hud­dle be­fore the next drive, but I imag­ine it was some­thing like this: “Al­right guys, here we go.” What­ever he went with worked, and we drove 69 yards on 14 plays (capped by a one-yard Nick Schwieger ’12 touch­down run) to go ahead 24-21 with two min­utes left. Our de­fense, which played pretty well all day (after the first pos­ses­sion at least), then stuffed the Co­lum­bia of­fense to seal the win.

This week is Home­com­ing, and we are play­ing Har­vard. It is our biggest game of the sea­son so far, we have a chance to move to 5-2, and if you go to Dart­mouth, there are no ex­cuses for miss­ing it (there def­i­nitely are, that was just a fig­ure of speech). Each week I like to think of rea­sons to dis­like our op­po­nent be­cause it makes the buildup to the game more ex­cit­ing. For ex­am­ple: I didn’t like Buck­nell be­cause they’re bor­ing and there’s noth­ing re­ally to dis­like about them; Sa­cred Heart be­cause they think they’re holier than thou (and thy and thee); Penn be­cause I’m jeal­ous that their sta­dium was in In­vin­ci­ble (2006); Yale be­cause of Caleb Man­drake; Holy Cross be­cause they think they’re holier than Sa­cred Heart; and Co­lum­bia be­cause they sched­uled us for their home­com­ing (they dis­re­spected us!). Well, Har­vard is about as easy not to like as a power-hun­gry mil­lion­aire CEO who fires in­terns be­cause his cof­fee isn’t hot enough and doesn’t give any money to char­ity. I hope that you agree, and that I’ll see you at the field on Sat­ur­day.

Have a great home­com­ing, and if you are a fresh­man make sure to touch the fire!