Posted on 01/04/2007 11:24:18 PM PST by doug from upland
This is really funny. We sometimes have political arguments here that get out of hand. But the most vitriolic discussions seem to be about sports. Some FReepers just go crazy. :)
BTW, I still get vertigo whenever I try to watch a game on that blue field.
His girlfriend/fiance's parents live a couple of blocks from me.
It's not that bad. I went to the MPC Computer Bowl there and saw Nevada vs Miami. Two bad calls (fumble and reception) is what caused Nevada to lose.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/arash_markazi/01/05/fiesta.bowl/
Parting shots
Days later the Fiesta Bowl is still noteworthy
Posted: Friday January 5, 2007 4:46PM; Updated: Friday January 5, 2007 5:57PM
It's been 72 hours since I stood on the Boise State sideline and witnessed "The Greatest Football Game Ever Played" (I think that's a suitable nickname) and I still can't believe it really happened. Of course I know it did. All I have to do is type "Boise State" on YouTube to see how it happened more than 100 different ways or type "Fiesta Bowl" into Google News to read more than 6,000 different accounts of how it all went down. But it still seems surreal. Not just the game, the whole week.
I flew into Phoenix the day after Christmas to embark on what would be the most enjoyable assignment of my young career -- shadowing the Boise State football team from the moment they landed in the desert until they left. As I sat down to write my story after the game on the patio of a Sonoran Suite at the Camelback Inn with the sun beginning to peek through the mountains nestled around the resort, my word count was stretching well past the quadruple-digit mark and my sanity -- after having not slept a wink since last year -- was being tested.
How do I capture everything that happened to me in the past week -- the practices, the meetings, the meals, the nights out, the game -- oh my God, the game -- in my 3,000-word limit. I might as well try and fit three linemen into the back seat of my rental car, a failed task from earlier in the week.
In the end, I went way over my word count and way below the expectations set forth by one of the team's security guards who slapped me on the back after the game and said, "We just won you a Pulitzer!" While I won't win any awards for my story, it did provide me with enough leftovers for one last notes column on the Fiesta Bowl before they play some other college football game in Arizona next week.
• You never really know how these all-access assignments are going to work out. When I got the task to go behind the scenes with Boise State I thought I'd be lucky to be admitted to a few closed practices and maybe a couple of team meetings. The last thing I expected was to be greeted by the director of football operations Keith Bhonapha at the team hotel with a copy of the team's bowl manual, handed out to every player, and be introduced to the team as I stood beside head coach Chris Peterson on the field after the team's practice. "He's going to be with us all week," Bhonapha told the team. "Treat him like one of us."
• It didn't take long for the players to discover I had a rental car and nothing else to do but shadow them. More than a couple times I was called over by a player during practice who asked if I could give them a ride somewhere after. One of the more memorable trips was taking linebacker Will Lawrence to Wendy's and having him order seven cheeseburgers and turn to me and ask if I was going to get anything. "That's all for you," I asked him, as he was given two bags of burgers. "Yeah," he said. "I'll finish this off before we get back to the hotel."
• The surprise of Ian Johnson's proposal to his girlfriend, and head cheerleader, Chrissy Popadics was ruined for me three days before it happened as I sat with Johnson and a couple of Fiesta Bowl committee members at Sun Devil Stadium watching the first half of the Insight Bowl. While Johnson was talking to committee member Wes Freas he began to admire Freas' Movado watch and said he had told his girlfriend that's what he wanted as his wedding present. When Freas inquired about his girlfriend, Johnson said she was the head cheerleader and that he had already bought an engagement ring and was planning on proposing to her after the game when the couple returned to California.
"Why don't you just do it on the field after the game when you're on stage accepting your MVP trophy on national television?" asked committee member Tyler Hanson. "It would be the greatest moment in Fiesta Bowl history."
"That's a good idea," said Johnson as he nodded his head. "I might just do that."
• The player with the biggest grin on his face after Peterson decided to go for two points at the end of the game and shouted, "Statue," was backup quarterback Nick Lomax, the son of former Cardinals quarterback Neil Lomax. It was Nick who last month came up with the variation of the Statue of Liberty play where Jared Zabrasnky pumps hard right and tucks the ball behind his back for Johnson, who pretends as if he's not a part of the play, to snatch and run left. "I couldn't believe it when they called the play," Lomax told me as he checked his text messages on the bus ride back to the hotel. "I came up with that a few weeks ago in practice while we were messing around and I showed the coaches. I knew it would work. I think everyone on the sideline knew it would work with how hard those guys were biting on the pumps"
• After running "circus" drills every Friday, where they practice every trick play in the book, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that Boise State had so many gadgets up its sleeve late in the game. One of the biggest reasons for their imaginative playbook is that they have the youngest coaching staff in college football. Eleven of the 16 members on the Broncos coaching staff graduated in or after 1999 and both the offensive and defensive coordinators were 29 when they were hired by Peterson prior to the season. Bhonapha, the director of football operations, was a 25-year-old graduate assistant at Hawaii when he was given his current job, his first paying gig since he graduated in 2005. "I never thought about age when I hired them," said Peterson. "I didn't even know what it was. I just knew that these guys were the best guys for the job."
The young staff almost makes the boyish-looking Peterson, 41, look old in comparison, although he tries to stay as hip as he can. During one meeting as special teams coach Jeff Choate was warning a player about Oklahoma giving him a different look on coverages, Peterson got up and said, "It won't matter because he's a baller." The comment, in reference to the team's favorite saying, caused the entire team to clap up "Coach Pete."
• The night before every game Peterson gathers his team together for a meeting he calls "Bronco Magic," where he not only talks about the keys to be successful in the upcoming game but also the keys to be successful in life. It usually concludes with a speech. The one that got the team riled up before the Fiesta Bowl was Kurt Vonnegut's supposed 1997 commencement address at MIT, which Peterson thought would be perfect for the team that would win the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. Although, as many know, Vonnegut never actually gave the address at MIT that year. The speech was actually written by Mary Schmich in the Chicago Tribune, but that's really neither here nor there, the meaning of the speech resonated throughout the team as many players shouted, "Put your sunscreen on!" before, during and after the game.
• As others will soon find out, if they haven't already, you will not meet a more humble, down-to-earth bunch than the Boise State football players. I've been around high school teams with bigger egos. It's one of the first things Peterson talks to his teams about during spring ball and something he harped on while the team was in Phoenix. "If you don't think saying please and thank you matters, you're wrong," he said. "It does. People notice that stuff." That was never more evident than during the game when receiver Aiona Key -- moments after inadvertently touching a punt that gave the ball and the momentum to Oklahoma -- bumped into me on his way back to the sideline. As I tried to move out of his way and give him his space he put his arm around me and told me to stand where I was. "I'm sorry about that," he said. "My bad. You were standing here."
• While Johnson will forever be the star of the Fiesta Bowl for scoring on the two-point conversion run and proposing to his girlfriend afterward, he wasn't exactly treated like a celebrity following the game. As Johnson went back to the locker room he searched helplessly for a Fiesta Bowl Champions T-shirt or hat, like the ones the rest of his teammates were wearing, to no avail. While he was doing post-game interviews, the team buses left without him, forcing him to catch a ride back to the hotel with his parents. "I told them not to leave without me," said Johnson. "I wanted to get that police escort one more time."
When Johnson was back at the hotel he couldn't find anyone to take his dinner order at the restaurant in the lobby but was greeted by his boss, Russell Baker, a plumbing foreman in Boise, who makes sure Johnson is packing pipe properly 20 hours a week. "When are you coming back to work," he asked him. "I'll start up as soon as I get back to Boise next week," said Johnson, who was getting ready to make a five-hour drive back to his home in San Dimas, Calif., the next day. "I still got a mortgage to pay."
Postgame interview with Boise State coach -- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4490478636704382509&q=fiesta+bowl&hl=en
(as of 8:12 in the 4th quarter)
Florida 41
Ohio State 14
Ouch.....
But congrats, to the ONLY undefeated team in college football......Boise State! That's funny that Florida is the champ with one loss, but Boise State may be lucky to be ranked in the top 3 after tonight. And I thought every game in college football was a playoff......so say the playoff opponents. I guess this is one of those rare times in the playoffs where a loss is greater than no losses......other then the fact that this doens't occur in any real playoff.
Congratulations to Florida on a game well played.
Boise State should be number one since they are undefeated.
Wow, no fear of the sweater vest in Florida today.
Again, congratulations to Florida on a game well played.
Hahaha, awesome response. Pure class my good man!
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