The 12th Man

This is a little delayed in coming, but it has been a busy week so far for me. Anyways, I am an avid sports fan. My favorite sport is football, hands down. I am still considering getting my coaching certificate to allow me to coach a high school football team. I live and die for the sport. This last week at the UNI football game taking place in our great UNI-Dome, I had one of my best UNI football moments ever!

I managed to get front row seats on the 50 yard line for the game. We were up by 10 late in the game, but our offense had completely stalled. To make matters worse, our starting HB (who's a stud) had been sitting on the bench most of the game due to an aggravated ankle injury. But it gets even worse. Our starting QB (who's one of the biggest QB studs I've ever seen, how many QB's do you know that can run over LB's??) had just gone out with a knee injury. Things were not going well. We had yet to score a single point the entire second half. That includes after recovering a fumble on South Dakota's 5 yard line. So you're wondering what this has to do with me? Well, let me tell you...

After our backup running back ran out of bounds short of the first down on 3rd & 3, I made sure to chew him out as he walked by me. He has the potential to be a really good running back, but for some reason, he just doesn't tend to run very hard. He will get tapped on his elbow and fall over. Quite frankly, it's pathetic. I don't know if I've ever seen a running back act like such a pansy. Needless to say, when he wandered over near where I was, I told him what I thought about it. He seemed to ignore me as if he didn't hear me, but he was only about 5 feet away from me at the time (our dome literally has the fans on top of the players benches). I'll also add that the crowd was pretty quiet because we were tired of punting. Anyways, the next time we got the ball, he went out there and ran over about everyone on North Dakota State's defense and sealed the game for us. I have never seen him seek contact so much in all the games I've seen him play. He went looking for somebody to hit on every single play he got the ball (which was every play). He looked amazing out there. If he continues to run like that once he buffs up as an upper classman, I will absolutely love the man. To top it all off, when he came off the field, he meandered back over by me. When I congratulated him on the hard running, he simply smirked and pointed up at me. Maybe I should get seats right behind the bench more often.