Stunned Disbelief

Hello All,

I type this as a I sit at my computer in silence, smiling.

It is Monday morning, and yet I cannot get images of Mike James hugging his sister in that corner of the nation's oldest stadium out of my head.

This is what college football is at its finest: the kid that you want to be the frontman for your program (a Freddie Mercury for Football, if you will) is the hero in overtime, and he wants nothing more than to hug his sister afterward.

No line to sell, no brand to build, just the joy of a kid honoring his late mother after the biggest game of his career.

It was hard not to get a little dusty on Saturday afternoon.

You could see it on Al Golden's face after the game.

When a young team goes on the road and fights their ass off, it resonates on a level beyond football. It makes you proud to be a human being attached in some faroff way to what you just saw on the field.

THIS is what it is about.

Between the huge momentum swings of that game (Up 19, Down 17, 23 straight to win it) and the carnage it brought (it was hard to shake an image of a fallen Malcolm Lewis embracing, and being embraced by, Golden as his gnarled ankle was reset)...that game was exhausting to watch.

And euphoric.

I still can't figure out what my favorite part was.

Coming out gunning and taking the 19-0 lead?

James submitting a Pantheon performance?

(Sidenote: all the great individual performances result in a game being dubbed the "PLAYER NAME X" game...this is DEFINITELY going to be forever known as the Mike James Game)

The much embattled defense coming up with an all-time heroic goal line stand?

Or was it the post game celebration in the bleachers, where you forgot for a second that this was an away game and that these were football players and for a brief period these were just college kids interacting with their friends and family in jubilation?

It doesn't matter.

The whole thing was awesome.

Afterward, there was a rush to figure out if this was a "corner turner" or a "signature win" or a "program builder".

Normally I would be writing something about that, reading more in to it than I probably should.

However, I have done that too many times before. While we are constantly searching for context and deeper meaning, we often lose sight of exactly what college football is about.

It is about rooting for Mike James, the ultimate team player. The kid who lost the mother that raised him to a car crash...and skipped the funeral to play in the bowl game. The kid who is always smiling and just received a national award...for community service.

It is about your team not giving in, even when they give up 36 straight points to the nation's number one rushing offense, at their place.

It is about rising and falling with your team, and feeling like when they win, YOU win.

It was the players on the field who got it done and deserve the credit.

When a team that has been through so much submits a performance like that, the context doesn't matter.

WE won on Saturday. And THAT is all I care about this week.

Go Canes.