BGP Officially Nowhere Close to Super Bowl
Tom Szczerbowski
Dec 11, 2002
If
it wasn’t shocking enough that BGP won in Week 9 for the first time since
winning in Week 3, they suddenly felt a burst of confidence and magically
won again in Week 10. Of course, it has been evolutionary epochs since
BGP’s last winning streak, a period during which whole species have emerged,
roamed the earth, and succumbed to extinction. Was BGP’s winning streak
a sign of something pregnant with possibilities or just some kind of fluke
? In fact, it was a fluke.
By his standards, Pablo Frank
turned in a more-than-adequate performance in those games, which was notably
unusual for the BGP veteran who lately has been spending more time on football
while trying desperately to shed his technodweeb image. “I wanna be remembered
as the football player that I am and not the Alpha geek Trekker that I used
to be.” In fact, he has devoted so much time to focusing on football in
recent weeks that he even quit the chess club. Frank is steadfast about
his newfound commitment to the BGP football organization and claimed that
he intends to maintain this zeal right to the end of the season regardless
of how many more restraining orders are filed against him by William Shatner.
However, Frank was notably missing in Week 11’s game. Uncorroborated
reports seem to indicate that Frank stayed home last night and played Half-Life
on his computer, a charge he is yet to deny.
The Stack wasted little time showing that they were determined to bury
their losing streak and Kirk Ireland decided to do something about it by
intercepting Mike Ciancibello
in the opening series and running the ball back well into BGP territory,
setting up a touchdown by Paul Bertels. BGP refused to go away and took
a short-lived 2-1 lead on touchdowns by Rob Hutchinson and Mike Garcia, until
the Stack roared back on a TD by Don Macdonald.
Then, tied 2-2, with the Stack charging, Paul McRae
threw a long bomb downfield, a ball that looked to be surely overthrown to
the casual observer. At that moment, Ireland turned, coiled, leaped into
the air, and stretched his body out to the max. Not only did he make the
catch, but he hung on to the ball after absorbing the full impact of his
body landing on the turf. It was a crowd-pleasing play all around. In
the broadcast booth, John Madden marveled at the play and quickly called
it one of the most memorable he’s ever seen, but perhaps Eric Dickerson put
it best when he said, “Adb ye rog ar dede McRae huba wooga awee tdo Ireland.”
Maybe Dickerson was right and maybe he wasn’t, but we will never be sure.
Not even McRae, who grew up in south central Sudbury, could make sense
of Dickerson’s probing analysis, remarking after the game, “Whether he’s
right depends on what he actually said and we still have people working on
it in the truck. I’ll get back to you on that one.”
This was no ordinary game for McRae, who was forced to chase scrambling
BGP quarterbacks out of the pocket all game long looking for a sack. All
that running left McRae frazzled and he spoke to SportsCenter after the game
about his conditioning – “I believe every human being has a finite number
of heartbeats and I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around exercising.
Forget it. That’s not why I play.” McRae was also upset about Frank’s Super
Bowl trash talk: “Well, that’s the kind of guy he[Frank] is. He thinks he
can coast to a Super Bowl with a 75%-losing percentage. You don’t make it
to the show by playing under .500 football. Someone should tell him that
first you have to make the playoffs”, a feat that BGP has still not accomplished.
Ireland’s catch led to his own TD moments later. Unphased, Ciancibello
took advantage of a defensive lapse by the Stack and launched an impressive
strike across almost the entire length of the field to Garcia, who trotted
into the end zone on a thrilling play that once again evened the score at
3. In spite of BGP’s comeback attempt, McRae delivered the gamebreaker
on the last possession of the game to Ireland for the winning TD on 4th down,
and thus the Stack had put the finishing touches on drawing a chalk outline
around BGP’s 2-game winning streak.
The game was loaded with all kinds of mysterious subplots that will
have the experts asking many, many questions over the days leading up to
Week 12, such as: How hurtful was Ireland’s absence for the Stack during
their losing streak ? How will BGP thwart the deluge of passes from the
throw-happy Stack offense ? Why was the Stack not using the shotgun as
often as last week ? Will the Stack’s bold offensive coordinator encourage
McRae to air it out more often on 4th-and-longs ? And, finally, just what
the heck was Eric Dickerson saying ???
| | |
