A 45-42 Tuesday Night, and Leo Reyes Is Ruined for Life
Cleveland State45
Western Michigan42
- Game
- 2024 Week 3
- Date
- 2024-09-17
- Site
- Home
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 2-1
Pass the pierogi, and pass the smelling salts while you’re at it.
A Tuesday night game! Against Western Michigan! I asked Marco and Jess next door if Leo could come, school night and all, and Jess gave me the look mothers have been giving me since 1975. Marco said yes before she could finish the look.
So Leo Reyes, age six, late of Phoenix, Arizona, attended his first Cleveland State football game in a horned helmet two sizes too big, and he watched our guys win a 45-42 shootout. Eighty-seven points, friends. He thinks every game is like that. I’m not going to correct him. Let him believe. That’s my whole job.
We’re 2-1. Last week we gave up a big number and lost. This week we gave up a big number and won, because when it mattered, our guys simply refused to lose.
Four pierogi. Leo fell asleep in the car with his helmet on. Best night of the year.
The Vikings gave up forty-two for the second straight game, and the reaction around town is joy. I’d like to speak to the town.
I had lunch with Mickey at Big Stan’s the day before, our weekly meeting, as it has been since my first column in 2014 tore apart his first bowl prediction and he responded by buying me a sandwich. I still order the same corned beef on rye. I still complain about it. Big Stan predicted a forty-point game. Big Stan undersold it.
Let me be specific: the offense has scored thirty-one and forty-five in back-to-back weeks. Real. The defense has allowed forty-two and forty-two. Also real. Mickey only reads the first sentence.
The Doom Model had this as a close loss and was off by three points. A moral victory for the Doom Model.
Back and forth
Two and one, Kenny! We’re winning.
We’re surviving. Different verb.
You should’ve seen Leo’s face.
You’ve doomed that child to a lifetime of Tuesday-night cardiac events. I’m proud of you.
Forty-five scored, forty-two allowed, and one six-year-old from Arizona now permanently, irreversibly a Viking.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.