Aloha Means Hello, Goodbye, and Three and One
Cleveland State28
Hawai'i20
- Game
- 2024 Week 4
- Date
- 2024-10-05
- Site
- Home
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 3-1
Hawai’i flew halfway across the planet to visit us, and we sent them home with a 28-20 loss and, I hope, a decent sweatshirt from the bookstore, because the first cold snap of the year came in off the lake right on schedule.
Jess Reyes, my new neighbor, stood on her porch in October in a winter coat and asked me if the Hawai’i players were okay. “They’re from the islands, Mickey. They’ve never felt this.” I told her they’d be fine. I told her Leo would be fine too, in his helmet. She told me Leo has worn the helmet to bed four straight nights. I said, “That’s a Viking, folks.” She did not laugh. She will.
We’re 3-1! A different kind of win, which is what I keep telling Kenny. Week one, close on the road. Week three, a shootout. This week, we held them to twenty, kept our heads and closed the door. That’s a grown-up win.
Three pierogi. It’s a business-trip win: no fireworks, home by dinner.
Twenty points allowed is meaningfully fewer than forty-two. I checked the arithmetic twice. It holds.
Tuesday’s trivia at the Lantern Room had a geography round, and the question was “What is the most isolated state capital?” My team, Regression to the Mean, wrote “Columbus” as a joke and lost the round. Nadia announced the answer was Honolulu and then said, “Your football team must have felt right at home with that defense.” I’ve never been more insulted by a correct fact.
Holding a team that crossed an ocean, six time zones and a lake-effect forecast to twenty, at home, is what you’re supposed to do. That’s the floor, not the ceiling. The real schedule starts now. The Big 12 doesn’t fly in tired; it drives over annoyed.
“Lil,” since three of you asked: a typo in a 2001 church bulletin. I was listed as an usher. I was not an usher.
Back and forth
Three and one. You’re running out of reasons.
I have a spreadsheet full of reasons. It autosaves.
The defense held them to twenty!
At home. Against jet lag. Let’s see it in Lubbock.
A tidy win, a worried neighbor, and a trivia team that knows more about Honolulu than it wanted to.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.