Boulder Again. Of Course It Was Boulder.
Cleveland State14
Colorado37
- Game
- 2025 Week 7
- Date
- 2025-10-25
- Site
- Away
- Result
- Loss
- Record
- 6-1
Colorado 37, Vikings 14.
I’m writing this from my kitchen table with a cup of Donna’s tea, which she makes when she knows I’m sad and doesn’t want to say it out loud. The tea says it for her.
Twenty-three points. In the mountains. Same place we lost last year. I don’t know what it is about Boulder. Maybe it’s the air. Maybe there’s a hex. Maybe Sal drove out there and buried a Bobcats pennant on the fifty-yard line. I’m not saying he did. I’m saying I’ve noticed he took Saturday off.
Here’s what I told my Little Lakers on Sunday, because Leo Reyes asked me why I looked “crumply”: I said, “Sometimes you lose. Sometimes you lose bad. And then on Monday, you go back and pull flags.” Leo said, “That’s it?” I said, “That’s it, buddy.” He thought about it and said, “Okay. Can I have a snack?”
Six and one. We’re still six and one, folks. The undefeated season is gone. The good season is right here.
Zero pierogi. Tea.
There it is. The crack.
I’m not going to gloat. I set a red mark on my calendar for this game, the game happened the way the red mark said it would, and I feel no joy. I feel the specific emptiness of being correct about something you love.
I put on the saddest record I own. It’s a solo piano album recorded in an empty church, and you can hear the bench creak. I played it twice. The second time, my neighbor slid a note under the door: “Colorado?” I wrote back “Colorado.” Cleveland is a city of very short letters.
The honest analysis: a twenty-three-point loss on the road is a real loss, not an unlucky one, and the offense that put sixty-two on Louisville managed fourteen. The offense had its first truly bad day. Every young offense gets one. The good ones get it early.
Miami (OH) is next, at home. Nadia has already texted me a single RedHawk emoji.
“Lil”? A DMV clerk misheard me. It’s on a learner’s permit somewhere in Parma.
Back and forth
Six and one is still great, Kenny.
Six and one is great. Six and oh was a dream. I miss the dream.
You miss it? You?
Don’t tell anyone. Especially Nadia.
The undefeated dream ends in Boulder again, Donna makes tea, and Ken admits, very briefly, that he’d started to believe.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.