Arizona Wins the Day, and the Counter Council Goes Quiet
Cleveland State14
Arizona35
- Game
- 2025 Week 9
- Date
- 2025-11-08
- Site
- Home
- Result
- Loss
- Record
- 7-2
Arizona 35, Vikings 14, at home.
I’ll tell you how I knew it was bad. At Big Stan’s, during the third quarter, the counter council stopped arguing. Six retired steelworkers who have argued about every play since 1975, and they just sat there, stirring their coffee. Big Stan polished the same spot on the counter for fifteen minutes. Chester, who said a whole sentence in Iowa, went back to abstaining.
That’s two losses in three weeks to teams from out West, folks, and I don’t have a pierogi metaphor for it. Sometimes a team runs into a buzzsaw. Sometimes the buzzsaw is from Tucson.
But we’re 7-2. We’re 7-2 with a freshman quarterback, a rivalry win in our pocket and Ohio up next, in Athens, where my daughter will be working the press box and my barber will be listening on the radio with his pennant in his lap.
I’m going down there. I’m staying at Bridget’s. I’m bringing the cape.
Zero pierogi. One very quiet deli.
Two losses in three weeks, and the Vikings scored fourteen in both. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a pattern, and patterns are my love language.
I’ll be brief, because this was a hard week for reasons that aren’t football.
I called my father Sunday. It wasn’t a good day. He asked me how the team was doing, and I told him, and he asked me again a few minutes later, and I told him again. The third time, I just said, “We won, Dad.” He said, “Good. Good.” My mother got on the line and said he’d been watching old game film on the television all week, the 1990s stuff, and he seemed happy. I’ll take that. I’ll take it every time.
So: the Vikings lost to a good Arizona team, at home, by three touchdowns, and next week they go to Ohio, a place I approach the way sailors approach the edge of the map. Mickey’s bringing a cape. I’m bringing a helmet.
The Doom Model says “rough patch.” For once, I hope it’s right about the “patch” part.
Back and forth
How’s your dad, Kenny?
He thinks we won. I let him.
Good. That’s the right call.
Don’t put that in the column.
A hard loss on a hard week, a quiet deli, and one white lie in Sarasota that was the kindest thing anyone did all Saturday.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.