Desert Heat, a Four-Point Escape and a Wedding Countdown
Cleveland State24
Arizona State20
- Game
- 2027 Week 3
- Date
- 2027-09-19
- Site
- Away
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 3-0
Vikings 24, Arizona State 20. In Tempe, in heat that made my cardigan file for divorce. Three and oh!
I flew out for this one, and you know who I sat next to on the plane? Marco Reyes, my neighbor, who was going home to Phoenix to visit his mother. He spent the whole flight explaining desert football to me. “The heat’s a twelfth man, Mickey.” I said, “Our twelfth man is a guy named Chester who abstains.” He didn’t understand. I didn’t explain. Some things are a Cleveland thing.
Four points! On the road! Against a good team in a hot building! That’s three straight years now, folks, that this team has won tight road games, and at some point we have to stop calling it luck and start calling it what it is. Character with a little sunburn.
Meanwhile, back home, the wedding countdown is on. Kate and Sam get married during our bye week next month, and Donna has assigned me exactly one job: “Michael, you will not mention football in your toast.” I’ve been practicing. I’ve gotten it down to only four mentions.
Four pierogi. One for Marco’s mother, who sent me home with tamales.
A four-point road win in Tempe. The Vikings are now three and oh with wins by twenty-one, five and four. That’s a team that knows how to win, and a defense that keeps making it necessary.
I’ll grant this, sincerely: the offense is the best I’ve seen here. A junior quarterback rated 86, a freshman receiver who already looks like he belongs and a running game that’s coming along. The question is whether a team can score its way past every problem. History says no. History has also been wrong about this team three years running, which is annoying for history and for me.
Teresa and I had coffee. Just coffee. At a diner on Lorain, at 7 a.m., because that’s when she gets off a night shift. She asked who we were playing. I said Arizona State. She said, “Is that the sun one?” I said yes. She said, “Good luck to them in the sun.” I didn’t correct her. I’m not sure whose side she was on. I found that I didn’t mind.
The Doom Model is fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.
Back and forth
Coffee, Kenny? At seven in the morning?
She works nights. It’s practical.
You’re smiling.
I’m squinting. It’s bright at seven a.m. Like Tempe.
A four-point escape in the desert, homemade tamales, a toast with only four football references, and a 7 a.m. coffee that was “practical.”
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.