Stillwater, Settled: Thirty-Two Points of Payback
Cleveland State49
Oklahoma State17
- Game
- 2028 Week 5
- Site
- Away
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 5-0
Remember Stillwater last year? Three points. Forty-five to forty-two. The P-word got out of my car and ran away.
Well, friends, we went back. Vikings 49, Oklahoma State 17. Five and oh. Thirty-two points of daylight in a place that broke my heart eleven months ago. I want to frame the box score and hang it in Sal’s shop, because Sal, at my last haircut, said, “Stillwater’s gonna get you again, Mick. It’s a pattern.” Sal, it was a pattern. Now it’s a payback.
I did go to Sal’s Monday. He was gracious. He said, “Good win.” Then he leaned in and said, “But you know who’s coming in a few weeks.” He didn’t have to say it. He pointed at the pennant, and folks, the pennant was facing me, and it had been facing me the whole haircut, and it’s going to keep facing me until the Bobcats come to Cleveland.
Five and oh. I’m not thinking about Ohio. I’m thinking about pierogi. Five of them. With sour cream. And maybe a little about Ohio.
Thirty-two points over Oklahoma State, on the road, eleven months after a three-point loss in the same building. I said last year that a team gets better when the same trip gets easier. This one got thirty-five points easier.
Five and oh. The Vikings have won by nineteen, thirty-seven, fourteen, forty-two and thirty-two. That’s not a team that’s winning; that’s a team that’s correcting things. Every week it goes back to a place that hurt it and fixes the record.
Teresa worked a double this weekend and slept through the game. She woke up at nine, checked her phone and texted me: “49 to 17? Is that good? You didn’t text me so I assumed bad.” I realized I hadn’t texted because I’d been sitting in my kitchen not knowing what to do with my hands. I wrote back: “It’s good. It’s really good.” She sent a picture of a soup pot. I don’t know what it meant. I think it meant, “I’m proud of you for feeling things.”
The Doom Model asterisk has gotten bigger. It’s now in bold.
Back and forth
Stillwater, settled!
Thirty-five points of improvement in eleven months. I checked the math.
Sal says Ohio’s coming.
Sal’s right. I don’t say that about barbers. I’m saying it about this one.
Stillwater repaid with thirty-two, a pennant staring Mickey down, and a soup pot emoji that may be the most emotionally sophisticated text Ken has ever received.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.