Orlando Owed Us Twenty-Eight Points, and Paid in Full
Cleveland State52
UCF24
- Game
- 2028 Week 9
- Site
- Away
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 8-1
Vikings 52, UCF 24. In Orlando. Eight and one.
Last year we went to Orlando and lost by thirty-two, and I ate wax-bottle candy at midnight as penance. This year, one week after the Ohio heartbreak, our guys went back down there and won by twenty-eight. That’s a sixty-point swing in one building in one year, friends. Sixty points! I’m not good at math, but I know when the math is on my side.
I got the call about this one from Coach Leo. That’s what he calls himself now: “Coach Leo.” He’s ten, and the Lakers’ season ended Saturday morning with a win (our first winning season in seven years, six and two, I’ll tell you about it someday), and in the postgame huddle Leo stood up and gave a speech. A ten-year-old’s speech. He said, “We lost one to the Bobcats team and it was sad but then we kept playing.” The other parish team is called the Bobcats. I’m not making this up. Leo has never heard of Ohio’s mascot. He just said it, at the exact right time, the way kids do.
Five pierogi. One for Coach Leo, who’s ready for the big job.
A twenty-eight-point road win at UCF, one week after the Ohio loss, one year after a thirty-two-point loss in the same stadium. That’s the trend line again. This team keeps going back to the places that hurt it and fixing them.
Here’s the thing I’ll say plainly, because the evidence demands it: this team responds. In 2025 it responded to Boulder by beating Miami (OH). In 2027 it responded to Orlando by holding Ohio to seven. In 2028 it responded to Ohio by burying UCF. You can doubt a lot of things about the Vikings, and I have, professionally, for five years. You can’t doubt the response.
Teresa watched this one with me at a sports bar downtown, her idea. She wanted to “see the natural habitat.” She ordered a salad. She clapped politely at every touchdown, like she was at the opera. A man at the next table asked if she was a Vikings fan. She said, “I’m a Kenny fan. It’s adjacent.” I need everyone to understand that I’m writing that down for posterity and not because it made my week.
Back and forth
A sixty-point swing, Kenny!
I double-checked it. Sixty. Like a birthday.
Teresa said she’s a Kenny fan!
Adjacent. She said adjacent. I’m framing the word.
Orlando repaid with interest, a ten-year-old coach who understands rivalries without knowing they exist, and one word, “adjacent,” that Ken will never get over.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.