Ninety-One in Manhattan, Kansas
Cleveland State91
Kansas State13
- Game
- 2036 Week 3
- Site
- Away
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 3-0
VIKINGS 91, KANSAS STATE 13. IN MANHATTAN, KANSAS.
Folks, eleven years ago, in 2025, we went to Manhattan, Kansas, and lost by thirty-one. I wrote a column so sad that Donna hid the paper from the neighbors. I said I’d never forget that trip. I haven’t.
On Saturday we went back. Ninety-one points. Seventy-eight points of daylight. In their building. It’s the most points we’ve scored on the road under Coach Dolan.
I didn’t go. The doctor allows Kansas, but Donna doesn’t. I watched at Big Stan’s, who opened the deli specially, with the counter council and a television Walt brought from home. When the score hit ninety, Chester stood up. Chester stood up! He hasn’t stood up for a score since 2024. He stood, he looked at the TV, he said, “That’s for 2025,” which is what he said in 2030, after we beat them at home. Then he said, “Now it’s paid.” Then he sat back down. Six words. Chester’s on a run.
Big Stan made a sandwich on the spot. He called it The Manhattan. He said it’s “a Reuben that’s been to Kansas.” Nobody knows what that means. It was delicious.
Five pierogi. One on the plate, and one Manhattan, and Chester’s second bite.
A seventy-eight-point road win at Kansas State. Three and oh. The most points the Vikings have scored in a road game in the Dolan era.
I was at the game in 2025, in Manhattan, when the Vikings lost by thirty-one. I remember the Doom Model sent me a skull icon that week, and that afterward it blinked. On Saturday I sat in the same press box. The man next to me, from a Kansas paper, asked how long I’d covered the Vikings. I said thirteen years. He said, “Were you here in ‘25?” I said yes. He said, “I remember. You looked like you’d been hit by a car.” I said, “I had been. Emotionally.” He said, “You look better now.” I said, “I’ve been running.”
The new quarterback, Elijah Pashos, has now played three games as the starter. I’ll save his numbers for the end, per our rules. I’ll say this: the program that has started a new quarterback every couple of years since 2029 just did it again, and the new one may be the best of them all.
Teresa, Saturday, by text from home: “Did you just score 91?” “We did.” “Is that good?” “Yes.” “Then come home and have soup anyway.”
Back and forth
Chester said “Now it’s paid.”
Six words in a day. He’s never been more talkative. Kansas State finally earned it.
The Kansas reporter remembered you?
He said I looked like I’d been hit by a car in 2025. He said I look better now. I’m taking it.
Ninety-one points in the building where it hurt the most, Chester standing up to declare a debt paid, and a doubter told by a stranger in Kansas that he looks better now.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.