Ninety-Eight Against SMU, and Mickey Is Sixty-Eight
Cleveland State98
SMU16
- Game
- 2036 Week 10
- Site
- Home
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 10-0
VIKINGS 98, SMU 16. TEN AND OH.
Ninety-eight points, folks. The third time in the Dolan era we’ve scored ninety-eight, and the first time against a Big 12 team. Eighty-two points of daylight against the Mustangs, our seventh straight win over them. In 2024 we beat SMU by six in Dallas and I called it “character with a little margin for error.” This year the margin for error could be seen from space.
Ten and oh for the sixth time in seven years.
Donna threw me a birthday party on Sunday. Sixty-eight. At Big Stan’s, after hours. Everybody came. Kate and Sam. Bridget and Eli and Rose, up from Athens, Rose in her secret socks. Marco and Jess and Sofia; Leo called in from Pennsylvania on a laptop that Sofia held up. Ken and Teresa. Walt, Gerald, Chester. Sal came. Sal brought a cake shaped like a football with a little green Vikings V on it and, very small, in the corner, an Ohio paw print, “for balance.”
Stan made one pierogi. One. On a plate, alone, with a candle in it. He set it in front of me and said, “Doctor’s orders, Mick.” I blew out the candle. Then Chester, without a word, slid his own pierogi across the counter. A second one. Like always.
Five pierogi.
An eighty-two-point home win over SMU. Ten and oh.
I’ll report on the party, since Mickey won’t report the important part. After the cake, Stan turned off the slicer, which made Gerald sit, and then Stan asked for quiet. He said, “Mick, the council has voted.” Mickey said, “On what?” Stan said, “On you.” Then Chester stood up and read, from a piece of paper, in his shaky voice, the longest speech anyone at that counter has ever given: “Mickey Bridges. Forty-three years. Never missed a Monday. Never missed a game. Never stopped believing. Next one.” Then he sat down.
Seventeen words. I counted. That’s more than Chester has said in public in a decade combined.
My father, Sunday. I told him about the party. He said, “How old is Mickey?” I said sixty-eight. He said, “A kid.” My father is eighty-four. Notebook: “A kid.”
The sun hat is still in the apartment. I’ve started wearing it to read. Teresa says that’s progress. I don’t argue with Teresa about progress anymore.
Back and forth
Chester gave a speech, Kenny.
Seventeen words. “Next one” at the end. He was listening in February.
Your dad called me a kid.
At eighty-four, everybody’s a kid. He’s right anyway.
Ninety-eight points against SMU, a birthday pierogi with one candle in it, a cake with a paw print in the corner for balance, and Chester’s seventeen-word speech ending with “next one.”
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.