For those of you living under a rock, Wake Forest played Louisville in the BCS Orange Bowl last Monday. It was a sort of Cinderalla story for us, since we are not a football school, and we're one of the smallest schools in Division I. But this season, we stole a lot of touchdowns, and a lot of hearts. One of my favorite articles from the Orange Bowl...
JOSEPH: Demon Deacons charm Orange Bowl
Published January 3, 2007
MIAMI GARDENS -- Opposite world is cool.
That's what we learned here Tuesday night at the FedEx Orange Bowl. In a game featuring a school no one ever expected to be in a BCS game and in a game many thought would be tedious because it had no national championship implications or pre-game hype -- tiny Wake Forest gave Louisville's emerging program and an announced crowd of 74,470 a memorable game. How refreshing. Suddenly, a BCS game didn't have to be life-and-death to be appealing. It didn't have to come down to a coach's job on the line. It didn't have to feature behemoths like Florida State or Miami. It could star a small, tie-dyed school from Winston-Salem, N.C.
And it may wind up rivaling the best bowl game you'll see this season.Yes, the favored Cardinals won, scoring 14 fourth-quarter points to beat the Demon Deacons 24-13. But how could you not come away from this game enamored by the Demon Deacons?
Wake Forest. The little engine that could ... I think I can ... I think I can...
How could you not like a school of 6,700 students, only 4,300 undergraduates, stuffing it to those ACC giants like Florida State and Virginia Tech? How could you not like the smallest school to ever compete in a BCS game? These things don't happen anymore in big-time college football. Heck, even "little" Boise State has 18,000 students, Louisville 25,000. Demon Deacons coach Jim Grobe had to put a team together with local kids who weren't highly recruited or necessarily motivated by the size of a school's stadium or, ironically, its chance of playing in a BCS game. Wake Forest. In a BCS game. Only in opposite world.
Think about it: If every current undergraduate and graduate student at Wake Forest attended Tuesday's game, Dolphin Stadium would have mirrored a Tuesday afternoon game in August between the Marlins and Nationals.
Heck, if every living Wake Forest graduate attended the Orange Bowl, there would still have be 20,000 empty seats Tuesday night.
But here were the Demon Deacons playing in a BCS game in front of probably the largest gathering of Wake Forest alumni in school history. Black-and-gold, tie-dyed crazies from Winston-Salem, N.C. The kind of students who celebrate school victories by covering the center of campus with toilet paper.
Every Deadhead should adopt this school. Jerry Garcia meets Mr. Whipple. The smallest school and coolest. And a team that refused to believe it couldn't succeed.This was the culmination for the Demon Deacons of an improbable year, one that could have been lost back in September when they managed to block a last-second field goal attempt to beat lowly Duke. Despite loses to Clemson and Virginia Tech, the Demon Deacons never went away. They beat Georgia Tech at home and Florida State and Maryland on the road. And they did it all after losing their starting quarterback, running back and left tackle. And now this.
After going down 10-3 after Louisville stole a play from their playbook by scoring on a modified flea flicker, Cinderella got mad.Wake Forest tied the game on a 30-yard touchdown to Nate Morton from Riley Skinner, formerly the Deacons' third-string quarterback. Then they took the lead in the fourth quarter on a 36-yard field goal by Sam Swank.But they fumbled deep inside Cardinals territory twice, and they couldn't stop the No. 5-ranked Cardinals in the fourth quarter. Suddenly, the magic had run out. Midnight had approached.
It was too bad, really. Back to the real world.
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