Bowling Green @ Owensboro 11-30-07

As I watched the two teams warm up for Friday night's semifinal football game, I started thinking about west Kentucky's two principal cities and their differences. Owensboro is a river town while Bowling Green is a college town. Owensboro is flat, and Bowling Green is hilly. Owensboro's streets are in a logical well planned grid, and Bowling Green's streets are narrow, don't line up and intersect at odd angles. Owensboro is Catholic. Bowling Green is Protestant. Old timers in Owensboro talk about Gabe's, and old timers in Bowling Green talk about Pauline's. Owensboro's barbecue is wet and Bowling Green's is dry. After decades of talking about getting one, Owensboro has an Olive Garden restaurant. Bowling Green had an Olive Garden but lost it several years ago. The most important event in Owensboro's history was when Cliff Hagan signed with the University of Kentucky to play basketball. Bowling Green's most important event was when Western Kentucky University went to the Final Four.

Yes, the two cities are different, and the differences may be reflected in their football teams. The Bowling Green Purples like to open the game up with a passing attack and sweeping pitch outs to their running backs. The Owensboro Red Devils focus on defense and play smash mouth, run-up-the-middle, ball control offense.

I knew the game had the makings of a classic, and it was appropriate that the game was being played at Rash Stadium behind old "Senior High" along Owensboro's Frederica Street. It's a classic venue. The stadium is two concrete grandstands that sit incredibly close to the playing field. There's very little room for the two teams to stand on the sidelines, so spectators really get a sense of the action on the field. Last season the school and the boosters coughed up a horse choking wad of money to replace the old playing field at Rash with one of those second generation artificial turf fields that feel like a natural surface.

Bowling Green had a stout assignment to try to upend the Red Devils in one heck of a tough place to play. The atmosphere around the old stadium was electric, and every player, coach, and fan sensed that two very good football teams were squaring off for a spot in next week's 5-A state championship game.

The two teams opened up the game with a bad case of the jitters. Bowling Green had the first possession, and Trent Steelman threw an interception on the opening play. Owensboro promptly turned the ball back over to the Purples. I can't remember all the entire scenario, but after some sloppy football, Owensboro tried to punch the ball in the end zone on short yardage but failed. They settled for a field goal.

Bowling Green just couldn't find a groove and continued to turn the ball over, and the Red Devils took a commanding 13-0 lead over the #2 ranked Purples. The Owensboro fans were going nuts, and the visitors from the other end of the Natcher Parkway were very quiet, despite having a large crowd in attendance.

Owensboro's fans were armed with cowbells and plastic milk jugs filled with bb's. They clanked those bells and shook those milk jugs making an awful racket. I was sitting with a friend from Owensboro, and we could hardly talk over the rattling and clanking. I was afraid that I would be deaf by the end of the contest (my ears still rang the morning after).

A well-dressed, middle-aged lady sat in front of me. She had on a heavy overcoat and layers of clothes on underneath. When the Red Devils kicked a field goal, she took off her coat. When they scored a touchdown, she took off a light jacket. I started to wonder if she lost an article of clothing with each Red Devil score. I thought things could get very interesting if they started running up the score, especially on such a cold night.

Down by a touchdown bracketed by two field goals, the Bowling Green squad could have given up, folded tent, and waited for the yellow dog school buses to truck them back down the parkway. Instead, they engineered a drive that put them right on Owensboro's goal line. Bowling Green got the touchdown and made the score 14-7. Tension spread through the stands, and the Purples' crowd started to make some noise.

Owensboro had the ball late in the second quarter. Their drive fizzled, and they had to punt. It turned out to be the key possession of the game. If Owensboro scored or even just ran the clock out, Bowling Green would've been down at the half with the Red Devils getting the first possession of the second half. Instead, the Purples got the ball with just over two minutes remaining.

They drove back down to Owensboro's goal line and were threatening to take the lead. The lady who had been taking off her warm clothes started putting them back on. Oh well. I'll try to sit next to her when the Red Devils take on Breckinridge County in a future season.

Trent Steelman and running back Lavance Anderson put together the best fake hand-off play I have ever seen to score the Purple's second touchdown. Steelman faked and Anderson plunged into the line of scrimmage running over the left tackle. Owensboro brought him down short of the goal line, and the referees blew their whistles thinking Anderson had the ball. Meanwhile, Steelman rolled out to the left and trotted into the end zone with the ball.

I've never seen a more convincing fake hand-off. I knew who had the ball, but I think I was the only other person in the stadium who knew it besides Trent Steelman and Tavance Anderson. Owensboro's players were confused. The officials were baffled. The Owensboro fans were irate. The line judge marked where Anderson was tackled, and he held his mark. But, Anderson never had the danged ball. The other officials conferred at the five yard line, and I thought for a minute they were going to disallow the touchdown. The scoreboard operator even took the six points off Bowling Green's total.

I feared I was going to witness one of the worst officiating calls in the history of high school sports. I thought the officials were going to disallow the touchdown because Steelman and Anderson fooled everyone so well. Deceit with the ball is one of the principles of football.

Finally, the referee trotted toward the side of the field and raised his hands signaling a touchdown. I was relieved, but the Owensboro fans around me were angry. They seemed to know nothing about inadvertent whistles, which are a part of the game of football.

I had been marked as a Bowling Green fan (I'm not), and I worried that I might not make it out of Rash Stadium with my skin. Skin? Rash? Yuk!

The important thing was that Bowling Green had the lead, and the momentum shifted to the visitor's side of the field.

The Purples controlled the second half. They moved the ball and scored three more touchdowns, and their defense kept the Red Devils out of the end zone. In the third quarter, Bowling Green used six minutes of game clock to drive for a touchdown. Owensboro had two possession and used about six minutes of clock but did not score. That killed the Red Devils. It finished off what Bowling Green started in the second quarter. Owensboro had a great defense, but they were on the field way too much in the second half. They had nothing left late in the game.

Owensboro is a good football team, but they needed more dimensions to their offensive attack to beat a very good team. Bowling Green is a very good team, perhaps even a great one. They can prove their great by knocking of Highlands in the championship game at Papa John's-Cardinal Stadium in Louisville next Friday. They've got to quit turning the ball over and quit getting stupid penalties. If they turn the ball over five times to Highlands in the first half, they will be dead.

OBSERVATIONS

Hard Nosed Player

I loved Owensboro's #42, Blake Roberts. He's a linebacker who has the nose for the ball and delivers bone crushing hits on ball carriers. He can shake off blockers, and despite being 5'10" he can disrupt passes. He seemed to be everywhere on the field, and I believe he played every down on both sides of the ball. Owensboro listed him as a tight end on their roster, but I saw him coming out of the backfield as a fullback. He did everything right on offense and defense. He's intense, smart, and competitive. He seems to be a crowd favorite in the "Big O." It's too bad a kid like that doesn't get to play next week in Louisville. Fans told me he was their district's defensive player of the year. A good choice, no doubt.

The Name Game

Gotta Give Him Credit or Credits: Owensboro had a player named T.J. Carbon. He wore jersey #11. I thought he should wear #6.

Learning to Fly: Owensboro's Adrian Cessna. Maybe his jersey number should read NC13250.

Where's Captain Kirk When You Need Him? Owensboro's Jordan Khan would surely raise the ire of the Starship Enterprise's charismatic commander. KHAN!

Can't Find the Kick Starter

Sheesh! I just can't seem to get out to a game these days. I was wanting to get to some football playoff games, but I haven't been able to find the time. It's o.k. because I'm really intending this blog to be about basketball, but I hate that it has been dormant for nearly three weeks. So, I'm whipping out a re-tread of something I wrote a little more than a month ago.

My friends Russ Cummins and Danny Brown are the broadcast team for Fern Creek High School in Louisville. They do a fantastic job of calling and describing the games each week, and what is even more amazing is that they had zero broadcast experience prior to getting behind the microphone for the first game last season. Fern Creek is mighty lucky because they are very professional.

This year, Russ and Danny decided to include a weekly segment that featured a short essay from your's truly. They called it "Trace's Soapbox." I'd write something each week, and Danny Brown read it on the air. The funny thing about this is that I'm an alumnus of one of Fern Creek's rivals, Louisville Male High School, and we've always teased one another about our different loyalties. I had a blast coming up with something new every five or six or seven days, and there were times when I had to get a prompt from them for a topic. There were other times when I'd get an idea in my head and could not wait to write it and send it to them.

After being on the road on a couple of different Friday nights, I came up with this:

People always want to romanticize baseball. I have no problem with that because I love that sport along with football and basketball. I divide the year into three seasons: basketball, baseball, and football. I don't pay much attention to the seasons dictated to us by the revolving of Earth.

I find romance in all three sports. Basketball is full of electricity, and it would be impossible to live in a state with college teams like Kentucky, Louisville, and Western Kentucky without having some lusty draw to the traditions and history of that sport. I remember driving across Kentucky one cold January night and finding Cawood Ledford's soothing voice on nearly every radio station. He was like a warming beacon guiding me through the darkness. I remember stopping for gas at one point during that trip and the service station had the Kentucky game on the loudspeaker by the pumps. The attendant had the game on inside, too. I didn't miss a minute of the game and didn't miss the Mrs. Grissom's commercials either.

How did she make those salads taste so fine?

I was born into a baseball family, so that sport has a mighty tug on me. All the movies, all the novels, all the drippy sports writing done about baseball are true for me, too. My grandfather played baseball, and an abiding love of the sport has been handed down to me.

That leaves football. I don't think many people find romance in the game, but I do.

My wife and I love to travel. We find any excuse to take a trip. We just sort of wander the highways, and we have to explain why a trip to Tennessee found us in east Kentucky. Never mind that. A few weeks ago, we were heading back to Bowling Green on a Friday afternoon that crept into night. Out on a lonely stretch of the Cumberland Parkway I discovered a caravan of cars and two school busses from one of Kentucky's too many counties. No doubt, the rolling assemblage was heading for some contest one or two or more counties away.

I wanted to pull into the "rocking chair" of their convoy and go wherever they were headed to watch some high school football tilt. As I passed them, I wanted to give them some sort of sign that my heart was with them. I wanted to be them and watch their boys go nose to nose with their opponent.

Later on our journey, when it was dark, we passed a town, and from the highway I could see the burning lights of six light standards glowing down on a football field lost down behind the tree line. I felt a pull. I had to fight the urge to exit and meander my way through that dark town and sit in the cold to watch football. My wife and children would've rebelled at such a spur-of-the-moment switch in our plans. Plus, we didn't have the warm clothes to endure a chilly night.

I don't know why but I looked at those Friday Night Lights for as long as could. I even checked my rearview mirrors so I could watch them fade as my Ford tumbled over the horizon. Finally, all I could see was their bright shaft shining into the heavens stirring the souls of guys like Lombardi and Landry to sit at the brim of Valhalla and watch another high school football game.