Friends…
The vastness of the offseason soon gives way to another season of Buffalo adventure. This very Saturday young men in Black & Gold will once again tread the gridiron. Our hopes and fears will soon be validated or rebuked. Or both. But our hearts will be rewarded for our long waiting. For college football, be it good or bad, is still it's own reward. It brings us it's own unique excitement and it renews us in some small part. Unlike it's antiseptic, computerized-modern-warfare cousin the NFL, college football is grubby, raw hand-to-hand combat carried out by mere teenagers or 20 year olds. The learning, failing and self-actualization we witness each Saturday in autumn is the evolution and assention of boys to men played out in real time. And therefore anything can happen and sometimes does in the most awesome and dramatic ways.
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| Most awesome, indeed |
And so begins year two of the Bienembree Era. Year one saw the introduction of many true freshman to big-time college ball. Year two will see many more. It's expected that 16 (16!) true freshmen will see the field Saturday for the Buffs. They'll join a cadre of redshirt freshmen and true sophomores to field the nation's least experienced team.
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| You are doing it wrong, kids |
The young-uns will make mistakes, you can be sure of that. Mind boggling, disastrous mistakes! But they'll also make plays. Heart-stopping, breath-taking plays. And one by one as the season progresses, they'll become men.
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| "How do they look, Scooter?" "Young." |
I know not what Coach Embree will say to the boys as they prepare to take the field Saturday at Mile High. But he could do a lot worse than borrow the following poem from the great Rudyard Kipling:
If…
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
And then add something like .. "Now go get me the still beating heart of a CSU Ram! AAARRRRRGGGHH!!!!!"
GO BUFFS!
