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OBSERVATIONS ON
COLLEGE SPORTS
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Nuggets of Gold
Friday, September 5, 2008
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By Adam Gold
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Adam Gold is
program director of the Triangle's "850
the Buzz" and host of "The G-spot with Adam Gold." |
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Don't neglect the laundry
By Adam Gold
©2008 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
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“Are you going to do
that laundry, or stare at it?”
Married men have heard
that before. The stale duds likely sit in piles somewhere, maybe in a
closet, maybe on the floor of the master bath, maybe right out in the middle
of the bedroom.
And, almost without fail,
we step over it as though it wasn’t there.
Smart husbands learn to
do the laundry. Not so much because she wants you to do it, but so you can
extend the offer knowing that if she calls your bluff you can actually
handle the job. You don’t ever want to be “that” guy, the one that doesn’t
really pay attention and then the laundry seems too tall a task for your
very small brain.
Will you get to your
point already, Gold? I know you didn’t come here to lecture me on helping my
wife around the house.
East Carolina nearly got
beat by laundry last week in Charlotte. This is not your older brother’s
Virginia Tech football team, and paying the Hokies too much respect nearly
left the Pirates on the short end of a game when they were clearly the
better team.
You know the statistics.
ECU was better on the ground, significantly better through the air and was
in complete control – especially in the second half. Take away the one big
play through the air – the 62-yarder to freshman Dyrell Roberts, and the
Hokies were held to just 181 yards of offense.
This version of “Beamer
Ball” is good, but not great, defensively. They don’t have a single reliable
running back or wide receiver and Sean Glennon is an average quarterback on
his best days.
Yet, with two minutes
left in the game, the Hokies still held a 2-point lead and the chances were
that ECU was going to end up on the short end of a game in which it was
clearly the more impressive team. How was that possible?
Laundry.
It doesn’t make a
difference how bad Notre Dame is in a given year (yes, even last year), it
doesn’t matter if the Yankees are vintage or not, and when Duke hoops
suffered through that 13-18 season, do you think any win over the Blue
Devils came easy – or any celebration less sweet?
The helmets are still
gold, the pinstripes are still real and Mike Krzyzewski is still on the
sidelines – okay, so not in the 13-18 lost season of 1995, but you get the
point, right?
East Carolina has a real
chance this year to do something very special. Conference USA is shaping up
to be a fairly formidable egg to crack. Whether it’s Central Florida or
Southern Miss or UAB in the East or Houston or Tulsa in the West, this is
not going to be a smooth ride for anyone, let alone the Pirates who play all
three of those difficult division games on the road.
On top of that, Terry
Holland has “rewarded” Skip Holtz with a non-conference schedule with a trio
of games against the Atlantic Coast Conference plus Big East favorite West
Virginia.
The hardest thing about
breaking through as a team, as a program, isn’t upsetting a more heralded
opponent. It isn’t even going on the road in a hostile environment and
coming away with an upset victory. The most difficult thing to do is to win
a game against one of the big boys when you know deep in your heart that
coming away the winner is absolutely no surprise.
That’s when you’ve
arrived.
The Pirates are better
than N.C. State. The Pirates are better than Virginia. The Pirates were
clearly better than Virginia Tech last Saturday. West Virginia might be a
different story, but the boys in purple can flat out play.
It’s time for this
program, this team, to take care of the business at hand and beat the teams
they should beat. This year, for this team, that means most every week.
Your wife is right. There
comes a time in every man’s life when he has to learn how to do the laundry.
That time is this year, for this team.
[E-MAIL ADAM GOLD]
[ADAM GOLD ARCHIVES]
09/22/2008 04:11:05 AM |
