They say you're not supposed to react to a situation until you've let the emotions settle and you're being level-headed about your decision-making. Rather than making a rash judgment that could hurt you in the long run, you should collect your thoughts and then proceed from there.
Apologies to whomever "they" might be, but I'm getting ready to speak with pain in my heart.
As everyone knows, I'm a Florida State diehard. For anybody that watched Monday night's game pitting the 'Noles against Miami, you know that's about as bad as it gets in terms of losing a game. Not only did we lose to a bitter in-state rival, we lost on a dropped ball in the endzone with no time remaining on the clock. Oh, and all of this came after we had a lead, but squandered it by letting the Hurricanes march down the field like they were playing a high school team.
To put mildly, tonight's game sucked.
I don't want to hear about how well both teams played. I don't want to hear about how Florida State QB Christian Ponder proved he might be ready to become a playmaker for the offense. I don't want to hear about how our receiving corps played better than anyone could've anticipated. I don't want to hear about how, even though we lost, we showed that we might be ready to play for another ACC Championship. I don't want to hear any of that.
We lost. End of story.
Losing sucks no matter how it comes. Blowouts suck. Close losses suck. Competitive-but-not-quite-in-the-game losses suck. I honestly don't care that we may have "played well". We're not freakin' Wake Forest or North Carolina or Maryland; some ACC basketball school that pretends like they care about football and looks for reasons to believe in their team.
We're Florida State, dammit, and we're supposed to win ballgames. Especially ones in which we score 34 points and give the defense a lead with 5 minutes to go in the 4th quarter.
There are a number of things to complain about: the secondary was godawful; the running game that was supposed to be better wasn't; there was no consistent pass rush to speak of with Everette Brown; and we showed the time management skills of Herman Edwards in the 4th quarter. I mean, it was terrible.
Sure, we'll regroup and beat Jacksonville State on Saturday. Then, I'm confident we'll go out to Provo and play well against a BYU team that everybody thinks is good now since they beat an Oklahoma team without Sam Bradford for a half by one point. Who knows, we might even make a nice little run in the ACC and win 6 or 7 conference games.
However, for one night at the beginning of the season, we gave away a win. A game that we should've won against a big time conference opponent was handed to them in a way that just makes me want to gag. As a matter of fact, I felt sick to my stomach after that game. So yeah, we might play better this season; and we might even win a conference championship.
But that doesn't, and won't, make me feel any better about losing to Miami to start the season.
~~ Lank
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