AJC > Sports > Hawks > Blog > Archives > 2007 > September > 03
Monday, September 3, 2007
How low can I go? Not much lower than this!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After a weekend that included the most humiliating loss in the storied history of college football (and arguably all of sports), I couldn’t crawl on my belly in the jungle and get any lower (and forgive me in advance for venting about Michigan, but surely you didn’t think I’d come here and ignore the subject, did you?) than I am right now.
I feel your pain Hawks fans. I know what it feels like, thank you Lloyd Carr, to be the laughingstock of your sport, justifiably so in my case as a Michigan fan.
Now I realize what it must be like to take heat from the rest of the world’s fandom and not have a snappy comeback because, well, most of what’s being said is in some way shape or form accurate, thank you again Lloyd Carr.
But unlike some cat who is only around to gloat when things are going well, I’m here to take your licks now that my Wolverines have been beheaded by mighty Appalachian State - and I refuse to hate on those boys from Boone, NC, because they’ve won more national titles in the past two years than my boys have won in my lifetime. The better [prepared] team certainly prevailed Saturday. And I can live with that.
That said, this was indeed the weekend from Hades for m and my big brother, who like me refuses to root for anyone else other than the Maize and Blue, despite our disdain for the head coach and his conservative ways. We suffered through the longest Labor Day weekend on record. And that’s not including the sweltering temperature over the grill (he ran the show and I was his assistant).
To make matters worse, we were so convinced that a victory was a given that we didn’t even bother watching. Early Saturday morning we slapped up a new door on the screened back porch of our parents’ house and then slid down to the Edward Jones Dome to watch Illinois and Missouri play their season opener (the capper was a the girl sporting a truly hilarious “MUCK FICHIGAN” t-shirt that expressed the jubilation of the crowd when it was announced that the Wolverines had joined the list of infamous upset victims on par with Mike Tyson after Buster Douglas knocked him into “oblivious”).
The two Michigan haters in our party (my pops and my son, who is a fair-weather fan of whatever big name team is closest to where we live at the time - he’s bragging on his Georgia Bulldogs these days) relished seeing our misery up close, as did the thousands of other haters in our midst. But we persevered. We sucked it up and took it all in, knowing full well that the jokes won’t last forever … will they?
No, I won’t get over this loss anytime soon, and thank you ESPN for riding this story harder than Mike Vick and Barry Bonds put together. But even if my boys run the table and smash somebody in a BCS bowl, it won’t help ease my mind. Pain like this doesn’t go away overnight. It just doesn’t.
So now all I can do is pour myself into all things Hawks.
And there’s no better time to get caught up in the work matrix than right now, with most of the Hawks returning to Atlanta to begin their so-called player arranged workouts in preparation for the Oct. 2 open of training camp.
It really is good to see someone taking their preparation so seriously (you might want to try that Lloyd Carr). The Hawks are so eager to get things started that they decided to come back an entire month early, just like the Portland TrailBlazers, another young team loaded with talent that needs every advantage to compete against more seasoned teams in its division and conference.
If chemistry development is the reason the Hawks are gathering so early, kudos to them. They’ve come back early in season’s past, but they were a much younger bunch then. To see them making the commitment now, with so many of them two, three and four years into their careers, is a sign that the proper foundation (despite a putrid won-loss record) for some sort of success is clearly in place. When that success translates into something that propels you beyond the regular season is anyone’s guess.
The truth is, players are always feeling good during the summer. Fort-five minutes of blind optimism three days a week must be written into the summer training regimen for most teams - how else to explain the unbridled confidence of guys like Zaza Pachulia (other than spiked Gatorade)?
So again, forgive me for venting, and stay tuned for updates on who looks like what and other assorted observations from Hawksville - the pre-training camp edition.
