The Saints winning the Super Bowl is a story I've been quietly hoping to happen since December 3rd. They deserved to win if for nothing else the horrific tragedies the city of New Orleans has persevered through. However, as the Saints knelt on the ball in their own end of the field and watched as time expired another sort of blessing happened: Hofstra University--the same school which canceled its football program at season's end--now has back-to-back Super Bowl champions.
Willie Colon was a 4th-round draft selection in the 2006 draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Two years later, Colon was the starting right guard on the Super Bowl champion Steelers. Marques Colston was plucked out of the 7th-round in that very same '06 draft by the New Orleans Saints. He has emerged to become a legitimate number 1 receiver and now also has a ring to compare to his college teammate's.
Admittedly, I was not up-in-arms about the cancellation of Hofstra football for the mere fact that I never saw a game that I actually remember who played and the team was mediocre at best. And while students protested with "Fuck Rabinowitz" shirts and made Facebook groups petitioning for the return of the team, I sat on my ass and didn't really give it two thoughts. After all, the program was losing $4 million a year--it only made sense to cut the team. Like in any other world, if you're not meeting expectations and you begin costing the company money, you're going to be fired. You don't have to be Donald Trump to know that.
However, last night's game got me thinking: If a team can be so bad on one level and put out such a poor product, then how can they produce two Super Bowl champions in back-to-back years? My answer would be that these coaches were better at teaching these kids the intangibles: the drive, the strive, the need to be the best. While head coach Dave Cohen and his staff may not have been the best at getting their players' to the execute x's and o's, I believe he was able to turn the players who had the talent level and skill set into motivated leaders. The players who came to Hofstra had no guarantees at a shot at the next level, they never had that privilege. I believe Cohen and his staff instilled that into his teams and made sure that if they did want to go to that next level it would be through hard work. That is something I think was overlooked by the coverage of Hofstra's cancellation.
To the reader's who are not a part of Hofstra you may not understand how much this is a blessing, especially those of you who attend big-time universities. Hofstra athletics is hardly anything worth bragging about. In fact, students are still steaming over George Mason's Final Four run in 2006--knowing damn well that it should've been Hofstra in the tournament and not them. And while I believe the majority of the school didn't care about the football team, the news of the cancellation caused a huge ripple effect among the community and the uproar was contagious. Football is an important part of American culture in general and to hear that it has been taken away from a small community--rather abruptly--was a shock.
It is nothing short of a blessing that a mere two months after the cancellation of the football program, there is a Hofstra alum with some Super Bowl bling on his finger. And it is a slightly ironic that there are now two Hofstra alums with Super Bowl bling in consecutive years.
So I raise my glass to you, Willie and Marques, for restoring some of the faith that was lost in the Hofstra football program. Maybe if Wayne Cherbet would come out of retirement we could go for three consecutive years.
1 comment:
Wes, that was a good read.
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