Will Navy Torpedo Deacons’ Bowl Hopes?
This is the time of year that as a beat guy covering a college football team I have to resist getting sucked into doing what I’ve learned so many times never to do.
Never, never, never bury a team that’s still alive.
Remember how much dirt we all heaped on the Deacons in 1999, Jim Caldwell’s seventh season as head coach? Caldwell, in his best imitation of Sisyphus, had shoved that boulder all the way up that monster hill to the precipice of success by the 10th week of the season. All the Deacons had to do was beat the always imminently beatable Duke (playing without its starting quarterback, tailback and placekicker) to ensure a winning season and become bowl eligible. By the end of the first quarter, Wake trailed 34-0 on the way to a 48-35 defeat. With No. 14 Georgia Tech and Joe Hamilton scheduled to play at Wake the next week, that was pretty much that for the Deacons’ chances.
So what was Ben Sankey doing riding the goal post above the post-game bedlam? He was celebrating a stunning 26-23 upset that lifted the Deacons into Caldwell’s first and only bowl trip.
What inspired this little jaunt back through yesteryear was the notion that if Wake Forest doesn’t beat Navy Saturday its chances of a winning season and a fourth straight bowl trip are rather bleak. A loss would leave the Deacons 4-4 with games against Miami (home), Georgia Tech (away), Florida State (home) and Duke (away) to play. The road to a winning season wouldn’t be impassable, but it would be rocky, crumbling and even perhaps mined in spots.
Now watch the Deacons lose Saturday and win the rest of their regular-season games, beat Virginia Tech in the ACC championship, kick Pittsburgh’s tail in the Orange Bowl and finish 10-4. Stranger things have, and will, happen.