(Apologia: I was very diligent Saturday, going so far as to keep thorough notes during the game. Since then, though, I can't seem to get those notes in close proximity to a working computer with an internet connection, which is why this post is late and lacking in facts and stats.)
My family tailgates in the Joel Coliseum parking lot, across the street from Groves Stadium. The Groves parking lot is now the exclusive domain of Deacon Club members who contribute a certain amount.
I'm not a snob, but this represents a big step for Wake Forest football. Once, an entire game day crowd could fit in the Groves Stadium parking. Nowadays, both that lot and the Joel lot are completely full by kickoff time, and merchants along Deacon Boulevard can make a little extra by charging anywhere from 5 to 10 bucks for a parking space.
My wife and I get to the parking lot three hours before game time, and the best spots - the shady spots - have already been taken. By Syracuse fans. We didn't expect this kind of turnout from the Orange faithful. Their team's coming off a one-win season, and northwest North Carolina's a long way from upstate New York. But apparently hope isn't the exclusive virtue of Wake Forest football fans.
Witness Groves Stadium just before kickoff: it'd be packed to the rafters, if it had rafters. I've never seen it packed for a nonconference game before. I don't think I've ever seen it this full at kickoff before; usually great gaps of empty seats are still being filled at the end of the first quarter. Jim Grobe has been like a booster shot to the hope quotient of Wake fans, and it has less to do with actual wins and losses than it does with the attitude he brings, the aggressiveness he demands from his players. At times in the past, Wake played like a beat dog instead of an underdog. That has yet to happen under Jim Grobe.
The third quarter of the Syracuse game contained a great example of Grobe's effect. DeAngelo Bryant takes the handoff around the right side and gets popped by a Syracuse linebacker, knocking the ball loose and back across the line of scrimmage. Ben Mauk, a redshirt junior QB who came to Wake with all kinds of gaudy high school numbers and hype, who took a nasty beating last season after earning the starting job for the opener but getting yanked halfway through the schedule, who is finally the unquestioned starting quarterback and leader of this team, who finally seems to have a strong grip on Wake's multiple offensive schemes and formations*, dives for the loose ball. So do two Syracuse d-linemen.
From where I sit, I can see the collision coming. Mauk had to see it coming. He gets his right arm over the ball when at least one of those big linemen lands on it. After the game, Grobe will call what Mauk did "the bravest thing" he's ever seen a QB do. But when the pile clears, Mauk is lying facedown on the ground, his legs kicking in pain. We're glad to see his legs move.
Mauk is wrapped on the field and carted off on a stretcher; we find out later he broke his arm above the elbow and dislocated his shoulder. He's done for the year.
Mauk completed his first pass for Wake two years ago, when he came in for Cory Randolph in a game at Clemson. He took his first snap and completed an 80-yard touchdown toss to Jason Anderson. So began the expectations, even though the pass was a bit of a floater that Anderson, an All-ACC receiver, had to come back for, and most of the yards on the play came from Anderson's broken-field running. But what really made the fans love Mauk, at least for a while, was his willingness to hit and get hit. On quarterback keepers Mauk made like the second coming of Jim Brown, lowering his shoulders and taking on defensive backs, never sliding or scooting out of bounds. I was in the stands when he did that, and I went nuts with everybody else, every time he did it, even though I knew it wasn't smart football. Grobe finally had to tell him, publicly, not to be so eager to court injury. Better he be able to get up for the next snap than gain an extra half-a-yard by standing up a cornerback.
Recovering a fumble is a different animal, though, one that requires less discretion and more reaction. Mauk did what he saw he had to do, apparently without having to think about it. And Wake got the ball back. Who knows if that's worth a starting quarterback.
Football coaches are always going on about commitment, usually when they're talking about the long, hard slog of summer practices, two-a-days, the aches and pains that build up over a season. But commitment is equally measured in a moment, a split-second, when a player has to choose so quickly he doesn't have time to realize he's making a choice. It's the kind of moment that can happen anywhere, that any one of us could face, but the nature of the game makes those moments far more likely to occur on a football field. That's one of football's attractions, to see others make the choices that we dread and crave at the same time. Hemingway called it 'grace under pressure,' and defined courage as 'the willful ignorance of likely consequences.' I'm not sure what Mauk did qualifies as 'willful ignorance'; I'm not sure he had time to think about what could happen, beyond the general and accepted acknowledgement that football is a dangerous game whose participants can be hurt - badly - on any given play. But for whatever else Mauk did or didn't do Saturday - and he did lead a touchdown drive on the opening possession - in that one instant he showed more commitment to winning, to his team, to getting Wake Forest a W, than any of the fans in the stands who have lionized or criticized him the past two years.
Mauk's replaced by redshirt freshman Riley Skinner*, who gets himself on the faithful's good side just a few plays later. He pitches the ball to Bryant, who's coming around left end, but instead of hanging back like most QBs do, Skinner keeps running right alongside Bryant. The fans who notice this barely have time to realize it, before a Syracuse defender comes into our field of vision. He's got an angle on Bryant, but Skinner's got an angle on him. Like Mauk's collision, we can see it coming. Unlike Mauk's, Skinner has the time and opportunity to think about what he's getting ready to do. He's got time to back off, to slow down, to shrink from what he could do. He's got time to hesitate and give it his minimum, and because he's a quarterback, not many people would blame him if he did.
But he doesn't: he hits the Syracuse defender so hard we can hear the pads collide; it's the last sound we hear before the Wake fans start screaming. It's an ugly block, but it's a good one, and it springs Bryant for a first down. Best of all, Skinner stays on his feet, unharmed, ready to get back under center and take the next snap. And if there was any question about his leadership - and screw the faithful, I'm talking about his teammates here - Skinner answered it.
Skinner leads a touchdown drive to give Wake its 20 points for the game, but any game balls need to go to the defense. Alright, yes, Syracuse was something like 117th in total offense in Division I-A last year, but the Wake defense looks no less dominant just because the opponent is weak. If I had my notes I could tell you exactly how many 2nd-half possessions in a row Syracuse went three-and-out, and how many Syracuse 'drives' were stopped inside their own 20-yard line. Put it this way: our seats are near the south end zone, which was what Syracuse was trying to reach in the fourth quarter. They stayed so far away that they could have slipped in a 12th man and nobody in our section would have noticed.
So Wake fans went home with a 20-10 win that was closer than it looked, at least until the defense took over in the second half. We went home with a starting QB lost for the season, but a replacement who - even though, for all we know, he can't pass on a four-lane highway - earned a great deal of respect. We went home with a defense that looks mighty hard to handle.
And we went home knowing that our next opponent is Duke, who lost to Division I-AA Richmond 13-0*. That would make anyone feel better, even Wake fans.
* If the Wake Forest admissions office is going to insist that football players meet the school's high academic standards, the coaches might as well use that to their advantage. The quote is with my notes, which I don't have, but one respected football analyst said something along the lines of "Wake has more formations than General Patton." I'm no respected football analyst, but I'd like to think I'm fairly knowledgeable, and I can't keep up with all the sets the Deacons show over the course of a game. Plus, they run a no-huddle offense with a lot of hot routes and motion in the backfield**. It's enough to make you dizzy before the ball's even snapped.
** Now, if the team you root for runs a no-huddle offense in which coaches send in plays from the sideline, and then the QB calls out the play to the rest of the offense, wouldn't you think your fellow fans might not want to start a raucous chant between plays WHILE YOUR TEAM HAS THE BALL? Don't you think that that might be a bad time to show how much noise you can make? Shouldn't that be saved for, oh, I don't know, maybe when an opponent is facing third down? Maybe the coaching staff has some system worked out, and has requested that the band and cheerleaders do this - getting the two sides of the stadium screaming "Wake" and "Forest" to each other to see who can scream louder - as part of their ongoing efforts to confuse the opposing defense. Otherwise, Wake's supporters have a whole lot to learn about football.
* The Winston-Salem Journal had a nice article about Skinner today: http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?c=MGArticle&cid=1149190472593&pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle
* It also helps that Carolina lost to a lightly regarded Rutgers team. Heh heh. Carolina fans had been out in force on sports talk radio the past week, predicting nine or even 10 wins for the Tar Heels. That might turn out to be a bit, um - well, the nice word would be optimistic. Since it's Carolina, though, I don't feel like being nice - it's downright delusional.
Appalachian gave NC State all they could handle, but couldn't hold on for the win. Same with Georgia Tech, who nearly upset Notre Dame.
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