Deaconball Victorious! Wake 9, Georgia Tech 6

Wake Forest football has completely undermined my purpose in keeping this blog, and I couldn't be happier.

This blog was supposed to be about living and dying with a team, a team that gave its fans no reason to expect great things.

Then this team went out and accomplished greater things than any Wake team before it.

Wake Forest is ACC champion. In football. In the era of expansion, the era that was supposed to make the ACC a football powerhouse, the era that was supposed to be dominated by Florida State, Miami, Virginia Tech.

Wake Forest is playing in a BCS bowl, the day after New Year's. For me, the New Year's bowls have always been a last gasp of college football, a chance to watch games as a dispassionate fan, enjoying the game for the sake of the game - until this year.

My brother said yesterday that "like the plays of Shakespeare, you can tease out the ramifications of this for a long, long time." I still can't wrap my mind around everything this means.

Once you finish grappling with the improbability of "little ol' Wake Forest" winning the conference championship - for the first time in my lifetime of following the Deacs - you come up against the fact that they won it without their starting quarterback and starting tailback, with their star linebacker playing on a bum ankle, with their third and fourth string tailbacks going out during the championship game with injuries.

They won it with a redshirt freshman that nobody wanted filling in at quarterback and losing only two games, throwing only four interceptions the entire season, and making big plays when Wake absolutely needed them.

It's the best team in Wake history, and the best team to root for that a fan could have. ABC flashed a graphic during the game showing the average graduation rate for Division I football programs - 58% - and the graduation rate for Wake Forest - 96%.

If you're looking for unnaturally talented athletes assured of making ridiculous amounts of money in the NFL, if that's the aspect of college football that brings you joy, don't bother watching Wake Forest.

But if you're looking for a team that plays with heart and brains and guts, a team that plays together, a team that plays for each other, then be sure to tune in to the Orange Bowl on January 2 and keep an eye on the Old Gold and Black.

I could go on about this until blogspot ran out of memory space. I could go on until I reached the end of the Internet. I can't say enough good things about this team, these players, these coaches, this incredible year. Yet I'm still somehow at a loss for words.

Go Deacs.