From afar we've watched quite a few games in recent memory affected by hurricanes. Seems like sometime in the 90's the NCAA world suddenly began paying attention to these beasts. With increasing frequency, several games a year now seem to be impacted by tropical systems, and for the first time one of these systems has influenced us.
Rightly so.
I love my football. And as a Razorback fan I hate the difficulty of our schedule this year. Taking away what is a badly needed bye week down the road is not a good thing for such a young team. But in the grand scheme of things the lives of millions of people measured against the fun and pageantry of a 3 hour contest should tilt the scales against football.
Right now in the Houston area, while I type this early in the morning, there are hundreds of thousands of households with lights on as people pack cars and run down to the store to fill up gas tanks. From Corpus Christi to Port O'connor to Galveston plywood is being bought at times more often reserved for deep slumber, and the sounds of cordless drills screwing the wood to window exteriors undoubtedly fills the air of coastal towns with names we've never heard.
While dads and sons do heavy lifting there are moms calling to as far away as Dallas trying to secure hotel rooms or calling distant relatives seen only at reunions begging for a spare couch...hoping cousins a few shades closer haven't beaten them to the punch.
And if a few thousand hotel room cancellations from a changed game date open up enough rooms for just a handful of evacuees, it might, just maybe, allow some families to get out of town and out of harm's way. It could be the factor that motivates someone that in frustration would have otherwise decided to stay in a dangerous situation.
But tonight, on a detached Arkansas Razorback message board or in our state's coffee shops tomorrow morning, you will find an outspoken minority begrudging the cancellation and second-guessing the decision makers.
For this minority, ask yourselves this. If it were your hometown in danger's way, your friends, your family, wouldn't you want hotel rooms in Fayetteville be open for evacuation? Wouldn't you want the state troopers who work parking at a game to instead be available to come secure your property or protect your life? Of course you would.
Hurricanes can be deadly. We've unfortunately had to re-learn this in recent years with over 1800 lives lost in New Orleans and along the Mississippi Coast. That some want to blame the new world of "hurricane-panic" on politicians would be laughable were it not such a grave situation. If anything, media hype can overplay the dangers, but this is not a bad thing. If just a handful of lives are saved because of media created anxiety then it will have been worth it.
I, like many of you, was looking forward to kicking back with friends and family to watch the game Saturday afternoon. I have been looking forward to renewing one of the greatest rivalries in college football history, and seeing what progress our young team has made. And I am not the least bit excited about so many back to back games on our schedule. This revision will undoubtedly negatively impact our win-loss record at the end of the season.
But let's face it, if ever there were a year we could afford to lose an extra game, this is it. We're not figuring to be in the national championship hunt, probably not even in a bowl game hunt at the end of 2008. In a year where Bobby Petrino is working hard to instill toughness in his young pups, this stretch of games will play into his hand.
I find it ironic that Junction, Texas is just a stone's throw from Austin. In the desert-like conditions at Junction is where Coach Bear Bryant's Texas A&M Aggies grew from a band of kids into tough young men who later ruled the dominion of college football. It was a climate-borne transformation where the foundation for success was laid. Losses came first, but in the long run the trust these men developed, the belief they had in one another, was forged here.
Maybe, just maybe, the wind whipped rains and reschedule in Austin will be our Junction. The tough stretch that lies ahead can only bring this team closer and next year these freshmen turned sophomores can look back at 2008 and say if we made it through that, then nothing is impossible.
In the end, the decision to move this game is the right one. And it's possible that for years to come people will second guess it. The 2008 football schedule was a gauntlet for our team, one that just got tougher. In 2011 these freshmen will be seniors...seniors who have already faced the toughest challenge of their football careers. That, Razorback Nation, is a good place to be.
So for the people of Texas, your lives are in God's hands. Hopefully things don't turn out as badly as it looks right now. This Razorback fan is praying for you and glad that my team is out of the way in this time of need. While I hope to come away from this event stronger as a football team, many of you hope to simply come away alive.
The rivalry may be heated, and we may hate one another as we take the field. But for this week, in the immortal words of Alan Jackson, "God Bless Texas".
