I can’t say a whole lot more at this point, but everyone who reads this, please wish me some Falcon luck tomorrow!! I’ll explain later!

Roll Along!!!

–G

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Okay, so I haven’t “met” any enemies lately, but I have read a blog.

A couple days ago, I slapped down a couple paragraphs on the situation at Ball State, relating it to what BG fans went through earlier this spring. So it was surprisingly refreshing yesterday when I stumbled on the blog of Ball State’s Peyton Stovall.

Stovall, like a number of his teammates, has every right to be discouraged about Ball State, considering by the time fall practice opens up he’ll be on his third head coach since hitting campus to go along with knee surgery in December 2005. Instead, flipping through his blog posts shows that he’s going to use his senior season to lead, not sulk, and that he has a true love and passion for his university similar to what many Falcon fans feel about BGSU. He’s working the summer (and apparently into the fall) as an intern with the SID office, and is beyond excited for their renovated football stadium to open up, and all the behind the scenes work leading up to that date. Heck, he even took pleasure in hammering out the BSU golf team media guides! If basketball doesn’t work out after his days in Muncie run out, he’s definitely on the right track to a nice career in athletics.

While it’s easy (and natural) to hate opponents, especially highly-skilled point guards, I think I might have to root for Peyton Stovall this season, and I’ll definitely be checking up on his blog.

In the meantime, I’d love to know if any BG athletes have similar blogs going, as “Stovall’s Summer Blog” is a nice read. I don’t know how booster rules and everything work, but if it’s cool, I’ve got space here for them and the door’s always open to our Falcons.

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It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times, to paraphrase Mr. Dickens.

The men’s basketball program is struggling, fans are getting restless at the results, or lack thereof, insults are thrown toward the head coach, who finally cashes in his chips and resigns. The same storyline that played out at BG in the springtime (and actually, over the past few years) just wrapped up at Ball State, and to be honest, I’m damn glad I’m a Falcon for this one.

Not that watching a generally likable guy in Dan Dakich be forced into a resignation was enjoyable, nor were the on-court events that led to that result, but Ball State found itself in a mess. And it’s still in a mess. The biggest question might remain, “How can you have eight pages worth of cheating on your resume, and still lose 22 games?” However it may be possible, Ronny Thompson did it. And now he’s high-tailing it out of Muncie, only to return to cash a check that he hopes to pilfer out of the university.

The Dakich saga was venemous at times, but nothing like what Ball State is headed for. I think that even with all the not-so-pleasant opinions of Dan Dakich the basketball coach, you’d be hard-pressed to find a BG fan that wouldn’t say hello, shake his hand, buy him a beer, whatever, if they ran into Dan on the street. In fact, the next handshake Thompson gets in Muncie may be the first, from the sounds of things.

If you were to find any positives in the Ball State debacle, it would be the solid reporting work done by Hoopwise’s Ray Mernagh, and in a larger part, Doug Zaleski of the Muncie Star-Press. While Ray has built a pretty solid rapport with the inner circle of MAC hoops, and throwing stories into the wind like he did with Thompson’s resignation is risky unless he’s absolutely sure, Zaleski has a career of, if he was wrong, covering Thompson’s teams on a daily basis. Not an easy task if the coach just thinks he was misquoted, I can’t imagine the cold shoulder for erroneously reporting a resignation. Both men stuck to some pretty big guns on this one, and in the end were dead on. Hopefully Ball State (and in a greater sense, the MAC as a whole) can rebound from this, and put this nasty chapter in the past very soon.

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Who would have thought that after early exits in both the NHL and NBA playoffs for former Falcons that it would be the Arena League that gave us something to turn our heads? But that was exactly the case on Saturday, as Josh Harris and Cole Magner played increased and important roles in helping the Columbus Destroyers to the Arena Bowl two weeks from tomorrow (July 29, 3pm on ABC).

Harris had been poking his way into the box score in recent weeks, covering kicks, mostly, but this week they threw him in for a play that had Falcon fans flashing back to his days on the Doyt Perry Stadium turf. Lining up under center, Harris took the snap, pitche to a wide receiver running a little (okay, a LOT) of misdirection, threw a nice, solid block to seal the end, allowing the WR time to roll out and throw the go-ahead TD pass. Only thing that would have made it better was if it were Cole Magner taking the pitch.

But don’t feel bad for he of the flowing blonde locks just yet. Magner caught the first touchdown of the game for the Destroyers, and made several key plays on onside kicks late in the game to help Columbus hold off the Georgia Force. Unfortunately, he apparently needs to spend more time schmoozing with the PR interns with the staff, as the game story on the team’s website repeatedly referred to him as Cole “Manger”.

Good luck to these two former Falcons as they try to bring some hardware to Columbus and continue to establish themselves in the professional ranks!

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In addition to the “Countdown to Kickoff” clock in the top right corner of the main BGSUsports.com pages, I recently unveiled a basketball version.

(Countdown clock removed due to design issue. Click here to count along with Coach Orr.)

It can also be downloaded here for use as an executable (.exe) file that pops up in your Flash player on the desktop. I know nothing of Macs or how something may work for that platform (widgets, I’m told), but I’m open to suggestions if anyone knows how to turn a flash movie into a widget.

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While I had researched and written a bit about Dave Wottle for BGSUsports.com, and knew some of the story behind his gold medal win in the 1972 Olympics, I had never thought about the video until it was posted yesterday at AZZ.com. Some of the fun is taken out of it by knowing the result, but it doesn’t make it any less exhilarating.

It’s reminiscent of a couple of the Triple Crown horse races this year, although seeing how far back Wottle is heading into the last 100 meters or so makes that finishing kick even more remarkable, if not a bit ridiculous.

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