Ball State Football and the undefeated non-BCS teams

i like to keep up to date on my alma matter's football team. i fell in love with college football in college. i didn't care about any teams, but my little team. we were awful. most of the fans in the student section would leave well before the game was over. but the faithful few, including me, would stay until the end. we would hope that they would pull one last play that we could cheer and yell for, they often did although it merely put a dent in the oh so large gap between their winning and our losing. but despite all that right after i graduated a new quarterback started playing, he was freshman and he was good. there had been a couple new guys the year before at wide receiver and tight end. so three years ago, my senior year, the offense was starting to really come together. well this year is kind of the culmination of all that. and now we're ranked for the first time in history ball state is a ranked school. today we stand at 14 in the BCS standing. tonight we play against miami university in oxford, oh. but there are still so many who question whether we have earned a spot in coveted bowl game, and not just ball state, but utah and boise state as well. granted our schedule isn't as difficult as an SEC schedule, but i think if we continue this momentum through the last three games of the season, then we deserve to play in that arena.
because its a tremendous thing to go undefeated and it should be rewarded. schedules are often set twelve to twenty four months before it actually happens. and in the case of ball state, there is no way two years ago anyone would have seen an undefeated season coming. i contend that ball state, boise state and utah could hold their own, and its a shame that people would rather see the "haves" play in bowl games, who have not been successful, than the "have nots" play in a once in a lifetime arena. i think about those players, who only have four years to play, with only a few going on to national glory, and those players who have worked so hard to be undefeated, shouldn't they have a chance to play in "real" football. who knows they might just surprise you.
chirp. chirp.

i never know how to title these.

halloween, a time for ghouls, ghosts and dressing up. but somehow it makes me so sad. have you "A Perfect World"? it was a movie with Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood, in it Costner kidnaps a little Jehovah's Witness boy and they weirdly become friends, that's not the point. the point is, there is a scene where the little boy who is kidnapped gets to celebrate his first halloween, he dresses up as casper the friendly ghost. and there is something in that scene that i remember as being so sad. i saw that movie when it came out in 1993 and haven't seen is since. but i always think of seeing that little boy's masked casper face around halloween time.
this was my first halloween at home since i graduated from college, and also my first halloween at home where my mom wasn't sitting on the front porch dressed like a pumpkin handing out candy to kids. i didn't realize how difficult it would be here in decatur, without her. the strangest things remind me of her.
today there was a woman in the library when i was there who has some sort of disability and she was so much like my mom. i almost started crying right there.
well, i guess all you ever get is super-melancholy.