Bravo, Johnnies
I awoke Sunday morning to an email from my father/sports correspondent, with the subject "24-6." That's the score by which the Johnnie football team dispatched big, bad Mount Union, winner of each of its last 55 games, to win the Division 3 National Championship. It's a stretch to call the Johnnies "underdogs" in any game, but they pulled it off perfectly in the press the week before the game. To listen to their players, you'd be led to believe they were the SJU Three Little Pigs, about to devoured by the Mount Union Big Bad Wolves. The game revealed that the Little Pigs are made of bricks, and the Big Bad Wolves were actually cross-bred offspring of a wolf and a miniature poodle. SJU's toughest tests of the season came against St. Thomas and Bethel in the regular season, two foes much more formidable than any SJU faced in the national playoffs, including the pipsqueaks from big, bad Mount Union. There's a certain justice in the powerful falling, as Mount Union did, and there will also be justice when Bethel, probably the second best team not only in the M.I.A.C. but also in the nation, knocks out its perennial nemesis, the big, bad Johnnies. For now, though, it's the Johnnies moment, richly deserved, the perfect end to their magical, record-breaking season. Hat's off!
I was looking at photos of the game and found this one, of a Johnnie Rat Packer, which is one of the funnier images I've seen. Check it out at:
http://www.d3football.com/gallery.php?photo&event=5935&photo=027
