CFN: Wake gets win; Ole Miss gains respect
The great dramas in sports possess a rare ability to inspire sharply contrasting feelings at the same time within the same teams. By that standard, Saturday afternoon’s wild Winston-Salem white-knuckler proved to be a superior spectacle.
On a picture-perfect afternoon in the Carolinas, the winning team managed to walk off the field with humility and quiet relief, while the losing team managed to leave the stadium with an emboldened mind-set and a prouder gait. It was that kind of a day: Wake Forest might have prevailed on the next-to-last play of the game, an ice-veins 41-yard field goal by stud kicker Sam Swank, but the Rebels from Oxford, Miss., gained a lion’s share of respect in the college football world.
Swank, quarterback Riley Skinner and coach Jim Grobe are all proven performers in their sport, tested titans of the Saturday afternoon wars that are staged every autumn. There was no disputing Wake Forest’s credentials entering this contest, and the work of the Demon Deacons’ tremendous trio — on placekicks, under center and between the headsets — is precisely what carried them to an exhilarating, last-second victory in one of Week 2’s few enticing matchups. But while the home team deserves the laurels of victory, the team that stole the show was the visiting outfit from the Magnolia State.
foxsports.com
9/7/08
