Time to take the long view at QB

Lisa Simpson will not be nearly so happy after she reads we're touting Steve Probst as the starting QB instead of Cory Christopher.

So there I was in my recliner (actually, that’s where I am right now, too) Saturday night, listening to the Flying Dutchmen threaten to take an 11-point second quarter lead over Western Michigan and figuring I might have to pen the mother of all mea culpas today.

Remember when I said Hofstra should de-emphasize the football program? Never mind. After the rout of Western Michigan Saturday, it’s Big East or bust! Upgrade to 85 scholarships immediately or cancel my Pride Club membership!

Alas, a touchdown that would have given the Dutchmen that 11-point lead was called back due to penalty and Western Michigan scored two quick touchdowns before the half to take the lead for good on its way to a closer-than-it-appeared 24-10 victory.

There’s some positives to be gleaned from remaining competitive against a I-A team that made a bowl game last year (albeit something along the lines of the Fargo Bluebonnet Cherry Bowl presented by NobodyGivesARatsAss.com), especially in the aftermath of last week’s thoroughly demoralizing 47-0 loss to Richmond.

To bounce back and throw quite a scare into Western Michigan speaks well for the players as well as the coaches. There is no shame in losing to a I-A team, and these kinds of near-misses serve as a reminder of just how handy those extra 22 scholarship players are. It’s one thing to outplay a I-A team for one half, quite another to overcome the depth disadvantage for 60 minutes.

But it was tough not to wonder what if, as well, and to think this was a moral victory that could have been so much more. The Dutchmen defense played an inspired game as it produced two goal-line stands in the first half and forced and recovered two fumbles on consecutive possessions in the third quarter with Western Michigan up 17-10. But a methodical offense could not capitalize as the Dutchmen averaged just 4.1 yards per play in the second half and produced no points despite twice driving inside the Broncos’ 35-yard-line twice.

Some credit, of course, must go to the Western Michigan defense, but a piecemeal offense has been a pretty consistent problem the last two years for the Dutchmen, who ranked ninth in the CAA last season with an average of 4.8 yards per play. They recorded a lower average gain per play in six of their eight losses.

The average gain per play is a tick higher this year (4.9 yards per play), but the total is inflated by a 467-yard outburst in the 40-24 win over Bryant. Remove that game from the equation and the Dutchmen are averaging 4.2 yards per play.

All of which makes me wonder how much longer Cory Christopher will be the starting QB. Christopher is already sort of splitting time with sophomore Steve Probst, who took 11 snaps Saturday, and he appeared on his way to a similar time share with Joe Sidaris before Sidaris suffered a knee injury that could sideline him until November.

I usually subscribe to the theory that teams that play two quarterbacks don’t have one. And since this is not shaping up as a playoff-bound season for the Dutchmen, might it be better for the long-term view to ditch the rotation and go with Probst full-time?

Trying to ride out last season with Christopher made a lot of sense with the Dutchmen in obvious rebuilding mode and Cohen reluctant to burn a redshirt season for either Probst or his fellow freshman Joe Sidaris. The possibility of a redshirt sophomore season is obviously gone now for Probst.

And while Christopher is an exciting player to watch, his clock management skills Saturday—when he had to burn two timeouts with the clock stopped in the second half—was Herm Edwards-esque and he’s been the starting signal-caller for 11 of the last 16 games. His ceiling is pretty defined, while Probst remains an unknown quantity.

Going with Probst all night Saturday probably wouldn’t have a what if near-miss into the CAA’s fifth victory against a I-A school this year. But better for the Dutchmen to make the change now instead of wondering next season how much further along they might be if they had a more experienced starting player behind center.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

Here are some words that rhyme with Cory: Gory…story…allegory…starting QB…

Lisa Simpson likes all things Corey/Cory, so she's quite pleased with Dave Cohen's choice of starting quarterback.

Turns out Cory Christopher’s days as the Flying Dutchmen’s starting quarterback didn’t end when he suffered a season-ending hip injury against Maine last October. Hofstra coach Dave Cohen announced Thursday that Christopher won the starting job over sophomore Steve  Probst, who ended last season as the starter, and redshirt freshman Joe Sidaris.

(Parenthetical aside: This is the fun part of being a fan of a I-AA school—you don’t get a coach treating the identity of his starting QB as if it’s the meaning of life. You don’t get a coach going all smug and arrogant and insisting he’s going to play all three of his QBs.)

Probst seemed to be the choice of Dutch Nation, but I liked what I saw out of Christopher last season. He wasn’t the flashiest signal-caller, he looks more like a tight end and he didn’t, to borrow a Tom Pecora phrase, fill up the stat sheet in resounding fashion, but he did a pretty good job of inheriting the starting job at literally the last minute and generating some sparks for an offense decimated by injury.

The Dutchmen scored 40 points in three of Christopher’s seven starts. The two teams that held Hofstra without a touchdown with Christopher at the helm won a bowl game (UConn) and ended the regular season as the top-ranked team in I-AA (James Madison).

Most impressively, Christopher marched the Dutchmen down the field in the final minute in consecutive weeks against Albany and Rhode Island to put them in position to kick a tying or winning field goal.  He seemed to have whatever “it” is that allows a player to perform better as the game gets closer.

That said, with the Dutchmen doomed for a rebuilding season, it felt as if Christopher was a place-holder, a Steve DeBerg-type who absorbs some punishment for the good of the team before handing the baton off to the future of the program. With Cohen hoping to redshirt Probst as well, Christopher would have taken every snap last year if he didn’t get hurt, so it seemed as if the future arrived the moment Probst stepped on to the field in Maine.

Perhaps, as has been bandied about on the CAAZone boards, Christopher winning the job will allow Cohen to keep one eye on subsequent seasons by redshirting Probst, which would allow him to enter next year with two highly touted sophomores vying for the job.

But the future is here for the Dutchmen, who need much more than a temp at quarterback in a season in which they are being greeted—internally as well as externally—with great expectations. Whatever “it” is, Cohen clearly expects to see a lot of it this year out of Christopher.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

Arrrgh. We still passionately loathe you, Seth Meyers

This is about Hofstra's football nightmare, not one endured by Fake Seth Meyers. Sigh.

If you’re like me (I’m sorry) then you spent your childhood wolfing down the Matt Christopher sports books and learning that hard work and humility triumphed over the bad guys every single time. The Christopher books eventually beget various good-guys-win books purchased via the East School book club which eventually beget a real-life appreciation of the underdog.

I didn’t see the U.S. Olympic ice hockey team shock the big, bad Russians in 1980—actually, nobody saw it live, imagine that—but I remember walking around school chanting “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” One of the great memories of my youth is begging and pleading my parents to let me stay up and watch the 1983 NCAA Tournament championship game between North Carolina State and Houston, won, of course, at the buzzer by N.C. State when Lorenzo Charles dunked Dereck Whittenburg’s air ball. Two years later, Villanova truly scored one for good over evil by shocking Georgetown with The Perfect Game.

Of course, as you get older, you realize that life isn’t as neat and tidy as it is in fiction and that the bad guys quite often win. And if you didn’t know this, dear Hofstra fan, you sure as hell learned it in 2006.

(Of course, if you’re a fan of the Tampa Bay Rays, you’re thinking today that reality does match fiction. But you’re probably also a front-runner. Once baseball season is over, you can start watching the Tennessee Titans!)

The point of all this: We were reminded again this weekend, at Defiantly Dutch HQ, that the bad guys win most of the time as injury-wracked Flying Dutchmen football team lost to Maine 41-40 in double overtime (recap from the Bangor newspaper), Northwestern destroyed Purdue 48-26 and moved into the top 25 in the coaches poll and Big Fat Stupidhead Seth Meyers continued to raise his profile on a suddenly resurgent Saturday Night Live.

It’s not right, you know. Hofstra should have begun its inspiring, let’s-do-it-in-spite-of-Fake-Seth-Meyers run to the I-AA national championship by knocking off Maine, especially after the Flying Dutchmen fell behind 13-0 less than three minutes into the game and came back to take a 17-13 lead before a spate of injuries—including the worst-case yet almost unavoidable scenario involving Cory Christopher—forced Dave Cohen to rebuild the offense on the fly.

Christopher, who had taken every snap this season because his only backups were freshmen Steve Probst and Joe Sidaris, both of whom Dave Cohen hoped to redshirt, was hurt in the second quarter and replaced by Probst (who can probably now look forward to a redshirt season in 2009). Running backs Brock Jackolski, the freshman whiz kid, and Justine Buries, the grad student and former New Mexico State player, were also hurt.

Yet Probst (135 yards and three TDs passing, 63 yards rushing) directed a game-tying drive early in the fourth quarter and the Flying Dutchmen created a miracle turnover in the final minute—freshman Chris Edmond, who made a team-high 13 tackles, stripped Maine quarterback Mike Brusko of the ball at the six-yard-line following an 18-yard gain and Ray McDonough recovered it—to force overtime.

Probst threw two TDs in overtime, but Roger Williams missed the PAT following the second score and Maine scored on the first play of its second possession and nailed the subsequent PAT to win it for the Black Bears.

The loss was doubly disappointing for the Flying Dutchmen because a win would have catapulted them into a tie atop the CAA North with New Hampshire. Of course, there are no playoff berths for winning one half of the CAA. Nor do I have any misconceptions of Hofstra’s season lasting beyond Nov. 22, especially with three top 20 teams still awaiting the Flying Dutchmen in November. But still, to be in first place in the North more than halfway through the season—and with a winnable game against reeling Delaware coming up Saturday—would have been a pleasant surprise given the given the rebuilding nature of this season.

The rebuilding just got a little steeper, as well, if Christopher is out for an extended period of time. While it was encouraging to see (or, in this case, read) Probst acquit himself well off the bench, Dave Cohen and offensive coordinator David Patenaude have a pretty big challenge in figuring out what to do over the final five games.

The Flying Dutchmen haven’t really established an identity on offense. The only player to carry the ball more than 20 times in a game has been Christopher, and we all saw how that worked out. Yet the staff has been reluctant to overwork Jackolski (understandable, since he appeared headed for a redshirt year himself two months ago) and Everett Benjamin, who played well after moving to tailback from fullback Saturday and scored the go-ahead TD in the second OT, has exceeded 11 carries just three times in his first 19 collegiate games.

Cohen surely doesn’t want to burn another redshirt, so the goal should be to keep Probst upright (and, perhaps, to scour campus to see if someone wants to walk on and hand the ball off if something happens to Probst) and hope that he develops chemistry in a hurry with receivers Ottis Lewis and Anthony Nelson, who caught 11 of Probst’s 14 completions.

It probably won’t result in a return to the Gardi-era shootouts, or allow us to get the last laugh at Fake Seth Meyers. But at this point, the goal for the Flying Dutchmen should be to get into 2009 in one piece—or as close to it as possible.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

To the extreme I rock this blog like a vandal

If you were in high school in 1990, you are singing the song right now. You know it. And you also owned the tape or CD at some point. Admit it. I am.

A friend of mine in Boston, Chris Price, writes a cool column about the New England Patriots every Monday titled “Ten Things We Learned Yesterday.” I’m going to pull a Vanilla Ice here and borrow liberally from Chris (his column goes “ding ding ding dingy ding-ding, mine goes “ding ding ding ding dingy ding-ding”—special thanks to Loyal Reader Jill for still knowing this off the top of her head and sending me this link for confirmation) with “Three Things We Learned Saturday,” when the Flying Dutchmen outlasted Bucknell 45-31 (recap is from the Bucknell-area newspaper).

1.) Hofstra can score at will against I-AA opponents with less than the maximum 63 scholarships.

2.) Hofstra is considerably less successful scoring, at all, against opponents with 63 or more scholarships.

3.) There are no more games against opponents with less than 63 scholarships and six games left against teams with 63 scholarships.

Therefore, 1+2+3 = Saturday may be as good as it gets for Hofstra the rest of the year.

(BTW, since I’ve already sunk lower than I ever thought possible with the Vanilla Ice recollections, I may as well say hearing “Ice Ice Baby” always reminds me of Columbus Day weekend and my senior year of high school, because I remember going to the local dance club Sunday night and hearing “Ice Ice Baby”—which was more popular than you can possibly imagine before we all learned what a fraud Vanilla Ice was—seemingly played every 15 minutes. “Ice Ice Baby” was also the senior song for the class of ’91 at Torrington High School. Oh look at that, I’ve sunk lower. Let’s move on.)

Not that I’m trying to be negative here. If this is going to be a rebuilding season—and it was shaping up that way even before starting quarterback Bryan Savage suffered a season-ending back injury prior to the UConn game and starting running back Larry Gaskins left school after it—then a game like the one Hofstra enjoyed Saturday, when it scored the most points in the Dave Cohen era, is vital for confidence in the short-term and success in the long-term.

It further provides a foundation for the 19 underclassmen who started against Bucknell, including the 1-2 punch of Brock Jackolski (170 yards and three touchdowns on nine carries, 18 yards on three catches and 107 yards on three kickoff returns) and Cory Christopher (148 yards passing and one touchdown, 54 yards rushing and two touchdowns).

But the last time the Flying Dutchmen set a Cohen-era record for most points in a game (43 against Stony Brook Sept. 26), they set the program’s record for biggest whuppin’ ever a mere six days later in a 56-0 loss to James Madison. So what can we expect next week after this latest record-setting outburst?

Probably not a 63-0 loss to Maine, but Hofstra’s challenges will likely go beyond merely getting to middle-of-nowhere Orono. (I say that to see if my two friends in Maine are really reading the blog, muahaha) The Black Bears aren’t nearly as formidable a foe as top-ranked James Madison, but they were impressive in using a 17-point fourth quarter to stun no. 24 Delaware, 27-10, in front of a crowd that included Delaware grad and vice presidential candidate Joe Biden (Hey Joe, does the Hofstra Arena look familiar? It should. Here are reminders here and here. Yes, I am now trash-talking a potential vice president.). Especially since the game is in Maine—not Hempstead, as Newsday thinks.

The Flying Dutchmen are explosive against lower-tier opponents but minimalistic against those stocked with scholarships. Hofstra scored 42 points against UConn, Albany (which, as you know, has one scholarship), Rhode Island and James Madison. That’s less than half as many points, in twice as many games, as they’ve scored against Stony Brook and Bucknell. And the inexperience on both sides of the ball is surely more apparent against better competition.

Don’t get used to the Gardi-type offensive outburst and winning margin the Flying Dutchmen enjoyed against Stony Brook and Bucknell. But maybe those experiences lead to another Gardi-type run at the playoffs next year.

***

A few other Hofstra- and CAA-related bits and bytes:

—How come nobody told me admission to the Bucknell game was free? And forget about Hofstra being inspired to do the same: Attendance Saturday was 2,444, well less than half of the average attendance thus far this season at Shuart Stadium (5,639).

—Amazingly, Stony Brook is STILL on pace to score negative points this weekend. Check out my buddy Chris Lang’s coverage of Liberty’s shutout of the Seawolves.

—Anyone see the last-second, tie-breaking 69-yard punt return for a touchdown by James Madison’s Scotty McGee top SportsCenter’s plays of the day Saturday? (Bonus: The Hofstra-Bucknell score appears along the bottom of the screen late in the clip) McGee’s dramatic score capped a 10-point comeback in the final 3:21 as the Dukes edged no. 5 Richmond 38-31.

—I added to and re-organized the links on the right hand side of the page. As always, please patronize my friends by clicking on their websites and blogs. But please don’t patronize them like bunny rabbits.

—Here's an extra reminder to make sure you check out and bookmark The Blog Formerly Known As CAA: Life as a Mid Major. Michael Litos, whose work at CAA:LAMM set a sky-high standard for the rest of us and whose uncanny good timing is the envy of authors everywhere, relaunched and renamed the blog over the weekend. Thanks to Mike for the kind email and for including DD among his links. Very cool.

—And really, we should bring today’s blog full circle: His credibility long destroyed, Vanilla Ice destroys the master copy of “Ice Ice Baby”—as well as much of the MTV studio—in this awesomely hilarious 1999 clip. Check out the eclectic mix of commentators on the set, including CAA grad Jon Stewart and Chris “Why did only Will Ferrell recover from A Night At The Roxbury?” Kattan.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Hofstra vs. Bucknell: Like clockwork, every 14 years

"Hey Nat I know you said you'd tell my dad if I ever bet again, but this guy wants to bet me Hofstra won't play Bucknell again for another 14 years!"

Seeing Bucknell on the football schedule brings back a lot of fond memories. The first football game I ever covered at Hofstra—and the first road game I ever covered in any sport—was at Bucknell on Sept. 10, 1994. It involved getting up at 5:30 am—amazingly, I did not sleep through the alarm—and taking the spirit support/band bus to Lewisburg, PA.

I remember packing a Walkman (click the link, kiddies) and a lot of tapes I’d recorded off CD, including this criminally underrated gem by Cheap Trick which I now have loaded on my iPod. (No idea why I can remember stuff like that, yet forget to do the laundry)

I remember Bucknell handing out “Hammer Hofstra” buttons as fans walked in. I should have grabbed one of those, especially since Hofstra hammered Bucknell 45-21. It’d be a cool memento—not as cool as a basketball signed by VBK and three other guys, but pretty neat nonetheless.

You probably could have made a lot of money if you bet me that night that Hofstra would not play Bucknell again for another 14 years—if only I could have found somebody willing to bet on the future schedules for Hofstra football. Hey, I bet this guy would have chased that action! (Watching a Very Special Episode of Beverly Hills 90210 as I write has its advantages)

At the time, the Flying Dutchmen were in their second season as a full-fledged Division I-AA independent and just beginning to stir as The Little Team That Could. The administration recognized it couldn’t remain an independent forever and was hopeful that playing multiple games per season against Patriot League foes would lead to an offer to join a conference that, like Hofstra, was filled with schools whose football teams had just moved from Division III to I-AA and did not award scholarships in football.

Hofstra also believed it was a good academic fit with the Patriot League, which is one tier below the Ivy League (I’ll pause long enough for you to choke your laughter). The Patriot League—filled with institutions at least a century older than Hofstra—did not think likewise and ignored Hofstra’s pleading eyes.

The Flying Dutchmen’s brilliant ’94 season changed the University’s expectations for the football program. In January ’95, Hofstra gave up on the Patriot League—whose existence appeared endangered with Fordham and Holy Cross reportedly seeking new homes—and began offering scholarships as it turned its gaze towards the Yankee Conference.

“The reason we held back on football scholarships is that we wanted to maintain our relationship with the Patriot League,” President James Shuart told Newsday in 1995.

That relationship came to a screeching halt once Hofstra began offering scholarships. The Flying Dutchmen played four Patriot League teams in 1993 and three apiece in 1994 and 1995, but since then, the program has played more playoff games against Patriot League foes (two) than regular season games (one).

“We’re not playing with the same type of kids they’re playing with,” Fordham coach Nick Quartaro told Newsday after Hofstra beat the Rams, 36-15, in 1995. It was the last game between the two schools, who met 22 times in the previous 23 years.

While feelings were no doubt bruised on both sides, Hofstra and the Patriot League thrived independent of each other. Hofstra eventually landed in the conference formerly known as the Yankee and currently known as the CAA and made the playoffs as an independent in 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2000 before winning the A-10 in the program’s debut season in 2001. A CAA school has reached the I-AA title game four times in the last five years and four of the top 10 teams in this week’s I-AA Top 25 poll are from the CAA, including top-ranked James Madison.

The Patriot League survived, but with just six football schools, it accepted Towson as a football-only member in 1997. Joe Gardi, who was offended by the Patriot’s snub, always took great delight in pointing out how the conference had to stoop to accepting a state school in order to remain viable. (Towson left for the CAA after the 2003 season)

Despite its non-scholarship status, the Patriot League receives an automatic bid to the I-AA tournament—Lehigh lost to Hofstra in 1999 but beat the Flying Dutchmen in 2001—and Gardi had to like what he saw in 2003, when Colgate proved non-scholarship opponents could run with the big dogs by reaching the Division I-AA championship game, where it fell to Delaware 40-0.

The funny thing is I’d bet today’s Powers That Be would be perfectly content if Hofstra had landed in the Patriot League and if Bucknell was an annual foe instead of a once-every-three-Olympiads-and-then-some non-conference opponent. It’s no secret that the football team is a blight on the bottom line—as one unidentified member of the athletic department described the program to Newsday’s Steve Marcus in 2004: “Dig a hole, put five million in it and throw dirt over it”— nor that President Rabinowitz isn’t a huge fan of athletics in general.

But Hofstra’s too invested in the CAA to turn back now. The bright side to remaining in the top I-AA conference in the land is the opportunity to make back some of the football investment via $250,000 games against I-A schools such as UConn, Boston College and Army.

There’s no money to be had in visiting Bucknell for the first time in 14 years, just a chance for the Flying Dutchmen to erase the sting of last weekend’s record-setting thrashing at the hands of James Madison. Conventional wisdom says Hofstra should beat the non-scholarship Bison, who were picked to finish sixth in the seven-team Patriot League, but, well, that didn’t work so well against Albany. And Bucknell—which is 3-1 and no stranger to nail-biters; its four games have been decided by a total of 14 points—is surely not lacking for motivation in its only game of the season against a program with the full allotment of scholarships.

I’ll guess two things: That Dave Cohen and his staff pray Cory Christopher can continue to take every single snap…and that special teams will be the difference in another game decided by less than seven points. Which, you know, makes me nervous.

(To the surprise of no one, I wrote much more than I expected, so the mailbag and links will have to wait until next week)

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

I don’t know what it is, but Cory Christopher has it

For his next trick, Cory Christopher will nail "Poison" in Air Band...even though he was just three years old when Bell Biv Devoe released the song. That's very depressing, BTW.

Did you think Cory Christopher played well in the fourth quarter Saturday? Well, take a look at the play-by-play. He was even better than you thought—in fact, Christopher was just about perfect in the fourth as he directed three scoring drives to lead the Flying Dutchmen past Rhode Island, 23-20.

Christopher was 10-for-13 passing for 113 yards in the fourth. All three incomplete passes were intentional spikes to stop the clock during the frantic 58-yard, 49-second drive that resulted in the game-winning 38-yard field goal by freshman Roger Williams. He also rushed five times for negative-1 yard—a nine-yard sack dropped him below zero—and a touchdown.

It was no fluke for Christopher, who has thrived in the 15 (or more) minutes that separate the caretaker quarterbacks from the difference-makers. Christopher did his first John Elway impersonation Sept. 13 against Albany, when he presided over an 18-play drive that ended with Brian Hanly missing a 34-yard field goal with nine seconds left. Christopher also put the Flying Dutchmen in position for another field goal on their lone overtime possession.

In the fourth quarter and overtime of the last two games, Christopher is 21-of-31 for 214 yards and has rushed 13 times for four yards and a touchdown (the four sacks he incurred are counted as carries). In those fourth quarters, Hofstra held a 21:29-8:31 advantage in time of possession.

Christopher’s fourth quarter performances are symbolic of his revelatory emergence as the center of the Hofstra offense. Nobody knew what to expect when Christopher was thrust into the starting lineup at the last minute against UConn Aug. 28, and his understandably inconsistent performance against the potential Big East champs further tempered expectations for 2008. But while the Flying Dutchmen were more prolific against Albany and Rhode Island last year—when they scored 65 points in a pair of wins—Christopher has generated the type of consistency and chemistry Bill Belichick would love to get out of a backup quarterback.

Bryan Savage—a pretty good dual threat himself and someone who appeared to be in no danger of losing playing time to Christopher before his season-ending injury—accounted for 62.7 percent of Hofstra’s offensive plays last year (367 passes, 118 rushes).

Christopher is on pace to obliterate those totals. Through three games, he’s had a hand in 72.5 percent of the Flying Dutchmen’s offensive plays (99 passes and 62 rushes). That puts him on pace to throw 363 passes and rush 228 times. The latter figure, remarkably, would place him within shouting distance of the school record for carries in a season, set by Trevor Dimmie (265) in 2000.

It’s also impossible to underestimate the confidence a player like Christopher can create amongst his teammates with those cool-under-pressure fourth-quarter drives. A leader is hard to describe but immediately identifiable. And there’s no teaching what Christopher has displayed the last two weekends—nor any doubt now that he’ll be “that” player for the Flying Dutchmen the next two seasons.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

We just witnessed a miracle and I want you to [TV edit] acknowledge it!

I was a sophomore in high school the first time I figured my procrastination had done me in. I had a research paper due in English class on a Wednesday, and as that week began I realized I was completely screwed. The research wasn’t done, the writing wasn’t done and none of it was close to done. And worst of all, there was no way to keep this from my mom, who had to decipher my chicken scratchings and type the paper for me on a typewriter (click the links, kids, so you can appreciate how good you’ve got it).

I staved her off for a while on Tuesday, but it was getting to be the time of night where I could no longer tell her it was coming soon. Pretty soon she’d realize it wasn’t done and pretty soon she’d realize she’d be up all night first helping me finish the paper and then typing it. And it would get ugly. Real ugly. Ugly as in my dad’s going to tell me he’s disappointed I’m making my mom cry ugly.

Then the news came: Power outage at the school. No school Wednesday.

I felt a sense of abject relief I never knew possible. There was no way out, yet I’d escaped. I was headed for certain doom, yet Clarence and Miriam apparently took time out from saving buses full of bickering, Christmas caroling kids to spare me a big fat F and a summer-long grounding. I was lost in the middle of the desert and I magically found a Comfort Inn.

I mention this nearly 20-year-old memory not to upset my mother but because I figure the Flying Dutchmen felt a similar sense of pardoned-at-11:59-p.m. relief right around 4 pm Saturday, when Rhode Island kicker Louis Feinstein pulled a John Carney (the one with the Saints, not the 76-year-old man who keeps nailing field goals for the Giants) and replaced Hofstra’s Brian Hanly as the sickest man in America by missing a PAT that would have given the Rams a one-point lead with less than a minute to play.

Of course, maybe the Dutchmen would have won anyway thanks to quarterback Cory Christopher, who, for the second straight week, directed an Elway-esque length-of-the-field march to put Hofstra in position to win the game. This time, walk-on kicker Roger Williams booted a 38-yard field goal with three seconds left and then made the game-ending tackle on the subsequent kickoff to end a frightfully good Cal-Stanford impersonation—albeit without the band on the field—at the Hofstra 20-yard-line to seal a thrilling 23-20 win.

However it happened—a Jules-esque miracle or an Elway-esque drive—it had to happen, because after 59 minutes and 13 seconds Saturday, it was abundantly clear that Hofstra could not afford to lose to Rhode Island. Losing to Albany seven days earlier was disappointing because the Flying Dutchmen should be long past the days of losing to a non-scholarship program (sorry…one-scholarship program).

But a loss Saturday would have been demoralizing because it would have been the most obvious sign yet that it’s just not meant to be this season. Sure, it’s easy for those of us over here to say stuff like that, and football coaches thrive on getting their players to forget the past and ignore the long-term view in favor of focusing only on the next game on the schedule.

Still, to lose that game in the last minute would have been crushing. For much of Saturday, it looked as if Hofstra had completely rebuilt itself in the seven days following the Albany upset. Rhode Island racked up 43 points and 517 yards the week before, yet a defense that had trouble wrapping up Albany’s Dave McCarty quieted the Rams following a quick first score (it’s rare you can truthfully use the phrase “before the fans even settled into their seats,” but the Rams drove 73 yards in 97 seconds and were up 7-0 as my wife and I were still filing in), forced three turnovers and, at one point, held them to one first down or less on seven straight drives.

The Flying Dutchmen dominated the Rams in just about every offensive category, including total yards (476-341) and time of possession (37:22-22:58), rushing yards (211-93) and first downs (25-15). Hofstra held the ball for at least nine minutes in each of the last three quarters.

A month ago, Christopher was slotted for backup duty and Brock Jackolski was headed for a redshirt, but they once again proved eminently qualified for their starring roles by combining for 531 all-purpose yards.

Even the special teams emerged, albeit after halftime: The struggling Hanly, who missed a PAT and a field goal before suggesting to Dave Cohen at intermission that he be benched in favor of Williams, threw a perfect touchdown pass to Ottis Lewis off a fake field goal attempt early in the third quarter.

Alas, that was called back due to penalty, and as the fourth quarter progressed it appeared as if Hofstra would be done in by ill-timed mistakes and failures to capitalize. Jackolski’s 64-yard run gave the Dutchmen, up 17-14, a first down at the one with less than six minutes left. But Hofstra gained no yardage on first or second down and Christopher was sacked on third down, forcing the Dutchmen to use their last timeout (they called three timeouts in a span of three minutes in the fourth) and to send Williams out to kick a 33-yard field goal.

A personal foul on the kickoff gave Rhode Island a first down at its 46, and Anthony Ferrer rambled 21 yards on fourth-and-one to give the Rams a first down at the one with 51 seconds left. He scored on the next play, setting up the Miracle on FieldTurf.

Never mind how crushing it would have been to lose on a day when Hofstra did so much right. It would have been soul-sucking, too, to lose on a Homecoming straight out of central casting. Back in my day, Homecoming was played in monsoons (anyone else remember how Homecoming ’95 was nearly postponed because of torrential rain and lightning?) and in front of sparse crowds.

So I didn’t recognize what we saw at Hofstra Saturday: Brilliant skies, folks tapping kegs, tailgating and playing touch football in the parking lots and several thousand fans actually standing, screaming and hugging one another in the game’s final seconds. Who are you and what have you done with my apathetic Hofstra?

I long ago gave up on the idea that Hofstra could ever build a fan base on the momentum generated by its sports teams. But still…it was nice to see. And it’s a lot easier to lure a giant chunk of the 6,107 who showed up Saturday—and that was a legitimate number—back to the Stadium in five weeks fresh off a dramatic win rather than an agonizing loss.

As for the football team itself: The schedule is still brutal—the Dutchmen, who visit Stony Brook Friday, still have to face five of the top 12 teams in the current I-AA poll, including top-ranked James Madison Oct. 4—and who knows what kind of shape Hofstra will be in by the time it hosts Delaware Oct. 25. But a last-minute power outage—pardon me, miracle—means the worst-case scenario isn’t as bad as it looked a week ago.

Jerry Beach can be reached at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com.

Albany is who we used to be! And we let them off the hook!

(Hi. I'm former Red Sox first baseman/outfielder David McCarty. That kid from Albany may think he's pretty good, but has he ever hit a game-winning homer at Fenway, mopped up in a big league game and won a World Series ring, all in the same season? I didn't think so)

Did that game Saturday night look a little familiar?

Did you sense Albany, already bursting with the belief they could knock off a Big Bad School With A Full Allotment Of Scholarships, gaining confidence that it could accomplish the seemingly with every possession?

Did you look across the field at the Albany cheering section as Hofstra methodically drove down the field in the final five minutes of regulation and remember the rapid-fire thought process: “We’ve come too far to lose this game can’t lose this game that ride home is gonna suck can’t lose this game oh God this is gonna hurt can’t imagine losing this game…”

And did you watch the Great Danes spill on to the field after David McCarty—who apparently missed the memo that guys sporting uniform no. 3 are no longer allowed to run wild at Shuart Stadium—barged in for the game-winning touchdown in overtime and recall the abject joy of watching David slay Goliath?

I was going to say Albany’s 22-16 win—the Great Danes’ first win over Hofstra since the days of Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, even St. Elmo’s Fire—represented the completion of Hofstra’s 180-degree turn from the pursuer to the pursued, but cracking open the media guide revealed the Flying Dutchmen lost to Big South schools Elon and Liberty, neither of whom had 63 scholarships, in 2002.

And let’s face it: Hofstra’s not exactly a Goliath this season. Nor was this exactly Michigan-Appalachian State—Hofstra was a three-point favorite against a team gave UMass all it could handle last week.

Still, it’s odd to see things from the other side. But that’s progress, right? I mean, you can’t be the lovable underdog forever. Even these guys eventually got past it.

But this was a game Hofstra could not afford to lose, and it had nothing to do with 63 vs. 30. It had everything to do with alternately managing the game to win it…and doing everything possible to fritter it away.

Hofstra ran more than three times as many plays as Albany in the fourth quarter (29-9), held the ball for 36:41 and converted eight of 16 third- or fourth-down conversions. Yet despite running 18 more plays, the Flying Dutchmen outgained the Great Danes by just 95 yards. Hofstra squandered seven points on busted field goals and extra points and, after going for it on fourth down and scoring a touchdown in the first quarter, employed a game plan conservative enough to make Herm Edwards look like Air Coryell.

Hard to blame Dave Cohen for playing for the field goal in the final minute of regulation, but after two blocked kicks, why did he think kicking a field goal in overtime was a good idea? I’m sure Cohen is saying all the right, albeit boring-as-a-tour-of-a-box-factory things about it’s only one game, there’s nine to go, gotta forget about this one and look ahead to this week, etc etc. But human nature suggests it’s a lot easier to leave behind a game in which you leave seven points on the field and win by one rather than losing the same contest in overtime.

In addition, a win Saturday was essential because it would have felt like a nice building block, particularly given the encouraging performances of new starting QB Cory Christopher and freshman RB Brock Jackolski.

Christopher racked up more than 300 yards of total offense, seemed to be the only player the coaching staff trusted for much of the second half—he carried the ball on four straight plays and five of seven during a drive spanning the third and fourth quarters—and looked like a leader, especially on the methodical 19-play drive that looked as if it would result in a game-winning field goal. If you’ve got a quarterback who doesn’t panic and can make something out of nothing a few times a day, you’re ahead of the game.

And Jackolski, whom the staff planned to redshirt until recently, and showed flashes of that no. 1 back ability with three kickoff returns for 78 yards and a three-yard touchdown run.

Even with Christopher and Jackolski playing well, it was clear Saturday Hofstra has a lot of work to do as the CAA season approaches. But the task doesn’t look quite as imposing when the record is 1-1 instead of 0-2.

Now? Conservative probably won’t work against Rhode Island, which scored at will in a loss to New Hampshire Saturday. And with a month-long road trip after that, it’s threatening to get late early. And can you imagine being 0-3 going into Stony Brook a week from Friday? That’ll be a game the Dutchmen really can’t afford to lose.

And if you’re looking for another bad sign? In 2002, the Flying Dutchmen went 2-10. Gulp.