Time for a turnaround
In a time when everything in the CMU football team's future seemed bright, everything ended up falling apart.
A promising 8-2 (6-0 Mid-American Conference) start quickly turned into two short weeks of head-shaking, heartbreak and even a little embarrassment.
Two years of trips to Ford Field in Detroit for the Mid-American Conference Championship Game and Motor City Bowl now are out of the question.
But the football team must collect the pieces and make something out of this season.
While CMU will not get a chance to defend its back-to-back MAC titles on Friday, the team must take advantage of its bowl opportunity to give it and some of its players a chance to end the season on a positive note.
Coming into the season, the team was voted an overwhelming favorite to repeat as MAC Champions. And while preseason predictions generally do not hold any merit, it was something the team had to deal with.
For the most part, it handled the pressure.
Until the last two games.
And for some, the season has not panned out quite like how many would have predicted their seasons to go. Junior quarterback Dan LeFevour, once a long shot for the Heisman Trophy, spent much of the season battling injuries and did not put up the numbers everyone expected.
Senior running backs Ontario Sneed and Justin Hoskins also were not used as much as expected.
But for those three players, and for many others, the bowl game is one final shot to end the seasons in the fashion that they would like.
There is no doubt the team has had some high moments this year, including its win against a Big Ten team (Indiana) and beating rival Western Michigan for the third consecutive time.
But still, what lingers about this season is the heartbreaking loss to Ball State and the frustrating setback nine days later at Eastern Michigan.
Whether the team goes to Alabama for the GMAC Bowl or Hawaii for the Hawaii Bowl, a win would right a lot of wrongs.
The team's most likely location for the bowl game seems to be the GMAC Bowl, held on Jan. 6 in Mobile, Ala. That is 40 days between games.
That seems like plenty of time to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.
Because in the end, the season will be remembered in one of two ways - the team holding up a bowl game trophy, or the memory of how it lost its final three games when it had the opportunity to achieve so much more.
sports@cm-life.com
