With the clock winding down on a dominating performance in the Outback Bowl, Minnesota fans broke into a chant of "Row the boat, row the boat, row the boat."
The never-give-up mantra coach P.J. Fleck used to help change the culture of Golden Gophers football continues to inspire a program determined to recapture its glory days.
"We challenged every one of our players: You want to be a blue blood, you've got to beat the blue bloods," Fleck said Wednesday after No. 16 Minnesota beat No. 9 Auburn 31-24 in a game that wasn't as close as the final score.
"We used to be a blue blood back in the '30s, '40s, '50s and '60s," Fleck added. "We've talked about the word of the year is 'restore.' We want to restore that tradition."
This season was a definitely a positive first step for the Gophs to be a perennial contender in the Big 10 West. And Wednesday's bowl win was also the program's most consequential victory in my lifetime (I was born in 1969). That said, this program is now saddled with significant expectations. While some thrive under those circumstances, others have a tendency to wilt, so Fleck is about to learn quickly that tremendous success in the MAC (where he led W. Michigan to a 13-1 record and a Cotton Bowl appearance in 2016-17) carries significantly less weight than credibility in the Big 10.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald has said "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
Such a philosophy is applicable to last Sunday's shooting at a White Settlement, TX church. Y'see, it is absolutely possible to mourn the loss of two congregants shot by the assailant while rejoicing over the fact that scores of other lives were spared when a security volunteer fatally wounded the gunman.
If you listed to gun grabbers, you would ascertain that we in the pro-2A crowd took pleasure in the incident so as to justify our worldview. That's some IMAX level projection right there.
- In this culture of "viral videos" and other internet fame, this particular story gave me joy upon hearing how the Good Samaritan took the exact opposite approach.
Hannah Enge remembers very little of her ride to Fairview Hospital last month. She’s used to having seizures from her epilepsy, but she knew this was different. She was having severe pain in her lower back.
“I was kind of heeling over in the Uber, like, ‘Oh my goodness this hurts so bad,’” Hannah said.
What the 20 year old didn’t know was that her Uber driver, Allison, had taken her phone to find her emergency contacts. She called Hannah’s mom, who lives 300 miles away, to let her know what was going on.
“She was pretty frantic,” Allie Enge, Hannah’s mom, said. “She said, ‘I’m an Uber driver, I have your daughter and her phone says she has epilepsy!’”
But this wasn’t an epileptic seizure. Hannah had an infection in her kidneys, and her organs were shutting down. When they pulled into the hospital parking lot, her heart stopped.
“I just blanked,” Hannah said. “What I was told is I just stopped breathing.”
She was rushed into the ER. Allison offered to stay with Hannah until family or friends could come.
“Allison was saying that, ‘I can bring her clothes, I can go to Target, I can sit with her,’” Allie said.
After three days in the hospital, and antibiotics, Hannah would recover. Family friends were able to be with her, but Allison was gone.
“She didn’t want any credit for it, and I’m like, ‘Honey, you are going to get credit for it,’” Allie said.
I personally know Hannah, as she competed in the 2017 Miss Minnesota competition (where she was voted Miss Congeniality by her fellow contestants) which I co-emceed. And I also know that her health challenges are something she refuses to allow to be a detriment to her, so much so that she often focuses her energy on others and how she can help them in a time of need. So how I see this incident is Hannah reaping something which she absolutely positively would have been willing to do for someone else. And like the Uber driver, Hannah would have done so without any fanfare.
I'm just so very grateful that she recovered.
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