College football’s preseason reminds me of the misleading world of movie advertisements.
Every movie that comes out is the best of the year, a can’t-miss, a feel-good story. You’ll laugh so hard, Coke will come out your nose.
Anyone see “Step Brothers?” Best I could tell, that movie was written by two witless, dirty-minded 13-year-olds. But Kyle Smith of the New York Post said that movie was “the funniest movie I’ve seen this year.” Smith must not have seen any other movies that year, or the New York Post is hiring witless, dirty-minded 13-year-olds to write its movie reviews.
This is what the preseason feels like. Every team is a National title contender. Everyone’s an All-American. Every player is going to have a breakthrough year, because he’s faster, stronger and so much more experienced than last season.
This past week, I’ve been chatting with Emporia State football players and coaches for position previews that will run next week. The Hornets are not the harshest critics, but they aren’t any different than the other hundreds of football programs across America.
If you have no hope in the preseason, then you might as well set fire to your football field.
“I want them to think they can beat anybody,” ESU coach Garin Higgins says. “I want them to feel that way. I want them to have the no-fear concept in their mind, and that’s what we’ve got to have. I don’t want them to have any doubt.”
Oh, there’s no doubt down at Welch Stadium, where the past — the Hornets went 4-7 in 2008 — is about as irrelevant to the team’s success as the Stingers.
If you ask the Hornet players, they’re thinking playoffs. They’re thinking National Championship. They’re thinking they might just be the greatest football team of all time.
“For us, we’ve got a lot of athletes,” Higgins says. “We’re very athletic, and we are a much-improved football team on paper. For us, our expectations are high; our players’ expectations are high. They’re high, honestly, because of our youthfulness.”
When you step back, you realize the Hornets just might be high on something. Sure, they’re living in a fairy-tale world, but it’s easy to get roped in.
I want to believe that quarterback Andre Sloan El is going to be the best dual-threat quarterback in Division II this year. I want to believe new running back La’Darrian Page could make Emporia say, “Brian Shay who?” I want to believe that Emporia State has the fastest wide receivers, the fastest defensive backs and the hardest-hitting linebackers this side of the Mississippi.
I try to be a realist when it comes to preseason expectations. Part of my job, I feel, is to be an unbiased observer, the one who can give the readers unfiltered analysis. But it’s tough not to get caught up in the unbridled optimism.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s a sliver of truth to what the Hornets have been telling me. Maybe the speed and the presence of new strength coach Matt Walters, who everyone around the program insists has made the Hornets bigger and stronger, will make the Hornets a contender a year before they should really start to contend.
Before practice started, I had the Hornets penciled in for another four-win year. But screw it — after watching a few practices, I’m jumping on the bandwagon.
If Kyle Smith can watch “Step Brothers” and see humor, I can see the 2009 Hornets making the playoffs.