The End and Looking Ahead

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When all was said and done and the smoke cleared (both literally and figuratively), the East Team walked away as Offense-Defense All-American Bowl champions for a second consecutive year in a hard-fought defensive struggle that spoke volumes about the purity of the game better than any well-intentioned rhetoric spouted from wistful gridiron veterans of yore. 

This was a game of changes.  Nothing changes momentum like turnovers and there were plenty of those, the defense of both squads pugnaciously attacking the ball at every turn.  It was a coming of age, boys becoming men before our very eyes in weather that couldn’t have been more fitting.  The skies opened, the rains came, and hard-nosed football was still alive and well in Orange Bowl Stadium.  And then there was a changing of the guard, of eras so to speak.  Everyone knows by now that this game was the final event to be held at the Orange Bowl as the Miami Hurricanes have finally vacated the place they’ve called home for 70 years.  She will sorely be missed.

As Offense-Defense All-American Bowl MVP Mike Zordich motored along into the end zone, providing the final nail in the West Team’s coffin for this year, one couldn’t help but think that while the past was a glorious and many-splendored thing, that the future is indeed bright.  We turn the page, and begin another, savoring what has been and anxiously awaiting that which is still to come.

More pictures will be up soon.

A special thanks goes out to everyone who supported the game and especially to all of our All-Americans.  Congratulations!  We can’t wait to see you on Saturdays.