Unfortunately for local football players, nobody got to play the game they love last Friday night. Instead they got the next-best thing.
University of South Florida head coach Charlie Strong invited all Florida high school football players and coaches — as well as first responders and their families — to watch the Bulls take on Illinois at home that night, for free.
“It’s all about who’s been impacted by the storm,” Strong said at his Sept. 12 press conference. “You want (to win) because now we have a way to give back to the community and give back in a really good way, where they have a chance to watch our football team.”
I caught much of the game on TV and it was so cool to see a mix of high schoolers from all over the state in the stands, sitting together to enjoy a free game on a night where, had Irma avoided the state, they could have been lining up against one another on the high school fields.
The nationally-ranked Bulls entered the game with a 2-0 record at No. 22, as did the unranked Illini. Dual-threat quarterback Quinton Flowers led the way with four total touchdowns and 386 all-purpose yards as USF picked up a commanding 47-23 win over Illinois.
In my opinion, the Bulls would have been winners no matter what the final score was.
One of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed covering sports is that they’re representative of society at large. If you’re looking for business, politics, entertainment, hard news, deep features, data dives and, of course, opinion pieces, you can find that in spades in athletics with the added bonus of something fun to watch. Sports can both highlight important issues and serve as a necessary distraction from our problems, though many people would prefer all of the latter and none of the former.
On Saturday, this football game served its purpose as a necessary distraction.
By now, I think we’ve all seen what Hurricane Irma did to parts of Florida. Though the Tampa Bay area did catch its fair share of damage I’d say we got lucky compared to our friends down in Naples and Fort Myers, Miami and the rest of South Florida, for example. A lot of people I know from college that stayed in the areas were without power, water, work and their own homes for much of last week. Even in central Florida, things got a little rough — just ask our Observer colleagues in the West Orange/Windermere area near Orlando, some of whom had no power as late as Sunday morning.
Irma put those first responders to work and they deserved a reward for their efforts, even if it’s as simple as a free football game. Irma took these kids out of school and sports, and likely caused many of their families to fall on hard times, and they deserved to have someone go out of their way to do something nice for them. I’m sure the Bulls gained a lot of new fans with the gesture, but they’ve made it clear that wasn’t the intended goal.
I don’t want to say I hope this happens the next time a hurricane comes through the state because, obviously, we don’t want to see more hurricanes come through. It’s just good to know that people still have the desire to help others even when they don’t have to.
Now let’s hope we don’t catch any more storms this year. I’m not trying to miss any more high school football than I have to, either.