Thursday, August 28, 2008

One of my greatest childhood memories

I don't believe in blogging about sports. I think this isn't the time, nor the place for talking sports. Sometimes, though, sports is just the medium in which experience life. That said, I was so excited to find this video on youtube. This is literally one of my greatest childhood memories.

To set the scene, the year was 1993. I was 10 and half way through fifth grade. Clemson had gone 8-3 in the regular season including 16-13 defeat of South Carolina. In the post Danny Ford era, however, 8-3 was not good enough and the coach, Ken Hatfield, was fired before the bowl game. While I liked Ken Hatfield (we named a cat "Kitty Hatfield" in his honor), I was still pretty excited about the new coach, Tommy West. He came to Clemson in the beginning of December and had less than a month to get Clemson ready for the bowl game against Kentucky. While he hadn't even had time to learn all the players' names, he managed to pull off one of the greatest last minute drives in Clemson history.

I had been to many Clemson games before this one, but had never felt so emotionally invested in a game. I remember wanting so hard for us to win this game. The odds were stacked against us, but I believed. We had been having trouble moving the ball all game and here we were, down 6 with a couple of minutes left, 85 yards away from the end zone. I remember gasping as Patrick Sapp threw an interception with only a minute left, but not even this could stop us, as destiny was on our side. When we scored I remember throwing my drink up and spilling it everywhere.

Here is the video. Amazing.