A startling surge of 41 unanswered-points drove the Bulls up and down the football field to a convincing home win against an in contention Kent State team, and although post season action is out of the question for the Bulls, this type of positive momentum affords the Bulls a chance to really show their improvement this season in their last remaining games.
Of course this season needs to be looked at critically. This outlook is not negative, but realistic so that the players can learn from their mistakes and appreciate their accomplishments. Turner Gill stirred up a bit of excitement for the team this year and the offense has posted more points than last year. There have been countless improvements on the part of the Bulls, yet many of these advances can be put into the category of invisible victories, or in other words, things the average fan does not see or consider.
The team is building and this process is slow and tiresome, but what about the fans?
Improvement cannot be naively judged solely on record, but the wins and losses of a season are the linchpin to how Buffalonians and teams around the country view the Bulls.
A lot of people will say that you cannot only look at record to determine improvement. A record can be deceiving - a string of close losses and unfortunate breaks can make a bad record for a good, hard-fighting team - but this is not simply the case for our Buffalo Bulls. Like in the years before Turner Gill took the reigns, our football team is still hosting a strain of blowouts typical of the Hofher era. It is inevitable to have these thoughts when perusing season headlines like 'Bobcats subdue Buffalo 42-7' and 'Eagles ground Buffalo 41-0.'
The season opener was a win over a team Buffalo was suppose to beat and this weekend's victory could be viewed as a fluke, but if the Bulls can pull one more together, there will be a definitive sign that UB is digging themselves out of the rut created by Hofher in his five years at the university.
Putting one more win under their belts for the season would solidify their efforts to improvement for UB students and fans, making it unquestionable to the average fan that our team is heading in the right direction.
The hanging of a destructive presence
Hussein's sentence destroys more than just a tired man
He was pulled out of a spider hole as a malnourished, untrimmed shadow of his former self. He has been pent up in holding cells and jails, but despite being behind bars, he has occupied headlines and infiltrated Iraqi and American minds unrelentingly for the past three years. As an individual of no governmental power, he wielded an uncontrollable presence, and with the sentencing of death by hanging, this presence will thankfully diminish.
Baghdad residents fired their weapons into the air rather than at each other on Sunday in ecstatic jubilation to their sudden sense of liberation. Thousands crowded the streets in celebration, because some said there wasn't a house in Iraq that Saddam Hussein didn't physically or emotionally damage And that era had symbolically come to an end for them.
The decision caused a ruckus of celebration, but also provoked violent protest from the enraged Sunni community. An outbreak of murders and violent crimes is undoubtedly connected to the sentencing; that fact cannot be denied. Militants opposed to the new government always seen to find reasons to shed blood, but this particular motivation will subside in the near future. It was time for Iraqis and Americans to bite the quintessential bullet and take some punches in order to give the nation a fighting chance to move on. And although their decision will be subject to temporary uprisings, they finally believe it may all work out in the end.
It's not the be-all, end-all solution for repairing Iraq, and in fact it may not have even been a top priority, but it was something that needed to be done. It may seem blunt or even cruel to push for the execution of human life, but if Iraq is ever going to put itself together, they need to sever themselves from their tyrannical past before they can look to a peaceful future.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
