It was the stuff of dreams, a fairytale story that seemed appropriate for Tinseltown. The storyline of the Utah State University football team was already a winner...what happened on the field only added to the magic. And the next day the country woke up to something new...
A star was born, and he was from Northern Utah.
If you didn't see the inaugural Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl game played last Saturday, December 18th, you may think it was just another in a long line of non-New Years Six bowl games. A program from the Pac-12 and another from the Mountain West conference met in Los Angeles, each team having something to prove.
For Oregon State, who came within one game of playing in the Pac-12 Championship (and the only conference team to beat Pac-12 Champions, Utah...), they wanted the country to know they were good, better than their record...good enough to have won it all.
For the Aggies of Utah State, well, after proving all the critics wrong and beating nationally-ranked San Diego State in the Mountain West Championship game, they wanted to prove to the country that they could beat a second team from a Power Five conference, and like their foe, to let everyone know they were good, too.
The game turned out to be more than just another bowl game, at least, it was for me--a USU Aggie fan.
If you do an internet search of the game, one name will scream out from any story, that of third-string USU quarterback Cooper Legas, and deservedly so. He replaced the starting Aggie quarterback after an injury in the second quarter--a quarterback that did so much to get the team to that game in the first place.
If you didn't know his name before, after one play, everyone knew Cooper Legas. He was--according to the commentators--the first college player ever to throw a touchdown pass with his very first throw in the very first play in the player's very first bowl game--ever. From there, his inspired play continued.
I re-watched the game over the weekend. It wasn't so much the accurate passes or the way he ran the offense, but what impressed me was the poise he showed, the way he looked like a seasoned vet on the field against a very good defense. He was just good, flat out good.
USU won the game and the team lifted Cooper on their shoulders to show their appreciation. You don't see that very often because it's rare. Football is a team sport. The record-braking touchdown pass would not have happened without the receiver who caught the ball and ran it in, or without the offensive line that kept the defense from reaching the quarterback. So, for all of them to lift him on their shoulders like that...it showed me they were as impressed as the rest of us.
The season's over. And now it's time for every fan to sit back and consider, what will the future bring? For those following Utah State, they'll think about how on a December night in LA, a Northern Utah star was born.
No comments:
Post a Comment