INDIANAPOLIS, IN. — During my “HILARIOUS MIC Football Weekly Preview: Week 6!” I told everybody and their baby’s momma that the No.6 Carmel vs. No.5 North Central showdown would be the best game on the menu Friday night and it was delicious!!! After three overtimes and a gang of points. Carmel finally walked outta the joint with a 41-40 victory and it wasn’t as easy as the all of the consecutive wins they had over North Central since 2005.
Two of my favorite coaches went to battle with some great football teams on Friday night and it was a shame that one of them had to lose but that’s the way the ball bounces. I tease both John Hebert (Carmel) and Kevin O’Shea (North Central) about their unbelievable swag every week in my preview to get folks hyped for the games and because they’re such great sports.
I talk about their swag, but most importantly, their ability to get the freakin’ job done and boy was it on full display Friday at North Central. The joint went to three overtimes with my man Chinchilla O’Shea, that’s coach Kevin O’Shea to the rest of the world but on TheJayGravesReport he’s got too much flavor to be called Kevin. Ole boy pulled a Tom Osborne on us and everybody watching it had to give him all of the respect in the world for it.
For all of you that don’t know who or what that is, let me break it down for you. Tom Osborne was the legendary coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers in their glory days. They were the No.1 team in the country playing for the national championship in the Orange Bowl in January of 1984 for the 1983 season. They were playing against the upstart Miami Hurricanes. The Cornhuskers tied the ball game on a touchdown and could have tied the game with the extra and still gone on to win the national title. Instead of kicking the extra point, they went for the win with a 2-point conversion and missed it. Miami won the national title that year and Osborne never second guessed his decision. He said that they play games to win around here.
On Friday night Chinchilla showed boyz why he won 5 Class A State Championships in just 9 years at Lafayette Central Catholic. He had the guts to risk it all instead of kicking the extra point and going to a fourth overtime. He saw that his kids were getting tired and going for it right then and there made since to a winner. That’s called swag and belief in his players and they’ll love him for it.
As crazy as it sounds but missing that extra point attempt will the turning point in the North Central Football program for the better. In 5 years we’ll be able to look back at that one play and tell boyz that the program grew up on that night at that moment.
Don’t sleep on John Hebert’s Crew either!! They were down 24-17 with less than three minutes left to play when Tyler Trent hit Sam Rogers for 16 yards on a 4 down and 13. NUTS!!!! Two plays later they connected again for a 55-yard touchdown to tie it up with 2:04 left. Wow!!! That’s great coaching and discipline when they needed it most.
If there was such a thing as MIC Football Classic on ESPN today I’d be glued to the television all day long. Great football and two great coaching staffs produced one helluva football game for the ages!! Salute my brothers and coach Hebert’s skinny jeans worked like magic!!!! Stop me when I start lyin’!
Other Scores From Around the MIC:
No.8 Center Grove 33 Lawrence Central 10
No.15 Ben Davis 48 Lawrence North 38
No.1 Warren Central 59 Pike 7
Playas Thesaurus:
1) Flavor: adjective – to have spice or swag to be really cool.
The caption under the photos are real talk today!