One more chance is all the Falcon football team wanted.
After receiving their bid to the GMAC Bowl, the team was ecstatic to put their pads on one last time this year.
“To me, it’s like another lifeline,” said senior middle linebacker Jovon Burkes.
The loss suffered at Toledo was a tough way to finish an impressive regular season that included a competitive battle at Oklahoma, then rebounding from a 1-2 start to win seven consecutive games.
The players see the bowl game as an opportunity to go out on a high note.
“It’s a chance to redeem ourselves on national television against a very good opponent,” said senior wide receiver Cole Magner.
“On national TV, we get to show our talent again, so it’s a great feeling right now,” said quarterback Omar Jacobs.
Senior safety Keon Newson is proud for everybody involved with the program.
“(It’s) an opportunity to get another win and do some more great things here for this community, the whole university,” he said. “It’s going to be real special.”
Jacobs, the 2004 Mid-American Conference Offensive Player of the Year, was most satisfied for the rest of the team, which made him feel at home all season, his first as a starter.
“These guys took me in and we had no problems the whole season, no arguments, no nothing. Sometimes people get jealous of your success or stuff like that,” he said. “You hear about it on other teams and people having cliques and everything like that.”
With all of their support and help, Jacobs is not ready to see some of his teammates leave.
“It’s a family, it’s hard to let go of some of these seniors,” he said.
This game holds great importance for the Falcon defense, who has the opportunity to display their talents as they led the MAC in scoring defense heading into Toledo.
“Toledo put a lot of points on us and we didn’t come out in the second half,” Burkes said. “This is our opportunity to be able to come out and play a second half to fix what went wrong in the prior game.”
“It’s important from the fact that we need to go out and let everybody know we played good all year long, that we got a defense that’s going to step up in big games,” Newson said. “We get another chance to step up in a very big game–in a bowl game.”
Newson is looking forward to putting an exclamation point on the end of the season.
“Knowing we’ve got another game, we can kind of focus on the finale, the grand finale of our season and what a great opportunity to play in a big bowl game like the GMAC Bowl,” Newson said.
