Roberts: Post Civil-Rights at Waffle House, Crimes of Photographic Passion, and Saying Goodbye to Mickey Andrews

Florida State Seminoles

The trip to Tal­la­has­see, Florida this past week­end to cover the Florida State Semi­noles and Mary­land Ter­rap­ins was a bit­ter­sweet one.  Sure, I’d man­aged to work out the kinks in com­mu­ni­ca­tions between myself and the Sports Infor­ma­tion Depart­ment at FSU (God bless Tina Dechausay for the patience she’s showed PRISM Press Group in this process) and arranged for my wife and I to be onsite for the final home game of the 2009 foot­ball sea­son for the Semi­noles. But, in doing so, we’d also arranged to be along the side­lines for the last home game ever that defen­sive coor­di­na­tor Mickey Andrews – one of the best to ever coach the game – would direct as a key mem­ber of Bobby Bowden’s aging coach­ing staff.

A late take­off on Fri­day evening – impor­tant things to do, like arrange for our kit­ten, B.J. Daniels, (USF fans, you know how he got his name­sake; FSU fans, after the drum­ming the Semi­noles took at Doak Camp­bell ear­lier this year at the hands – err, horns – of the Bulls, you prob­a­bly do too) to be taken care of by his Aunt Katie (yep, the same one that writes – on occa­sion – for PRISM Press Group) – found us stuck in unusu­ally bad traf­fic on I-75 past I-4, though, we were unsure exactly why. (What exactly were you peo­ple tak­ing so long to do while in your cars?  And please don’t quip that it was gawk­ing fondly at that infu­ri­at­ing Con­fed­er­ate flag some dolt must have spent tens of thou­sands of dol­lars to hoist on a gigan­tic flag pole con­structed con­ve­niently high enough to be seen from all direc­tions at the I-75 / I-4 inter­change, whether one wants to or not.)  For­tu­nately for my wife and I, the won­ders of XM radio kept us enter­tained with the raunch­i­ness of Cana­dian come­di­ans – all of which, stereo­typ­i­cally, added the phrase “eh?” to the end of each and every punch line – on Laugh Attack, but still couldn’t keep hunger (beset by bore­dom, we pre­sume) from even­tu­ally over­tak­ing us and forc­ing us to stop in Mar­ion County, just north of Ocala, at our favorite cul­tural the­ater of real­ity, the local Waf­fle House.

It was at this Waf­fle House, eat­ing hash browns, scat­tered and chun­ked (the mere thought of call­ing hash browns chucked never ceases to amaze me, as the men­tion of such phrase­ol­ogy only evokes mem­o­ries of col­lege days long past in which evenings filled with drunken debauch­ery led to 2 a.m. runs to the closet Waf­fle House where what­ever it was we filled our stom­achs with inevitably ended up “chun­ked” on the stained asphalt out­side the estab­lish­ment … ), and a bowl of grits that tasted eerily like the processed hunks of dough you find in supermarket-brand cans of chicken and dumplings, that I came to a life-altering real­iza­tion that would set the trend for the rest of trip …

A Waf­fle House in Florida can serve as a micro­cosm for all that the Civil Rights era achieved in the Deep South …

Laugh if you will. But there sat my wife and I, enam­ored with the Christmas-themed hand­i­work of one of the wait­resses who worked at this par­tic­u­lar Waf­fle House (she  some­how takes dried out waf­fles no one wants and makes orna­ments out of them, trin­kets of hol­i­day magic which appar­ently are in extremely high demand, she men­tioned, after mak­ing a smash­ing debut last Decem­ber), and watched as five black (yes, I said “black,” not African Amer­i­can; count that to my indoc­tri­na­tion as a major in Black Stud­ies for five years while a stu­dent at FSU) gen­tle­men, all of whom had to be 65 years of age or older and eas­ily capa­ble of retelling tales about the fight for equal rights by peo­ples of color in the late 1950s to 1960s, lov­ingly came in, waved at all the employ­ees, were met in return with a resound­ing greet­ing sim­i­lar to that heard in the for­mer sit­com, Cheers, and crowded into a booth just behind us for their Fri­day night sup­per.

What was intrigu­ing about what we were observ­ing wasn’t so much the aged wis­dom and expe­ri­ence which shown on each of the men’s weath­ered faces.  Nor was it the flir­ta­tious play­ful­ness with which an elderly black woman, sit­ting in a stool at the bar directly inside the entry way to the Waf­fle House, turned to the eldest of the gen­tle­men and, with an ador­ing smile, told him to get his “filthy lips” off her check before she had to “whoop up” on him …

No, what proved eye-opening for us was the level of com­fort with which all three of the employ­ees on duty that night — not to men­tion the whole of the hand­ful of patrons from the sur­round­ing rural area that ate along­side us that evening –, all white, engaged this con­gre­ga­tion of black indi­vid­u­als; not sim­ply with pass­ing word steeped in well-practiced, well-mannered cour­te­sies, but mean­ing­ful, direct con­ver­sa­tion, hand­shakes and hugs, and all in the inti­mate con­fines of the short­est side of this par­tic­u­lar Waf­fle House’s din­ing area.

It was a scene that kept my wife and I mes­mer­ized, and I think both she and I ended up order­ing extra glasses of sweet tea (nowhere near as good as Chik-Fil-A, but def­i­nitely fine enough in a pinch, par­tic­u­larly when eat­ing break­fast food as your din­ner) just to con­tinue tak­ing in the magic of what were seeing.

Even­tu­ally we had to pick up, pay our bill, and take leave of our sanc­tum of racial har­mony. We men­tioned on the way out of to our vehi­cle, laugh­ing at the same wait­ress we’d been served by inside due to her cun­ning in escap­ing out­side to her own car for a cig­a­rette under the aus­pices of grab­bing a band-aid from her own per­sona first aid kit, that the last thing we ever expected to find in the mid­dle of a rural Florida out­post like this was a shin­ing exam­ple of what race rela­tions in an ide­al­is­tic Amer­i­can utopia might actu­ally become.

It cer­tainly, we agreed, stood in stark con­trast to the sup­pos­edly cul­tur­ally advanced city of Sara­sota to which we called home, with his seg­re­gated pock­ets of poor black com­mu­ni­ties to which the major­ity of Sarasota’s sprawl­ing retiree pop­u­la­tion secretly warned each other to avoid, both day and night, due to the threat of being robbed, raped, or – even worse than raped? – murdered.

And I won­der why the church at which I work so eas­ily fits that com­mon labels of Bap­tist orga­ni­za­tions like it through­out the South – “lily white” …

That same notion was some­thing my wife and I debated for much of the remain­der of our trip Fri­day night before falling exhausted into a sur­pris­ingly com­fort­able king-sized suite at the La Quinta located on North Mon­roe in our des­ti­na­tion town of Tallahassee.

Sat­ur­day morn­ing found us wak­ing up early and head­ing directly over to Shoney’s – con­ve­niently located about 200 feet from the door to our room – for Tallahassee’s ver­sion of Café Glut­ton, com­plete with heap­ing mounds of grits (that’s right, two orders of grits in a twelve hour period, for those count­ing), French toast sticks (much to the plea­sure of my wife, except for the cold syrup), and bis­cuits so dry that even the skin of igua­nas would have appeared doused in Oil of Olay in comparison.

Oh, but oh so good …

Stom­achs full, we hopped in our car – stom­achs already cry­ing in despair at the meal we’d just fin­ished ingest­ing – and headed in the direc­tion of Doak Camp­bell, con­vinced that we had lit­tle choice but to drop a cool $15 to $20 bucks to park in the battered-for-four-months-out-of-the-year-in-order-to-pay-a-year’s-worth-of-rent front yard of some cur­rent stu­dent com­pound owned by a fam­ily wise enough to pur­chase depre­ci­ated prop­er­ties in the midst of the stadium’s recon­struc­tion process in the early 1990s in order to play out the role of absen­tee land­lords and milk broke col­le­gians for every cent they can.

Sadly enough, after stop­ping for gas at a local fill­ing sta­tion (does any­one call them that any longer?) and with­draw­ing $18.50 from the store’s conveniently-placed ATM machine (actu­ally $20, but tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the inci­den­tal sex­ual assault on the pocket that comes with using such means of acquir­ing cash, I say $18.50), I remem­bered the fact that when still a stu­dent, I’d lived – along with any­where from six to prob­a­bly 12 oth­ers (depend­ing upon the night, the drug, and the alco­hol present) – in a base­ment apart­ment only about 1/3 of a mile from the sta­dium, off a side street just up the road from the sta­tion where I’d just got­ten cash.  Dri­ving over there, and con­sciously – like it or not – step­ping into a (bad) trip (not that kind … ) down mem­ory lane, I found plenty of park­ing and no just-rolled-out-of-bed-with-a-hangover-and-threw-this-shitty-shirt-on entrepreneur-types stand­ing guard.  Score one for me and my wife – free park­ing.  Except for that $2.50 I’d just paid to get $20 that I no longer needed.  Wonderful.

It being 10:30 a.m. at this point in time, the uphill-to-downhill trek along Pen­sacola Street was as enjoy­able as could be expected, with the air still crisp from accom­pa­ny­ing over­cast skies.  Down a con­crete ramp where once half-baked stu­dents like myself used to slide – pre­car­i­ously so, but hey, we were inde­struc­tible at that age, remem­ber? – down an ivy-covered hill (that innocent-looking South­ern ivy that actu­ally is a preda­tory nui­sance that chokes the life from sur­round­ing foliage), through the ensu­ing tun­nel and around to the right we went, trav­el­ing toward the vicin­ity of Gate B, where we expected to find media passes (lov­ing placed by the hand of Tina Dechausey) await­ing to be picked up.

The acqui­si­tion process of the passes went smoothly enough, though we had a bit of a chal­lenge due to the fact that only one of our two passes was a photographer’s pass enti­tling us to the brightly-colored yel­low arm band that would allow us to maneu­ver the dan­ger­ous col­lec­tion of entan­gled cords that winded along the Florida State side­lines.  Tina quickly cor­rected the error, and before long, my wife and I stood in the north­west cor­ner of the sta­dium, star­ing upward at a large video screen above the stu­dent sec­tion that played high­lights from Andrews’ career.

Bert Reed, Florida State University

For­tu­nately for us, snip­pets of the 20+ years Andrews spent on the defen­sive side of the ball at Florida State weren’t the only things await­ing my wife and I; here, too, iPod head­phones in ears and all, warmed up sopho­more wide receiver Bert Reed and fresh­man defen­sive back / return spe­cial­ist Greg Reid.  That allowed me the shot at some intrigu­ing can­did images, an oppor­tu­nity only enhanced when sud­denly, on the far side of the end zone, emerged E.J. Manuel and the rest of the Florida State quar­ter­back corps, along with offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Jimbo Fisher and his con­tin­gent of coach­ing assis­tants.  Quickly, we scram­bled along the back­end of the end zone to the Mary­land side of the field, but not before I stopped, enthralled and enam­ored, to shoot a few pho­tos from directly behind Manuel – and, unknow­ingly, directly in front of another pho­tog­ra­pher shoot­ing the exact same sub­ject, but with a lens that, had he wanted to use to angrily lash out in frus­tra­tion at the imbe­cilic ama­teur who’d just stopped in front of him, could have pum­meled me to the point that I could eas­ily have stood in as a replace­ment for one of the north­ern end zone’s back­line pylons.

Thank God for oppor­tunis­tic wives that, see­ing a win­dow to not only cor­rect an error in judg­ment by their hus­bands, but also make them appear com­plete jack­asses in the process, non­cha­lantly speak up and say loud enough for an entire ¼ of a foot­ball sta­dium to hear, “Did you really just stop right in front of that’s guy’s lens?!”

A sud­den flash of embar­rass­ment rolled over me in real­iz­ing what I’d done – kind of like the time I gave a speech in Debate class in high school wear­ing loose gym pants that even­tu­ally gave away the fact that I’d fixed my eyes on the “safe spot” form of the one of the hottest girls in the school in the back of the room. Apolo­get­i­cally, I turned, offered one too many state­ments of for­give­ness and found myself quickly depart­ing the scene of this pho­to­graphic crime with my arm tightly in the grasp of a spouse who ranted and raved about the incon­sid­er­ate nature of a hus­band she now loudly debated the wis­dom of ever hav­ing married …

I was lucky in the fact that I was soon able to turn this woman scorn’s – not to men­tion, my own – atten­tion away from the cherry-faced pho­tog­ra­pher (now mov­ing very quickly in the oppo­site direc­tion from us) and toward the ever-increasing num­ber of play­ers that headed toward the field in order to engage in the rit­u­als of their pre-game reg­i­mens.  Walk­ing past us, we stared intently at jer­seys plated on the top of the back with names like Thomas, Pryor, Press­ley, Reed, Owens, Reli­ford – and that, just to name a few.  Wide receivers and run­ning backs shared side­line space imme­di­ately in front of us, exchang­ing posts on the goal and 20 yard lines, run­ning routes from which Manuel and his back­ups could wind up, throw, and hit intended tar­gets in stride.  The cycli­cal nature with which each player repeated pat­terns – inside, out­side, post and fly routes – mes­mer­ized us, even made us dizzy, with heads turn­ing quickly to see who next would step up, sig­nal, and begin run­ning in open space.

Pass­ing routes soon gave way to posi­tion drills, with Jer­maine Thomas, Lon­nie Pryor, and Tavares Press­ley show­ing off their respec­tive quick­ness and agility on direct hand­offs and pitches to the out­side.  Pryor, in par­tic­u­lar, caught our eye, nim­bly work­ing the side­lines and cut­ting on a dime, dodg­ing defend­ers which only he could visu­al­ize mov­ing toward him, div­ing, then miss­ing the tackle and allow­ing him to burst into open field for a big gain.

Time passed as quickly as the click of my Nikon D60’s lens (if a cam­era could wheeze from a work­out, then I eas­ily would have sur­passed its abil­ity to remain con­scious given the con­tin­u­ous flow of shots taken three, four, five, six at a time in order to cap­ture the flu­id­ity of the afore­men­tioned drills), and before I knew it, the play­ers retreated, like a wan­ing tide, back into player’s tun­nel from which they would erupt behind Andrews approx­i­mately 10 to 15 min­utes later.

It was quite a site to see.

Nor­mally, Florida State fans are used to being caught up in the vicious inten­sity of large groups of gar­net and gold-clad foot­ball play­ers fun­nel­ing forth onto the field at Doak Camp­bell like mad fire ants stirred into action by the care­less foot­steps of an unknow­ing five-year old with­out shoes play­ing in the itchy land­scapes of Florida’s favored Bermuda grass.   But this par­tic­u­lar Sat­ur­day – being the last home game of Andrews’ illus­tri­ous career – it was FSU’s defen­sive coor­di­na­tor that ended up part­ing the large Semi­noles logo, which hid behind it a swarm of anx­ious defen­sive play­ers hun­gry to pro­vide their beloved coach one final win in front of a home crowd, and led the team out onto the field.

Shortly after the mov­ing entrance, Andrews would be hon­ored – much to the scream­ing ela­tion of a dis­turbingly obvi­ous three-quarter full sta­dium which, despite its lack of phys­i­cal num­bers, sounded more like a capac­ity sell-out crowd — by being handed Chief Osceola’s flam­ing spear, which FSU’s defen­sive coor­di­na­tor emphat­i­cally plunged into the ground at mid­field, while play­ers he coached both in days past and present jumped about nearby like starved vul­tures cir­cling an over­turned live­stock truck on nearby I-10.

Side­note:  Was it us or did Rene­gade seem unusu­ally rat­tled by all the atten­tion given to Andrews Sat­ur­day?  This seemed par­tic­u­larly the case when Osce­ola rode the beau­ti­ful ani­mal to mid-field, cir­cled, reared Rene­gade up like nor­mal, then brought him down, only to have Rene­gade sud­denly pivot hard, head pointed to the ground, and give what looked to us like a partial-snarl before Osce­ola quickly handed off the spear to Andrews and made a bee­line for the north end zone …

Mickey Andrews, Florida State University

That scene sat in direct oppo­si­tion to the gath­er­ing that took place near mid­field just prior to Andrews lead­ing the Semi­noles out on the field and was con­joined with the intro­duc­tion of team seniors play­ing their last game that after­noon, a solemn meet­ing that fea­tured the three­some of head coach Bobby Bow­den, ath­letic direc­tor Randy Spet­man, and Andrews, who sur­rounded him­self with mem­bers of his fam­ily which he’d accom­pa­nied out onto the play­ing sur­face in a pro­ces­sion that seemed almost royal in its essence.  Here, the three exchanged hand­shakes and hugs, and Andrews was rec­og­nized via announce­ment to the crowd that a newly-established ath­letic endow­ment would carry his name­sake.  That seemed to move the usu­ally stolid Andrews to an unchar­ac­ter­is­tic show of emo­tion, a sen­ti­ment only enhanced when for­mer play­ers of his on hand at mid­field revealed the gift of a brand new, beautifully-equipped garnet-colored Ford truck that sat for the remain­der of the game pre­car­i­ously close – or so we thought — to the stu­dent sec­tion at the north end zone.

We laughed at the fact that Andrews and his bevy of con­grat­u­la­tors actu­ally ended up hold­ing up the Florida State March­ing Chiefs from tak­ing the field, and set up an amus­ing show­down at the mid­field logo between notice­ably aged for­mer play­ers of Andrews, Andrews him­self, count­less pho­tog­ra­phers like myself shoot­ing away at the embraces shared between the afore­men­tioned band of broth­ers, and a quickly approach­ing mass of instrument-wielding, polyester-wearing band mem­bers anx­ious to take up their posi­tions and go through the stan­dard rou­tine of spelling out the school’s ini­tials and play the National Anthem for what must be the bil­lionth time.

The fes­tiv­i­ties of the pre-game finally brought to a close, my wife and I took up res­i­dency along the Mary­land side­line – much less-heavily pop­u­lated by mem­bers of the press, half of which seemed to be made up of fam­ily mem­bers brought along by overzeal­ous pho­tog­ra­phers and reporters who boasted of being able to get such indi­vid­u­als down on the field – and began tak­ing in the real rea­son why we had trav­eled five hours to get here the night before:  watch­ing to see if Florida State could become bowl eli­gi­ble for the 28^th con­sec­u­tive year.

The too-close-for-comfort con­test which played itself out from that point for­ward is well-documented on any num­ber of Internet-based sports sites, so for the sake of the reader’s atten­tion – which by now has surely waned – I’ll spare the details.

How­ever, a few things of notice which may not have caught the eye of the aver­age observer who tuned in to watch FSU edge out the Ter­rap­ins in the wan­ing moments of a 29–26 victory:

a)      Manuel had a tough time throw­ing the ball, toss­ing three inter­cep­tions on the day.  One rea­son why that might have been the case – out­side of the nor­mal claim that receivers like tight end Beau Reli­ford ended up run­ning wrong routes?  How about the man­ner in which Manuel was throw­ing the ball, releas­ing it with arm fully-outstretched and releas­ing the ball at the zenith of his for­ward arm move­ment?  That seemed to leave the ball con­sis­tently leap­ing higher than nec­es­sary en route to its intended tar­get, and, at points, left it trav­el­ing a path more rem­i­nis­cent of a lob than a pass with any veloc­ity behind it.  Manuel’s throws often appeared to take for­ever to get where they needed to be, a cir­cum­stance which Maryland’s line­back­ers and defen­sive backs intel­li­gently picked up on and turned to their advantage.

b)      Despite the mis­takes made pass­ing the ball, Manuel is to be cred­ited for keep­ing his com­po­sure and mak­ing things hap­pen on the last drive of the game for Florida State’s offense, calmly rec­og­niz­ing the oppor­tu­nity to move the ball on sev­eral occa­sions not with his arm, but instead with his feet, thereby keep­ing hopes alive that the Semi­noles could move into posi­tion to grab the go-ahead score.  In that sense, he reminded me a great deal of USF’s B.J. Daniels, though, per­haps with­out quite as much speed.  It will be inter­est­ing to see whether or not Manuel is allowed to take advan­tage of his dual-threat nature even fur­ther head­ing into this com­ing weekend’s show­down with Florida, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the pres­sure he’s likely to encounter off the edge by the Gators’ defen­sive line and in the mid­dle by UF’s blitz­ing linebackers.

c)      Huge kudos goes to Florida State’ offen­sive line, which, if I remem­ber cor­rectly, did not allow a sin­gle sack of Manuel the entire game.  That led Florida State’s quar­ter­back to praise the unit as the key to the Semi­noles’ suc­cess against the Ter­rap­ins, and the main rea­son why he felt con­fi­dent in tak­ing mat­ters into his own hands on FSU’s last offen­sive possession.

d)      The touch­down scored on the option-pitch by Manuel to Pryor in the sec­ond quar­ter left me won­der­ing why more of an option-style of play – think a bit like Geor­gia Tech – isn’t incor­po­rated into the Florida State play­book.  It would seem that given the youth­ful ath­leti­cism and speed of its receivers and tail­backs, the inclu­sion of schemes in which the Semi­noles’ quar­ter­back could be given the oppor­tu­nity to make a read on what appeared a keeper run and elect to a pitch the ball to the out­side cor­ner would be ben­e­fi­cial to the over­all game plan put together by offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Jimbo Fisher.

e)      The same sen­ti­ment dis­cussed in my last point seems applic­a­ble to the Semi­noles’ wide receivers as well.  Take, for instance, the 42-yard touch­down by Reed in the third quar­ter – his sec­ond carry for a score this year. Given his abil­ity to break for the cor­ner after going into motion prior to the snap and being given the ball and accel­er­ate down field and make defend­ers miss – par­tic­u­larly when com­bined with blocks like that laid down by team­mate Rod Owens on the touch­down run – it seems that uti­liz­ing receivers as yet another option by which to expand the Florida State ground game would be a log­i­cal enough pro­gres­sion.   Think James Rodgers of Ore­gon State; play­ers like Reed eas­ily have the abil­ity to fit a sim­i­lar type of role for Florida State, and not just on pre-established sweeps to the near or far side line.  Inter­est­ing as well to con­sider: what would incor­po­rat­ing a Dex­ter McCluster-like direct Wild­cat snap to a WR like Reed mean for the Semi­noles offense?  That was some­thing which entered my mine in pre-game warm-ups, as I watched Reed work with the remain­der of the quar­ter­backs in snap and roll­out drills, and a sen­ti­ment Reed him­self vocal­ized to me in post-game interviews.

f)        Speak­ing of Pryor:  I know that Thomas is con­sid­ered the start­ing tail­back for the Semi­noles, and given the three straight 100+ yard games against North Car­olina State, Clem­son and Wake For­est he posted in his pre­vi­ous three starts, right­fully so.  Yet, how explo­sive did Pryor – a mere fresh­man – look on the two car­ries he had on the day?  Sure, 50 of his 57 total yards in the game came on the option-pitch for a score in the sec­ond quar­ter.  Still, on the sea­son, Pryor is aver­ag­ing 5.9 yards each and every time he touches the ball.  And don’t for­get to fac­tor in his impact in the pass­ing game as well, where Pryor has racked up 13.8 yards per recep­tion.  Those are pretty solid num­bers and per­haps war­rant addi­tional play­ing time for the young­ster from Okee­chobee, Florida.

g)      It was inter­est­ing to watch the side­lines late in the fourth quar­ter after Manuel threw his third and final inter­cep­tion.  Team­mates like Reed stated in post-game inter­views that they could see in Manuel’s face a deter­mi­na­tion to win despite all the mis­cues that ham­pered Florida State’s offense up to that point of time.  I saw some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent, how­ever, as I stopped to observe the offense’s body lan­guage head­ing back to the side­lines fol­low­ing the pick.  Manuel was the last player back along the benches, and after a short out­burst aimed at no one but him­self, he stood star­ing along the long line of dejected team­mates as if wait­ing for some sort of instance of com­mu­nal con­sol­ing to take place.  If that was the case, Manuel soon rec­og­nized he was going to be left dis­ap­pointed. Almost painfully, he stood there, wait­ing, with his team­mates pay­ing him no heed.  I found it strik­ing, as there was no attempt on Manuel’s part to gather the troops around him as an one would think an offen­sive fig­ure­head would.  That left me wor­ried that should Florida State get the ball once again, Manuel would find moti­vat­ing his team­mates a near-impossible task.  Thank­fully, I was wrong, but it was note­wor­thy – at least in my mind – that Manuel kept the ball on sev­eral occa­sions on the ensu­ing go ahead score rather than try to force a throw down­field.  It was as if he knew he would have to atone for his ear­lier offen­sive sins – and atone he did.  You could feel the change in the atti­tudes of his team­mates as they real­ized Manuel was deter­mined to not be the rea­son Andrews lost his last home game as Florida State’s defen­sive coor­di­na­tor.  It was, in hind­sight, the absolutely right thing for Manuel to do, and a deci­sion which yielded a great deal of respect from oth­ers in post-game inter­views.  That will be essen­tial head­ing into this weekend’s show­down with UF in Gainsville, with Manuel fac­ing what is likely to be the most dif­fi­cult start of his foot­ball career.

The most impres­sive part of Saturday’s con­test came, in my opin­ion, not dur­ing the con­test, but soon after Florida State ended Maryland’s heart-stopping final offen­sive play, a multi-player lat­eral that got a bit too close to break­ing into open space thanks to the inat­ten­tive­ness of a few play­ers in the Semi­noles’ sec­ondary.  Rather than head back into the cel­e­bra­tory sur­round­ings of the player’s lock­er­room, FSU defen­sive play­ers herded each other up near mid­field, and fol­low­ing an exten­sive ses­sion of onfield inter­views between Andrews and anx­ious reporters – more inter­ested in talk­ing to Andrews than Bow­den, we noticed -, grabbed Andrews up, hoisted him on their shoul­ders and car­ried him toward the play­ers tun­nel while a patient crowd that had stuck around to con­grat­u­late Andrews from the stands repeat­edly chanted his name.

A more than fit­ting way, in my opin­ion, to close the final chap­ter of the home game biog­ra­phy of one of the great­est defen­sive minds to ever play the game.

And also the butt of a joke which, in typ­i­cal Andrews’ fash­ion, made its way into his post-game press conference …

When asked about how he felt being car­ried of the field by the play­ers he coached, Andrews responded that had his boys played the way he’d expected them to, they wouldn’t have had the energy to carry him off the field …

It’s the time of sen­ti­ment that we’ve come to expect from Andrews …

And the kind that we’ll all dearly miss hear­ing from this point on in our cov­er­age of Semi­noles football …

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