It was a pleasant night in El Paso, Texas in 2021. Our Fighting Wildcats, fresh off a pandemic, played their first game since winning their 9th straight Florida Classic against that school up north. UTEP is a solid Division I program. That’s nothing new to us. We’ve had our fair share of money gam…, excuse me, “non-conference games.” Aside from that, this was an important game for a variety of reasons. One, we hadn’t seen any genuine action in two years. But, more importantly, this would be our first year as a member of the revamped SWAC league. This game, and the season as a whole, was significant.
We eventually lost by ten points, but it was much closer than that. The first half was a defensive battle, followed by a Wildcat rally that fell short in the second half. At the end of the game, the majority of us felt encouraged. We clung on against a team that, on paper, should have beaten us. The optimism was justified. Additionally, we got our first look at Kemari Averett, possibly the finest tight end to ever play at Bethune-Cookman. We had reasons to be cheerful.
Losing Streaks and Moral Victories
However, as the season ticked on, the loses started to pileup up rather shockingly. In fact, we didn’t win our first game until week 9 against Alcorn. Week 9? Week…9. I remember feeling ecstatic after the win but also embarrassed that the streak even existed in the first place. It was surreal. We found ourselves in a place that was unfamiliar to the Bethune-Cookman family: Losing streaks and moral victories. It’s truly hell on earth for a sports team. We started to find the most obscure and pointless things to feel good about. You do this to mask everything else that has gone amiss. It’s truly a dreadful place to be. Yet there we were, pleased that the defense only gave up 20 points this week but that’s because they gave up 42 the week prior. Purgatory.
The 2021 season showed us a brand of football that I never want to experience again.
The 2022 season has entered the chat.
In 22′, not only did we fail to improve, we did the unthinkable and finished with the same exact 2-9 record. We went 2-9 in back to back seasons. How Sway? Which football god did we piss off? Apparently all of them. There were excuses flying around from hurricanes, to facilities, to faulty helmets, budget cuts, you name it. No one wanted to be the guy who gets the blame for razing a program who won back to back Black College National Football Championships just a few years prior.
We found ourselves in a place that was unfamiliar to the Bethune-Cookman family: Losing streaks and moral victories. It’s truly hell on earth for a sports team. We started to find the most obscure and pointless things to feel good about. You do this to mask everything else that has gone amiss. It’s truly a dreadful place to be.
-Stephen Holmes Founding Editor
Life After Coach Sims
Unfortunately, it was Terry Sims who fell on the sword. To be fair, in college football, it’s always the head coach. It doesn’t matter why. If you’re losing games like we were, the first and perhaps easiest thing to change is the coach. So there we were. Then Ed Reed happened, but we’ve prayed and moved on from that.
Now, here we are. It’s 2023, Terry Sims is gone and Raymond Woodie is in. Many of the players Sims recruited have also exited the program. So much like the uncertainty that surrounded the 2020 season, we enter this season with the same apprehensions but with a healthy dash of equal parts optimism and pessimism. Can you blame us? It’s been an exhausting last two seasons for the program but also for the fanbase and alumni that could really use somethings to feel good about. We just want to win….desperately.
Oh what I wouldn’t give for a 7-4 season now.
All Hail to Thee.
