Confession of an Eagles fan

There are times when I get upset with something I hear or read,and I immediately want to voice my opinion. It's a natural reaction whether it is personal, political or community related.

With the C-19 shutdowns and delays, I was looking forward to seeing Eastern Eagle football this spring. But when the new schedule was released, three of the teams Eastern was scheduled to play said they were going to wait until fall to make a comeback. They are Portland State, Montana and Montana State.

What bothered me most was the travel would have been easier on a budget,and EWU needs to pay attention to their athletic department money.

Now EWU needed to scramble to find opponents. They are scheduled to play UC Davis and Cal Poly, coached by former EWU Coach Beau Baldwin. The final game will be against Idaho. It isn’t an ideal situation, but several other schools decided to sit this one out until fall.

Now I wondered why the Montana schools would not want to play. With the NCAA C-19 rules, an athlete would not lose eligibility for a season played either in the fall or spring. This could be a benefit for anyone getting looked at for the next level, where a paycheck is involved. If you played for any team that put their season on hold, why wouldn’t you consider transferring since the transfer rules would allow athletes to play immediately.

I think the decision by the Montana schools and Portland State was made fairly late and transferring would not be easy to accomplish and could be detrimental in the long run. Too bad, because some kids will be graduating and decide to get on with their lives since they hadn’t played competitively for nearly two years.

I tried hard to figure out why these teams weren’t going to play until this fall. Sacramento State was the first team to sit this one out and that was early last fall. Not sure if being situated in the California capital city had anything to do with it or not.

I guess I can understand Portland State since their governor has locked her state down until March. With the Montana schools it was difficult for me to cut them slack. The rivalries that have been in place with EWU and Idaho have been great. Since Montana has been playing high school sports since last fall it would only seem right that the Griz and Bobcats would be putting a quality product on the field and challenge for a FCS playoff spot with the other Big Sky schools.

To say that I wasn’t happy was an understatement, until this past week. After seeing the weather change with nasty cold and snow, looking at Montana made me think the schools must have a meteorologist on staff to predict what the weather would do in February and March.

If the Montana schools had indoor venues like North Dakota then I’m sure football would be played but there is no way that practicing and playing in these miserable conditions would be good for anyone.

I’m just glad I didn’t go into a rant a month ago and then have to backtrack. Instead I’ll just say confession is good for the soul and reality can make you change your mind.