If you come here today for some sort of, "What does it mean?" takeaway from Saturday's contest against Morehead State, you might as well keep walking. Surface-level football knowledge isn't going to be terribly rife with insight from a game against a non-scholarship foe that pulled the old-school bus ride from home on gameday and eschewed the hotel stay the night before that has become customary in college football. The Govs won a game they were supposed to win and looked pretty good doing it. That is great news, as the alternative might have felt particularly catastrophic, but it's not inherently interesting.
What is interesting, or should be, is that we had a home game in September at Fortera Stadium for the first time since September 28, 2019—a day we handed 11th-ranked Jacksonville State a 52-33 shellacking that was a harbinger for a great many things to come that championship season. That day was a referendum—I specifically recall sitting in the pressbox, long after the game ended, and having a discussion that centered on exactly how good that 2019 team was and how far it could conceivably go.
Yesterday, there was no talk about that. There was just an appreciation for football where it was meant to be.
Yes, I know it wasn't even the first football game in Fortera Stadium during calendar year 2021. Thanks to [waves vaguely at everything] we had gathered in Austin Peay's football home as recently as April for a contest that mattered a great deal, which the Govs won 34-31 against Murray State. And that was a lot of fun, as beating an archrival will always be, in any sport, regardless of when it happens.
But it didn't feel like football. Because football is fall (or pre-fall) days, even fall (or pre-fall) days with cruddy weather (thanks, Mother Nature!) doing the things Governor fans have done for years and will continue to do for years to come. Tailgate. Enjoy beverages. Music. The band. Gov Walk. The Last Train to Clarksville. Seeing old faces and meeting new ones. You can do all those things all year 'round; the blend, the cocktail of sights, sounds and smells only feels right on Saturday's in (or around) the autumnal solstice.
A rainy day against a non-conference foe with little history to draw on or interest in could have led to what Assistant AD for Strategic Communication Cody Bush has long called an "AT&T Day"—friends and family only. Instead, it led nearly 5,000 people through the gates and into the seats, to watch the Govs, simply because that is what their Saturday's are patterned around this time of year—Austin Peay football.
It will not be breaking new ground to point out that we aren't far removed from a long, dark period of Austin Peay history which had little to entice folks to show up for beyond habit and somehow, even less to get excited about. A long, arduous slog where the tailgating was the high point and the football incidental. It's easy to romanticize those days now, because the diehards survived and welcomed in the masses once we stopped losing by historic amounts every week, and also because now Austin Peay football regularly hands out the sort of beatings it used to take at the hands of other teams. Of the two, dispensing the beatings is much preferable to receiving them.
But now, a fan can have their trashcan chicken and enjoy a win too. In the not-too-distant past, the fall had a ceiling for satisfaction—as we return to football as it's supposed to be played, as the weather gets colder and the leaves get crisper, it's important to celebrate not only the opportunity to achieve some small bit of normal but to take a longer-term view of how this exuberant normal would have been unthinkable not long ago. Go Govs, baby. Throw up that monocle.
