Let it be known: Wabash always fights! | Life in Ludlow

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Football weather. That is what we enjoy/endure around this time of year. 

It can be cool to cold, dry to wet, with or without snow. 

In spite of your lack of interest in the game of football, it is hard to resist playing when you were younger and hard to resist watching now. 

In fact, if you don’t have another activity, like a job or wine tasting at breakfast, watching football is one of the few activities that may raise your pulse. (BJ argues that those all-pervasive Hallmark movies accomplish the same thing). I have developed some injury to my right foot causing the need for X-rays and a visit to the podiatrist and also giving me plenty of time to follow football. I can give you more information on the excruciating pain associated with my foot malady but as of this writing I seem unable to cure it. Maybe next week.

Back to football, not futbol. Regular readers know that we are fans of the Kansas City Chiefs more or less due to our long residency in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. For the same residence reason we have been fans of the Buffalo Bills, the Washington Football Team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Saint Louis Cardinals, the San Francisco Forty-Niners, the Cleveland Browns, the Seattle Seahawks, and the Pensacola Goshawks. Hey, when we were in Pensacola in 1968, Roger Staubach was the quarterback! 

This past weekend was the 127th occasion of the Monon Bell Game and we must confess our loyalties were not aligned as BJ is a proud graduate of DePauw University and I am an even prouder graduate of Wabash College, one of three remaining men’s colleges. 

These two schools are roughly 30 miles from each other in West Central Indiana and have one of the most colorful and enduring rivalries in the USA. 

I suspect some of the intensity of the rivalry may stem from what some Wabash men such as I have done to the academic integrity and feminine pulchritude at DePauw, that is, we married their women. Not only did I marry a DPU co-ed, she spent so much time at Wabash with other Wabash men even before she claims she met me that she may have qualified for an “associate degree.” All that is another story. 

Alas, the Monon Bell Game of last weekend. DPU comes into the game with a sparkling 8-1 record and already having won the North Coast Athletic Conference 2021 football championship. Wabash comes into the game at their brand-new stadium in Crawfordsville with a record of 6-3 and not really looking all that sparkly. 

It was one of those to-be-expected blustery football afternoons in the Midwest with some wind and a steel-gray sky. Then, at the end of the first quarter, DPU led 21-0 and to the casual insider the game might have been over. To the less casual observer like me, I was disoriented!

Regular readers also recall that the slogan for Wabash is “Wabash Always Fights.” So, by half time the score was 21-14 as the Little Giants clawed their way back into the game. Archie Manning was at the game due to his friendship with a Wabash alumnus. Uh oh, the score was tied at 28 by the end of the third quarter and the DPU contingent was now worried. With every succeeding score I yelled at my computer screen interrupting BJ as she was doing something far more important and then I finally rested as the game ended with Wabash winning 42-35 and reclaiming the Monon Bell. 

Shortly thereafter I received a congratulatory note from Chad Winston, a DPU graduate from the 1980s who has relatives in this area. I expected similar courtesies from Terry Umbreit who is a Port Ludlow resident who graduated from DPU in the middle of the last century. I tried to be humble but when I contacted him about the results of the game I may have failed. 

Love a curmudgeon and give it a good old Wabash Yell! BJ says wait until next year. She also wonders why anyone but us would be interested in the Monon Bell Game.

(Ned “It wasn’t from Hokey Pokey” Luce is a retired IBM executive and Port Ludlow resident. Email Ned at ned@ptleader.com.)