Underdog Tulsa beats the odds and only loses football game by 21 points!
The Tulsa Golden Hurricanes kicked off their season last Friday on the road against Michigan State, losing their season opener by a final score of 28-7.
The Spartans, ranked eighteenth in the nation, were heavily favored entering the game, manhandling TU’s offence throughout to the surprise of absolutely no one. But despite the loss, TU athletics is currently celebrating the loss as a big achievement for their athletics program.
“Obviously, going up against a strong team like Michigan State, you’d expect to do a lot worse,” one athletic trainer volunteered. “You expect a final score of, say 56- 14, or 38-3. You don’t expect something like 28-7, which has a much nicer ring to it.”
TU, a member of the American Athletic Conference since 2014, has been playing more and more lofty CFB programs in recent years, from larger Conferences like the Big 10 and Big 12. Although most of these games have ended in defeats, some of them have ended in respectable defeats.
“There’s just no way to compete with the athletic prowess and academic shoddiness of the bigger schools,” sighed one season ticket holder when approached for comment. “We can only hope that one day, one day, we might lose by a score of 21-17. That would be fantastic!”
In total, the University of Tulsa makes around $1 million for every game it plays against larger college athletic powers, an amount that isn’t bad, considering there’s a ton of embarrassing things I would gladly do for a million bucks.
The game was mostly a defensive struggle, with Tulsa staying in the game until halfway around the second quarter.
One student who watched the game on Friday said: “I’m surprised we made it that long. It kept me mildly interested.”
Another student who watched the game said, “If we only lost by 21, against Michigan State, then the other AAC teams should be rightly scared of us.”
Reactions around the city of Tulsa were very optimistic. Reports of noise disturbances could be heard around the city, while several Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant chains were vandalised by elated, drunken fans. “I guess they must have bet the point spread and won,” one confused onlooker stated.
The reactions from the victorious home team, however, were more lukewarm. The television broadcasters were surprised by the enormous number of nonplussed fans and students in attendance paying more attention to their cell phones than the season opener. “I mean, I don’t even know where Tulsa is,” one Michigan State Student texted, “So I know they’re not going to beat our boys.” MSU fans also generally reacted with disdain to the victory, saying: “We’d expected to win by much, much more. That’s what the college football rankings value: a blowout.”
In a postgame press conference, Michigan State Coach Mark Dantonio gave this statement:
“I was surprised by Tulsa and Coach Montgomery’s gameplan. They were resilient … obviously for us, 28-7 is a pyrrhic victory … We’re going to hit it harder at practice and watch some game film so that our boys can bounce back from this.”
And so this is a great start for TU football this season. Moving forward, it is all about seeing the glass as a quarter full.