Feb. 4, 2008

Walking back into my office after Tom Brady's final pass fell incomplete I knew what was waiting for me.

I had left my cell out of listening range in hopes of gathering my thoughts after the inevitable Patriots victory. I had used up all of my go-to disparaging lines about New York after the Red Sox cruised to the World Series - many of them courtesy of my clan in South Boston - but I still had a couple in the hopper for the imminent P-a-t-s triumph. Nothing says I love you like a good zinger.

In the wake of Sunday's debacle, I knew the worm was about to turn. As I picked up my phone the first text in the queue was from none other than Matt DaSilva, LMO's intrepid managing editor and Long Island savant.

"GMEN!"

Ugh.

A second message simply had this link.

The third message was a short voicemail from my buddy who recently returned from Iraq. He was in my wife's residency class at Travis Air Force Base (Fairfield, Calif.) and he went on to be a member of the U.S. Army's "Red Horse" unit - a force that deploys three times a year to parts of the world none of us want to be. He's a huge Giants (and Mets) fan who entertained a large contingent at his humble digs in Las Vegas. Even when he was in the Kitty Litter he always kept me apprised of his teams.

Being stateside there was no question I'd be hearing from him. His message was as short as it was long in pain for me.

"Hello! Is anyone there?"

The glee in his voice was unmistakable. When I phoned him shortly afterwards he was barely audible, drowned out by both the Giants lovers and the Pats haters reveling in the glow.

That's life when your team is on top of the heap. Everyone is gunning for you and the indifferent fans always want to see the favorite tumble. It's human nature. In a transparent excuse to make myself feel better about this unseemly loss I have a message to those lacrosse teams who think somehow a championship is deeded to them.

You're being hunted.

The team that knows this all to well is Salisbury. Sure, the Gulls won their share of championships - 1994, '95, '99, '03, '04, '05, and '07 - but they also lost one that was in the bag; just like the Pats had this one in the bag. Jim Berkman's troops were 20-0 heading into the 2006 title game against a Cinderella Cortland squad with the title all but locked up.

Until they played the game.

The Red Dragons pulled out the improbable 13-12 victory that might even trump Sunday's Patriots defeat.

Sam Atkinson, a former US Lacrosse staff member, the SID at Salisbury, and a former Sea Gull, wrote an eerie email last week. "Hey, coming from Salisbury and seeing perfect seasons end in a championship game sucks."

Amen.

The 2008 season is a virgin right now but a lot of publications, including this one, has decreed who is the No. 1 team in the country. We do it purely for discussion purposes but it definitely puts a bulls-eye on the programs at the top of the list.

So let it be known. Duke, Northwestern, Le Moyne, West Chester, Salisbury, Franklin & Marshall, Onondaga, Anne Arundel, Cal Poly, BYU, and Westminster: you're all on notice.

If you win the title, you should have. If you don't, you'll join a long list of teams that were once deeded the mantle of "The Greatest" but were derailed by reality.

Good luck.

Contact Jac Coyne at jcoyne@uslacrosse.org.