Football Team Progresses Under Collins

By Anthony Fontana

The 2008 football season is officially over for the Cardinals. In head coach Jim Collins first year as head coach at SVSU, the team narrowly missed out on the playoffs, although Collins doesn’t believe that means the team didn’t have a successful season. 

“Our goal from the start of the season was to improve each week. The fact that we were able to do that and that guys were able to buy into the team aspect shows the character that we have here. We had a great season and if anything, it gets me excited and looking forward to the possibilities of next year.” Collins said, hours after defeating Ferris State to finish the season 7-3, only to find out that they would not be playing in the postseason. 

In what turned out to be a season full of ups and downs, the Cards finished a mediocre 3-2 at home while managing to complete the road portion of their schedule with a sparkling 4-1 record. The team won five out of their last six games in a last ditch effort to make the playoffs, although they came up just short. Looking back on the season, Collins was happy the way his team played although disappointed that they weren’t heading to the playoffs.

“As a coach, you never want to look back through out the season and second guess yourself. At the same time, if we only could have done this or done that in a particular game, we could be talking about the playoffs right now which is upsetting.” Collins said. 

When asked in particular what game(s) he was talking about, Collins thought about it for a moment before answering.

“To me, the Ashland game comes to mind. We dug ourselves into a big hole early in that game but battled back in the second half. We really outplayed them the second half of the game although we just weren’t able to complete the comeback. Another game is the Indianapolis game. We were kind of sluggish all game long and it ended up costing us as we lost a close game. If a few things would have gone different in one of those two games, we would still be playing football.” Collins said.

Although the team will be missing out on the playoffs, Collins will have fond memories of his first year as head coach at SVSU. 

“It’s hard to pick out just one or two things that are memorable about this season. I would say a game that stands out to me was the Michigan Tech game. That was probably the best game that we played all season from start to finish. Although it’s disappointing that we didn’t make the playoffs, we have the pieces coming back next year where we could be a dangerous team.” Collins said.