Waking a sleeping giant.
Until Sept. 16, I had designated three incidents in history worthy of being categorized under the aforementioned idiom. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto penned the phrase after he unleashed a surprise assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941; the United States responded by entering World War II and eventually dropping the first and only combative atomic bombs on Japanese soil. Sixty years later terrorists decided to try to break American resolve again; President Bush and the United States military shoved a payload of explosives down al-Qaida throats. Finally, two semesters ago I pulled my own Yamamoto when I rocked backward into the head of a snoozing Andrew Brackman as he recovered from a midweek basketball game during a particularly boring Communication Inquiry class. I included this last example to prove that the wakening of sleeping giants is not isolated to militaristic action, and, as the son of a deployed soldier, I am in no way correlating collegiate athletics with the seriousness of war.
Nonetheless, all three examples had long-standing effects. It took the Japanese decades to recover from the American response to Pearl Harbor; five years out, members of al-Qaida currently make their homes in cave ruins in American-occupied Afghanistan; and I spent the rest of the semester reminding myself not to lean backwards into the multi-million-dollar arm behind me, all the while enduring a class as boring as the city that might make my ‘giant’ the first pick in next year’s Major League draft.
Well, here’s to Sept. 16 marking the awakening of another sleeping giant, one with equally lasting effects that transcends a nationally-televised miracle. I’m not talking about the team — I am talking about the Chest — which until a few quarterbacks ago had been one of the biggest giants in the Triangle. Since Philip Rivers’ departure, Amato has been in a peaceful slumber of contentment and security at the start of each season. Even after an embarrassing loss to lowly Akron, Amato acted alarmingly sure of himself at a University that chased away one of the most successful basketball coaches in school history. For being heralded in national publications as one of the worst coaches in pre-season college football, Amato held his chest high — I mean that figuratively; I don’t think he really has a physical option — even posing his own questions to reporters, stopping just short of asking how he could win a Division I-A game.
Then came Sept. 16. Ironically, a game that put much of the Wolfpack fan base to sleep might have been the incessant alarm that finally woke the one spectator that matters. Southern Miss tore Amato’s team apart in every possible way. Even the defense, Amato’s brainchild and usually capable of a decent performance, got ravaged by the punt-less Golden Eagles. The Chuck stopped there. He spared the media excuses, if he had any. Hattiesburg, Miss., is where the Chest woke up. Through the post-game press conference and the rest of the week leading up to Saturday’s game against Boston College, Amato was all business. Perhaps it was a result of much-needed media training following his degradation of the Akron football program, but, once again here’s to the hope that Boston College wasn’t a fluke and the Chest is finally coaching instead of coasting.
Last year, Amato’s hibernation ended with a 21-point loss to Clemson (interestingly, his team lost to Southern Miss this year by a similar margin), when he realized his mangled offensive line warranted a more mobile quarterback and a laterally efficient running back. Against Southern Miss he started Marcus Stone and ran Andre Brown to a near-250-yard performance. What followed was a 5-1 record the remainder of the season with Stone and Brown at the helm of the offensive production. Too bad Amato’s team went 2-4 before that point. Fortunately for the Chest, the team and the fans, it has taken half that time this year to make similar adjustments. He started Daniel Evans after impressive relief against the Golden Eagles and established the run early in Saturday’s game with both of his preseason Doak Walker candidate running backs. The offensive line is now healthy and ready to handle a quarterback who is patient as the pocket tightens. Evans showed that a number of times and proved he was up to the challenge of scrambling as well (e.g. his last pass).
Amato’s numbers still point to a successful tenure at the University he has indelibly left his mark on. The Murphy Center, the bowl, the really cool wolf fountain are all legacies of the animated man that turned the program around in his very first year with the team. But, in the world of football non-practical hardware is what counts most. So on October 5, under the lights of a national stage, against a nationally-ranked team that he has always coached well against, I hope Chuck Amato continues to show that he is, like many of us, restless.
