For those of us in the class of 2008, it's been a strange four years.
We entered the school before the days of Park Hall. When we arrived, the only thing between the Ball Communication Building and the Robert Bell Building was a brick walkway. Scheumann Stadium still had a tiny press box, and there was open air instead of a snazzy hill seating area opposite the main scoreboard.
There's no debate that as we move on to the next stages of our lives, we have seen an ever-changing university. When we got here, Ball State was "everything you need." Now, apparently, we are redefining education.
Probably nothing better illustrates the oddities of our four years here in Muncie than the transformation of the athletic program from afterthought to relevant, for both good reasons and bad.
The obvious place to start is the football team. This class's freshman year was 2004. Brady Hoke was only in his second season as coach of the Cardinals. Ball State was a plucky group of athletes that unfortunately lacked the talent to really compete.
In the first game we saw as freshmen at Ball State, the Cardinals put up a strong effort against a good Boston College team before losing 19-11. Little did we know that would be the high point of a 2-9 season that featured a season-ending game between the two lowest-ranked teams in the country according to CBS SportsLine, a game the Cardinals would win over University of Central Florida.
Four years later, Hoke is the steward of a program that will play at least four games on ESPN networks next season, with the possibility of up to seven appearances on the flagship sports network. Ball State boasts a quarterback who has been ranked as high as the third-best quarterback for the 2009 NFL draft. The Cardinals played in a bowl game last year. The kids who were once undermanned are regularly putting scares into the likes of Michigan, Nebraska and Illinois.
The other big-time revenue sport at Ball State, men's basketball, has also undergone all sorts of changes since our class arrived in August 2004.
In the 2004-2005 season, Tim Buckley took the Cardinals to a winning overall record with better things expected thanks to a lot of returning talent the following season.
Instead, Buckley didn't last beyond 2006 as Cardinals' coach. He was followed that April by the nationally recognized hiring of Ronny Thompson of the famous coaching Thompsons. To say that did not turn out so well would be an understatement on par with saying the Japanese made a minor tactical error when they decided to bomb Pearl Harbor. After gathering the wreckage, the Cardinals brought on Billy Taylor, who so far has shown all the tools to succeed at the helm, even though Ball State's record this season did little to show it.
We've seen Ball State baseball make the NCAA tournament. We've seen the men's volleyball squad gain the distinction of being the final team in the nation to lose a match. And we have witnessed the wild and crazy journey of the women's basketball team, from slightly above .500 to NCAA bubble team and back again, with a confusing coaching change at the center of it.
As we make the transition from apathetic seniors to proud alums of Ball State, most of us will identify ourselves with the school's athletic success.
Whether the success that many Cardinals' programs have enjoyed the last four years will continue is still to be seen. But, good or bad, no one can deny it has been exciting.
It's been a great four years. I'll see you down the road.
Write to Andy at ndistops@hotmail.com
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