For the first time in 22 years, the Towson University football team will be heading to Loretto, Pennsylvania to take on the Red Flash of Saint Francis University. The Tigers will head up to Loretto to face a team that has improved greatly over the last few years under their head coach Chris Villarrial.

Last year, the Red Flash finished the season with a 7-5 record and reached the FCS playoffs as winners of the NEC Conference. They come into Saturday's game with a 2-0 record. Both of their wins were blowouts. One was against Lock Haven, the alma mater of Tiger Hall of Fame head basketball coach Vince Angotti, and the other against Wagner. This is not the same level of Saint Francis that the Tigers played back in 1995, the last time they traveled to play the Red Flash.

The last time these two teams met with Towson traveling for the game, a very odd and at the time scary situation happened. The Tigers' offensive coordinator was Jay Robinson. One of his offensive coaches was current Towson head coach Rob Ambrose. You could tell even back then, that Rob was going to be a special coach. He just had that "it" factor that you just can't put your finger on.

Towson won the game in a blowout by the score of 34-7. It wasn't really even that close. But for the Tiger offense the storyline during the game changed. At some point, coach Robinson started to feel under the weather. He started to feel so badly that he had to leave the game.

There was a thought that he might be having a heart attack. It was indeed not a pleasant situation. Then head coach Gordy Combs had to make a quick decision: put the young Rob Ambrose into the offensive coordinator's role. As I said earlier, the game wasn't even as close as the 34-7 final score.

For Coach Ambrose, it was his first chance at calling all the plays during an actual game. It worked out well that afternoon, and would work well in the future. Luckily, Coach Robinson did not have any kind of serious illness, and was back in his role of offensive coordinator the following week.

Robinson left Towson in 1997 to join Ron Vanderlinden's staff at the University of Maryland. He went on to become head coach at Calvert Hall and then came back to join the Tiger coaching staff in 2007 and 2008.

Coach Ambrose took over the offensive coordinator's position when Coach Robinson left, and stayed there until after the 2000 season when he would go become the head coach at Catholic University. After a one year stint there he went to the University of Connecticut as the quarterbacks coach and then offensive coordinator before returning to his alma mater as head coach in 2009.

So, when the Tigers take the field at DeGol Field, once called the Pine Bowl this Saturday, Rob Ambrose may take a second to remember that October day 22 years ago when he ran a college offense for the first time.

The aforementioned Coach Combs and I will have all the action for you this Saturday night at 6:45 p.m. on CBS SportsRadio 1300 and TowsonTigers.com. We hope you will tune in.

Until next week, GO TIGERS !!!