For just the second time in school history, the Towson University Tigers football team travelled to play a school from the SEC. Just like the first matchup seven years ago against LSU, the Tigers gave up 38 points to the Florida Gators this past Saturday.

The Tigers showed a lot of gumption against the Gators, having scoring opportunities on both of their first two possessions. Unfortunately, a turnover and missed field goal kept the Tigers off the scoreboard while Florida built a 10-0 lead. Towson never got better chances than the first two times it had the ball, and would fall to Florida 38-0.

Now the Tigers will have a bye week and have a chance to rest and heal before getting ready for their next ballgame on Oct. 12 at Johnny Unitas ® Stadium against CAA Football foe UAlbany. The Tigers rose to ninth in the nation in the latest polls, as they sit at 3-2 overall and 1-1 in CAA Football. Towson will still have its eye on a CAA Football Championship and a trip back to the FCS playoffs with seven regular season games remaining.

The Tigers stayed last week in Ocala, Florida. It was about an hour ride from the hotel to The Swamp. The bus going to a game is always very quiet. The players are focusing on the task at hand. For me, I am usually looking over game notes and such. For much of the ride from Ocala to Gainesville last Saturday, though, I was doing a lot of reflecting.

The first Towson football game I ever broadcast was on Sept. 22, 1979 when Towson traveled to Ashland, Virginia to take on Randolph-Macon. The Tigers won 16-0 in a driving rainstorm. The stadium at Randolph-Macon wasn't much bigger than my Dulaney High School; That's not saying a whole lot.

The memory of that first game jogged the brain into thinking about other places we have been compared to where the bus on Saturday was headed.

There are places I remember more than others. Slippery Rock just because, well, Slippery Rock. Northeastern's football stadium was nowhere near the campus. It was a little place in the middle of a neighborhood in Brookline, Massachusetts. The press box was no more than 20 feet above the field.

Charleston Southern had just started playing football when the Tigers traveled there in 1994. It was memorable for a couple of reasons. One, Dan Crowley threw five touchdown passes in the first half, and second, it looked like they had just stuck a couple of sets of bleachers in the middle of a field.

I could go on, but to sit and think of those places as the bus headed towards an 88,000 seat stadium, and it boggled the mind on where we have come over the past 40 years.

So even though the Tigers didn't get the huge upset this past Saturday, to think about where we have been and where we could be going is just fun to think about.
 
Until next week, GO TIGERS!!!