The football team didn’t receive much encouragement from the Rapid City Journal after their victory in Sioux Falls–the Cobblers’ first victory against a Sioux Falls school since 2006. After the Journal‘s Saturday coverage of the game consisted of a republication of the Argus Leader‘s story, which naturally filters through a pro-Sioux Falls lens, in Sunday’s paper, writer Padraic Duffy leaked more rain on that victory than our library’s ceiling.  Duffy advised Cobbler fans not to “get too carried away” after beating “a mediocre (if that) football team.” He also assured his readers that he would only “break out the pom poms” when a team from the Black Hills beats “a really good” East River team.

So after two articles tempering the win and none celebrating, who is getting carried away? Rest assured, in this case, no one is accusing the Journal of breaking out pom poms. One could debate Duffy’s claims, wondering whether he’s implying that for the last seven years every Sioux Falls team the Cobblers lost to was excellent, and why he thinks breaking a seven year drought (and a 15 year drought since the Cobblers won in Sioux Falls’ Howard Wood Stadium) is not a big deal, but really, we don’t fault Duffy for writing his thoughts in the paper, however much we might disagree with them. His job is not to encourage a beleaguered football community to celebrate a regular season win, so we won’t ask him to. Instead, we might suggest that the Cobbler boys, who at school this week have been amazingly humble about their victory, pin his article to the bulletin board and use it as motivation to drive the Stevens Raiders and O’Gorman Knights into the ground in the next two weeks. They’ve definitely got something to prove.