The Mac Weekly

Issue date: 9/14/07 Section: Sports

Consecutive wins have finally given Mac football something to be excited about

Macalester football continued its win streak with a 62-0 drubbing of Principia last Saturday. The Scots are now 2-0 for the season. It has been many, many years since such a phrase was last found in The Mac Weekly, so here it is again in case you missed it. The football team, American football you understand, has won its first two games of the season.

"The last time Mac went 2-0 was 1988; most of my players weren't even born," Head Coach Glenn Caruso said. "It's something not a lot of Macalester teams have done."

Before its win against Principia the team won its season opener against Beloit, a monumental achievement in its own right. It had been even longer, 1957 to be exact, since Mac had won a football game against Beloit.

Caruso received close to a thousand e-mails from Alumni showing their support.
This is only Caruso's second season in charge, and already the current team hardly resembles the team Caruso began with, when only 27 guys showed up to the first meeting.

"When we took over the program, winning and success were not synonymous," Caruso said. "This is a process, and although we are not to the promised land yet, we have gotten a lot closer."

The 2-0 start is demonstrating that the success under Caruso so far has gone hand in hand with winning games, something Caruso was expecting after maybe three or four years. The truest test of just how far the program has progressed will be tomorrow against Carleton, the first MIAC team on Macalester's schedule.

"Our expectation is and always will be to win," Caruso said. "There's no question Carleton is a better team than both we've played, and they will fare very well in the MIAC this year.

"3-0 is something that's been a long, long time back. It would show immediately that we can compete in one of the best conferences in the nation."

Caruso has already made the cover of American Football Monthly, the first division 3 coach to do so, and any further progress in Mac's win streak would garner even more attention to for the program. Not that the football team has lacked attention in the past, but being ranked one of the worst college football teams in the nation is a whole different image to deal with.

"In the past the instinctive thought of the team has been negative, but I do believe we have a tremendous opportunity to change it into a positive one, something that's already started to happen," Caruso said.

Continued...

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