"Anger is a gift." -- Zach De La Rocha, Rage Against the Machine
FT. COLLINS, Colo. -- Rocky Long was an angry man.
Like a baseball-cap wearing Captain Ahab, the UNM football team's head coach screamed his frustration after missing the kill against the great white whale that was the Colorado State University football team.
But it wasn't the Rams that Long vented his frustration at Saturday evening. Or his players. It was us, the members of the media, he was yelling at.
The journalists who audaciously kept freshman running back DonTrell Moore, the Lobo everyone wanted to talk to, from joining his team in the locker room.
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Moore's two fumbles set up CSU's lead in the first half. But his hard, slashing running also kept UNM in the game.
Long's anger, laced with accusations of a lack of respect, had subsided somewhat by the time he came out of the locker room. But you could still see it in his eyes, a scrum riding on a sea of emotion.
It was there in the locker room as well.
You could tell this team was not sad, not despondent over this 22-14 loss. Like their coach, they were angry. You could see it in their eyes, the way they moved in the cramped, humid room.
Normally talkative Lobos like Terrell Golden brushed questions aside.
"I don't want to talk," he said brusquely, turning to finish his conversation with his backfield mates. Brandon Ratcliff said it with his eyes, an intense gaze that most wouldn't want to see on the football field. I'm sure it was the look CSU's offense saw as Lobos swarmed all around them.
Junior quarterback Casey Kelly said it with the words he didn't say. When asked if the loss was his toughest as a Lobo, his eyes sparked anger as he choked on his words.
"Yeah. . ." he said, emotion gathering on his brow and in his eyes. "I mean, yeah."
Kelly, who'd had his ugly day against the Rams last season, knew what Moore was going through. His were the eyes of an older brother that must chastise and console at the same time.
Linebacker Nick Speegle, who spent much of the evening concerning himself with the Rams offense, looked spent but not despondent. Determined, but not desperate.
"We're definitely disappointed," he said. "We have to get it out of our heads. It's over. We can't do anything about it. The future is ahead of us. We can go to a bowl game if we do something about it."
And that's the key. UNM remains in second place in the Mountain West Conference at 4-2 in the league and 6-6 overall. Its defense has allowed two offensive touchdowns in the last four games. It held the upper hand on the line of scrimmage for much if the game -- as did the offensive line.
The UNM offense wasn't able to get that last needed touchdown this week. But it has shown that it can. And Saturday it showed it can move the ball when asked to.
The Lobos put together a 17-play, 78-yard drive late in the second quarter that countered a CSU fumble return for a touchdown and served notice that the game was far from over, even though the score was 19-7. Moore's 181 yards showed that the Rams were not impregnable.
The Lobos' should hold onto their anger. The anger of losing to a team that they stood toe-to-toe with and didn't flinch from. The anger of falling short when given a chance to win a conference championship no one thought they could even come close to attaining. And yes, the anger of being disrespected by journalists.
That anger, if transformed into the mean streak we've seen occasionally displayed by past UNM teams, could be the difference. The difference between sitting at home on New Year's Eve or playing in a bowl game -- a bowl game that is much deserved after the Lobos pulled themselves from the wreckage after being humbled by Texas Tech University.
Anger can breed determination. And that was one thing that the Lobos, to a man, displayed when asked, "What do you take from this game into the Wyoming game?"
But Kelly, who's shown determination and resilience as much as any other UNM player this season, put it best.
"We take what we've got," he said, his bright amiable face darkening a bit. "We've still got our heart. We've still got our pride. We've still got a lot on the line. We can't dwell on this one too long.
"We've still got a bowl game to play for and that's what we're looking at."
