The player steps onto the field. Left foot, right foot, and another left foot. It is up to the player to make the final play in the ultimate showdown between the two teams. The player can feel the immense pressure building up as the crowd keeps rooting for him as he tries to carry the team to a win as the clock keeps ticking. It is either win now, or go home a loser because it is the championship game.☺ Mike Lupica and John Feinstein expressed these moments in the books QB 1 and Foul Trouble, as they were both books about high school sports. In QB 1, Jake Cullen is a freshman quarterback who lives under the shadow of his dad Troy Cullen and his brother Wyatt Cullen; both successful and famous football quarterbacks for the Granger Cowboys football…show more content… One major reason the Granger Cowboys won the state championship game was because of outstanding motivational speeches. Before the game started, Coach John McCoy told the team that it did not matter who made the plays, it just mattered that they made the right plays and gave it their best effort. Despite his motivating speech, the Fort Carson Hawks started with an uncontrollable offense and a blitzkrieg defense and the Hawks found themselves winning the first half 14 to zero. During halftime, Coach McCoy told the Granger Cowboys that they needed to show some fortitude, and that they needed to come out in the second half and play as a team like a hive of bees trying to produce honey. ☺ That speech quickly turned around the destiny of the team and they found themselves barely losing 14 to 13 with 30 seconds left in the game, which leads up to the next major reason the team was able to win. Selflessness. With the score at 14 to 13, the defense was able to stop the Hawks’ unstoppable offense by coming up with an interception because all of the players did their respective job as they blitzed the quarterback and read the quarterback’s eyes to come up with the ball. Consequently, the Granger Cowboys offense took the field and they maneuvered the ball almost the whole length of the field to win. Unfortunately, they were still 35 yards away from the end zone, but what happened next showed great selflessness. With five seconds to go, Jake called a timeout and he told Coach McCoy of a play that would fool the defense: “They were going to run the wildcat offense and put Casey in at the quarterback and they would line Jake up as a wide receiver, a call so crazy that it might actually work” (Lupica 255). As ludicrous as that play call sounded, the Hawks tenacious defense was unable to stop the play, and Casey delivered a state-of-the-art-hit-the-receiver-in-stride type of
