Squirrels QB Riley Pennington, brother of the league's most prolific passer, knows how important a ring is to not only him and Evansville, but his family.
After a grueling West Final in San Antonio, the banged up Predators look to forget all of the pain in OIFLCup IX. "It hurts, but winning's a good hurt," said Maddox. "It doesn't matter how much it hurts; we've got months to rest and heal up. I hear that ring is magical - you forget about the pain when you've got it."
"Brice has all the records and all the accolades, but I want to be able to show him my left index finger with a big ring on it. He can have numbers. I want a championship."
Riley's Squirrels had to beat Brice's Long Island Mean Machine to get to this point, and they did so by way of a potentially questionable illegal defense call. "Doesn't matter. Water under the bridge," he said.
"I'm sure Mean Machine fans feel they got screwed. I wish I cared. Every game has bad calls, and we overcame ours."
Can the Squirrels overcome one more tough opponent? If they do, they will be the first Eastern Conference Champion to win the OIFLCup Game since Geno's original team, Detroit, won two.
"It's not a conference thing, I don't get into that nonsense," said Geno, "but it is pretty unreal that we won the first four (OIFLCup II would have been won by an East team if the league had conferences) and haven't had one since. I'd like to fix that, but not because I care about the conferences."
The OIFLCup Game will be played quarter by quarter throughout the week, with the Fourth Quarter (and overtime, if necessary), played out play by play on the last OIFL weekly chat of the ninth OIFL campaign. Don't miss it!