COLUMN: Southeast Missouri State football team won long before McCrum's last-minute kick

The Southeast Missouri State football team won long before Ryan McCrum made a field goal with 5.6 seconds left to give the Redhawks a 27-24 victory over Southern Illinois on Saturday night.

Yes, McCrum's field goal gave Southeast the first victory on its schedule, but even if the junior kicker had missed for the fourth time in the game or the Salukis had somehow rallied, coach Tom Matukewicz could have considered his team's home opener a success.

That might be an unpopular or uncomfortable line of thought in a win-or-go home world, but it doesn't make it any less true.

The Redhawks notched a win more than two hours before kickoff, when Broadway traffic was backed up and people decked in Southeast hoodies and hats were walking up and down the sidewalks.

They won with every new tent that was set up for tailgating and when people lined up to welcome the players as they walked into the stadium.

They won in a landslide when 8,015 people -- some wielding cowbells to be rung on third down -- filled Houck Stadium for the game, a bigger crowd than all but one home game a season go.

"It just feels like that town had a lot of buzz," Matukewicz said. "There were a lot of people in the stands. You heard them."

Sure, there have always been people tailgating before games and a portion of the crowd was wearing SIU maroon, but if you've spent time around Houck on gamedays in the past, the difference and the growth in numbers was obvious.

It felt like a college football game was about to be played, and it felt like that was reason enough to be excited.

After one big win last season, Matukewicz lamented that no students had rushed the field, ripped the goalposts down and thrown them into the Mississippi.

You can count the reaction of the still-small student section to Saturday's victory another win.

"Probably the best thing I saw at the end was the students rushing the field," Matukewicz said. "We had kind of a chant or whatever. They were dancing out there on the logo, which I thought was phenomenal. That's what the college experience is like, and we want our student body to come be about a part of that."

The Redhawks won when I was once again publicly pondering the team's third-down play-calling on Twitter during the third quarter.

Invested, intelligent and informed fans replied to discuss the merits of both the obvious -- like for the love of all things would Southeast please get wide receiver Paul McRoberts the ball, which the Redhawks eventually and finally did -- and the ridiculous, like taking quarterback Tay Bender out of the game before he even had a chance to prove he could deliver passes to McRoberts.

College football teams are supposed to have fans discussing the obvious, the ridiculous and everything in between. In-game discussion was hard for me to find a year ago.

Of course, with McCrum's kick the Redhawks won on the scoreboard as well. SIU might not be ranked like a couple teams Southeast beat in Matukewicz first season, but I don't think he's had a bigger win.

The Redhawks played embarrassingly poor football against the Salukis last season, and the truth is they were helped by just as poor of a performance from SIU in Saturday night's win.

But while the Redhawks probably aren't ready to march over teams or win titles in Matukewicz's second season, they were the team that did what it took to win while SIU fumbled and threw the game away on Saturday.

"This town and this university deserves a winner," Matukewicz said. "You've got to be patient. This is just Year 2. There's still a lot of holes there, but we're giving this town and university everything we've got to try to produce as much as we can."

That's what winners do.