Up Close And Personal With Ned

We're just about 27 hours away from the monstrous battle between Miami and Florida International, and the return of Ned.

On the FIU campus yesterday, they held some sort of pep rally for the Golden Panthers, and a Deadspin reader attended. Here's his report:

As a student of FIU, there is no game we looked forward to last year more than the UM game. It obviously didn't disappoint anyone in attendance last year. It was right up there with the Marlins World Series games as the greatest sports games I ever attended.

So this year obviously there was a big demand for tickets and once again a lot of hype surrounding the game. To try to get the FIU faithful ready and excited for this game, the FIU Football team decided to have an autograph signing in the bookstore, which had a number of players and coaches. Obviously when i heard about this I rushed to get into my FIU gear hoping to meet the school hero that is A'mod Ned. With nothing but hope on my side, I tried to get my crutches to fake an injury to try and get Ned to sign one if he was there. No dice: I couldn't find my crutches but put on my goldrush shirt to get in the mood.

He ended up being there along with some defensive players and the back up kicker, who, when we asked a bookstore employee why he was there, said he had heard about the signing and was hanging out there pathetically, and the coach felt bad, so told him to sign things.

Well, whatever ... look, there's Ned! We hope he runs for 300 yards and pulls off the upset.

It's on!