Long Time Coming

December, 2001:
* Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
* John Walker Lindh is arrested in Afghanistan.
* Zacarias Moussaoui is indicted on charges related to involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
* Richard Reid attempts to destroy American Airlines Flight 63 with a bomb concealed in his shoes.
* Hamid Karzai is sworn in as the interim President of Afghanistan.
* And on the 29th, RPI defeats UMass, 3-2 in overtime, to win their own tournament for the 16th time.

They haven't won since in eight consecutive tries. It's been a while, hasn't it?

That's not the longest drought - the Engineers won the tournament in 1964 and then not again until 1976 - but it's by far the longest since the tournament was dropped from a three-game round-robin to a two-game championship/consolation format in 1981. Before the class of 2006 graduated, no class had failed to win the Rensselaer Holiday Tournament since the change of format. We've now seen five consecutive classes graduate without winning, and in the meantime, the tournament has been won by Merrimack, Northeastern, Air Force, Nebraska-Omaha, Niagara, Notre Dame, Mercyhurst, and Union. Yeah, that's not an overly impressive list - the Irish are the only overly solid team that stands out.

We outlined on Wednesday why the Engineers should win this year. But they've had a number of other years that they should have won recently, too. No excuses this year. Anything short of a title tomorrow night is failure.

Here's the #1 rock song from the last week of 2001 to pump you up for the weekend. It's a band you might have heard of if you've been tuned into popular music at all in the last decade.