By way of Prep Rally comes the most inspirational thing you’re going to see today, and a great counterpoint to yesterday’s collarbone-breaking child abuse. What you need to know, via WPDE News (YouTube) Channel 15:

The Myrtle Beach Seahawks scored a convincing 64-16 win over Hilton Head in the first round of the class 3A playoffs. On the final play of the game, Hilton Head’s Chip Mullen, a senior with Down Syndrome, scored on a 75 yard touchdown run on the final play of his high school career. Myrtle Beach joined the Hilton Head players in the end zone to celebrate Mullen’s score.

It starts with a great “oh, oh no!” moment where you think the kid’s gonna run in the wrong direction, but once he starts booking you get that swelling in the heart, forget about how they’re losing by 48 points and just let the okay parts of your humanity take over. According to the Prep Rally report Mullen is the life of his school, leads the team’s pre-game huddles and had already scored once this season … and you know what? That’s more than what I got out of high school. I was just fat and mad at everything. Chip seems like an awesome guy, and at the risk of losing my snarky blogger card forever, I’m happy that the teams worked together to give him something like this. And hey, at no point did a grown-up in a tiny football helmet run in and shatter his bones, so that’s a plus.

It was bad enough that Joe Montana had to beat my Bengals in the Super Bowl (twice, even). Now he has to ruin one of the greatest sports films ever made. Montana was asked earlier in the week about the film Rudy, which was based on a true story that happened while Montana was at Notre Dame.

Well, the crowd wasn’t chanting. No one threw in their jerseys. He did get in the game. He got carried off [at the end of] the game. [...] Back then they tried to play someone at the end of [the season] that all the seniors could get in the last home game. The schedule was kind of set that way.

So he got in. He did get a sack. And then the guys carried him off, just playing around. I won’t say it was a joke, but it was playing around. He worked his butt off to get where he was and to do the things he did. But not any harder than anyone else. –Dan Patrick, via Doc Sat.

The jerseys thing was old news–the real “Rudy”, Daniel Ruettiger, said as much on his website. But Montana’s account of Ruettiger being carried off the field already has been refuted by a teammate that was there. Whether it was the case or not, Rudy remains one of the great Little White Guy That Could movies ever. And if you don’t cry at the end of that film, then you have no soul. Or maybe you’re just really, really dehydrated. Either way, I don’t think we can be friends.