Just a week ago, Fisher DeBerry mused, he couldn't get anybody to talk with him.
And now they're calling from outer space.Strange things happen when you beat Notre Dame. Cosmic things.
The telephone in the Air Force football office rang Monday morning and the voice on the other end said, through a spotty, echo-laden connection, that it was NASA Mission Control in Moscow with a message for Coach DeBerry.
Ret. Col. John Blaha, a 1965 Academy graduate, is the American astronaut on board the Russian space station Mir, orbiting 250 miles above Earth. Last month he replaced Shannon Lucid, who set the U.S. space endurance record after spending 188 days on Mir.
When Blaha heard the Falcons had stunned the No. 8-ranked Fighting Irish 20-17 in overtime, he sent congratulations to DeBerry and the Falcons via the NASA station in Korolev, a suburb of Moscow.
And one thing more. Blaha, a three-year soccer letterman at the Academy, asked if video highlights of the game could be sent to NASA so they could be beamed up to Mir.
It was like that all day. Phone calls, faxes and letters from former players and far-flung fans. One was a white sheet of paper with big printing that read: "Yes!! We loved it. Congratulations."
Tommy Lasorda, a good friend of DeBerry's for more than a decade, called him to say, "I'm so happy for you and that's tough for one Catholic to say."
A week ago this office was dealing with the aftermath of another 20-17 score, a last-minute loss to service rival Navy.
"It was like we'd lost a family member," DeBerry said.
If that was belly-to-the-ground time, this was noggins-to-the-ceiling.
How do you wipe a smile off an entire campus? The snow that left the athletic department parking lot a frozen slate on Monday morning couldn't do it. Everyone who walked by the football office, whether in military uniform, sweatshirt, heavy blue jacket or fatigues, wore a loopy grin.
From the moment the Falcons landed Saturday night they were engulfed by well-wishers. More than 1,000 fans showed up for a hastily assembled rally in the Air Force fieldhouse.
These victories are like the greatest morsel of food you've ever tasted. You want to keep chewing it forever and never swallow.
Precious little time is accorded for savoring these moments. After the team watched ESPN SportsCenter's report on the upset and a video montage of big hits and plays from the game, an assistant coach stood up to give a reality check.
"You've had a good time watching this but you've got about an hour and a half and then it is dead over," he said. "We have to learn something from it and be better."
Hawaii beckons in a WAC home game this Saturday and the Falcons, with one conference loss and San Diego State and Colorado State still to come, can ill-afford to look past anyone.
"The next opponent is the most important game we play," DeBerry said, back in full coach mode. He'd just come from a lunch where he'd told the players they had to put it behind them and not bask among all the people who would spend this week telling them how wonderful they'd been.
You have to let go of the moment, but you don't have to like it.
DeBerry says he is "the worst at keeping clippings and stories and things like that," but looks forward to a day when he can pull things out and slip cassettes into the VCR and re-live some of the great days in Falcons football history.
"Not for the games so much, but to watch the people involved," he said.
It is college football, especially at a place like this, that makes a game like this resonate with permanence. An upset in the NFL affects nothing so much as next week's point spread, but these players will remember that Saturday in South Bend for as long as they live.
"This is what college football is really all about," DeBerry said. "They have to be students first here. They're proving you can take 21 or 22 hours of class and still play good college football.
"It goes to prove what we all know is true about life and athletics: If you believe, truly believe, and have a group that's committed to each other, anything is possible. That's true whether it's athletics or a social issue. If people work together you can whip just about everything. That's the spirit in which we approached the game."
They believed, and they won a victory that was celebrated to the ends of the earth.
And far above the clouds.