It was a fitting — or as George Eager labeled it, "picture perfect" — way for the game and season to end for the Franklin & Marshall football team.

There they were, Diplomats dressed in their Saturday blues, basking in the glow of a fading sun as Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days" blared from the press box as it does in the home locker room following every win.

There were moms and dads taking pictures of their giddy sons, posing in groups, taking turns holding the trophy like it was Lord Stanley's Cup taking a triumphant journey around the ice following the Stanley Cup Finals.

The trophy marked F&M's thrilling, 29-24, come-from-behind win over Wilkes in the ECAC South Atlantic Bowl. Just moments before, the Diplomats finished off a 19-point, fourth-quarter rally capped by the game-winning touchdown with just eight seconds left to play.

"To finally hold this thing and have it in my possession is the best thing in the world," said Barry Lovett, one of eight Diplomat seniors posing together after their playing days ended in style.

"I can't even explain it. This is one of the greatest feelings I've ever felt in my life. I've been playing for a championship forever."

The hardware was also symbolic of the triumphant return of Diplomat football to the glory days.

Thanks to the dramatic victory, F&M finished the season with a 9-2 record, its best mark since 1996. It's only the second winning season since '96 and just the fifth since 1989 when the Diplomats finished off a 19-year run without posting a losing record.

"It just shows where this program is going," said fullback Ryan Murray, another senior. "We wanted to be remembered as the group that set the foundation that got this program going in the right direction. I think we did that."

Murray was the hero for the Diplomats in his finale. On a gimpy ankle, which he said he "couldn't even feel" after the game, Murray kept one fourth-quarter scoring drive alive with a Herculean effort and then scored the game-winning TD.

On a third-and-6 from the F&M 31, with his team down 24-17, Murray went around the left end, was hit a couple yards past the line of scrimmage and began falling toward the ground. But the 6-foot-1, 215-pounder refused to go down.

Murray somehow managed to stay on his feet and lunged three yards past the first-down marker, keeping the drive alive. Four plays later, the Diplomats scored, moving within a point of tying the game.

"Emotions just took over," explained Murray, of his lone carry of the game. "There was no tomorrow. You have to give everything you have on every play."

On F&M's next drive, it was Murray who hauled in a two-yard TD pass from John Harrison with eight seconds to play, finishing off the improbable comeback.

It was an appropriate ending, according to fourth-year coach John Troxell.

"He's the backbone of this team," Troxell said of Murray. "When you talk about toughing things out, getting extra yards, blocking, he did everything for us. It's hard to find guys like that, who are not selfish kids and just want to win. So for him to catch that last pass to seal a win in a game like this, he deserved it."

Murray's heroics typified the drive and desire of the octet of seniors (Murray, Lovett, Eager, Jeff Kellar, Jeff Liberatore, Mike Marcinek, Clarke Miller and Frank DiMattia) had since arriving on campus in the midst of a coaching change, not knowing what to expect in the four years facing them. In their first three years, they went 11-19.

"I knew one day we'd get it together," said the 22-year-old Lovett, a co-captain known to his teammates as the "Fossil."

Troxell refers to the All-Conference cornerback as the "best in the country."

Lovett, who will graduate in December, tied Kellar for a team-high three interceptions this year.

"We just finally clicked this year," Lovett said. "We wanted to go out with a bang. It's been a helluva run. This has been the greatest year for us. This is a turning point in Franklin & Marshall football."

Eager, a Manheim Township graduate, only spent the last three years at F&M after transferring from Millersville, but will go down as one of best in school history.

In the Wilkes win, Eager grabbed 10 passes for 126 yards and became the first F&M player to produce 4,000 all-purpose yards.

"There's a new attitude with this team," said Eager, who had 89 catches for 1,169 yards and 13 touchdowns this year. "Hopefully it will never go back to the days of where we weren't competing for a Centennial Conference title."

Ah, yes, a return trip to the glory days, a fitting goodbye gift from Eager and his fellow seniors.