You Had Better Have a Coach If You Want to Beat Northwestern At The Lake

The titanic Showdown On The Lake between two Big Ten bottomfeeders scraping for a rare conference win turned out to be a tense, exciting game that came down to the final seconds where Northwestern triumphed as the Kings of the Rot Pile, and I was miserable and fuming.

UCLA came out looking every bit as lousy as advertised. The ‘Cats ran the ball on them at will with Caleb Komolafe steamrolling through their defensive line like it was made out of papier mache and Joseph Himon flying around the outside. They let Griffin Wilde run free in the secondary. Northwestern, a generous donor of the ball early this season, did not turn it over. The UCLA offense, led by heralded transfer quarterback Nico Iamaleava, moved the ball a little but continually stalled out. At halftime, the ‘Cats were up 17-3 and on their way to what looked like an easy romp against a profoundly crappy team and one of the most convincing wins against a Big Ten opponent in years.

But in the second half, the game took a turn against the ‘Cats. UCLA got another field goal. Northwestern went on a long, punishing, run-heavy drive that took up a large chunk of the third quarter and into the fourth that got them all the way down to a first and goal at the three, but the ‘Cats couldn’t punch it in, and the field goal was blocked. Somehow, Iamaleava took an offense that was doing little other than getting hit in the solar plexus by Robert Fitzgerald and led a quick drive down the field. All the Bruins needed was a field goal to send the game into overtime. The game went from a casual Wildcat romp to the ‘Cats desperately holding onto the lead with the tips of their fingernails.

Calmly watching the second half of the UCLA game 

The ‘Cats could not get the drive they needed to finally put away UCLA and the Bruins got the ball with 86 seconds left to get into field goal range. I was watching this at like 11:00 at night and had spent the entire afternoon in a hermetically sealed internet bubble to avoid knowing what happened and I was quietly losing my mind and pacing around, anxiously fast forwarding from snap to snap. But there was nothing to worry about. UCLA mounted no real threat to score and the clock ran out on them with the Wildcats triumphing and remaining in a strong position to not be the worst team in the Big Ten this season. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be their biggest win.

When you root for Northwestern, you can’t really get mad at a win. You can watch them flail around against a crummy team or win because of a very stupid mental error by another team or because of what a scientific analysis of other teams’ message boards after losing to Northwestern has determined to be an extremely unfair amount of uncalled holding penalties, very nasty holding penalties, it’s a disgrace with the holding penalties and we’re looking into it very strongly. So I am not going to go on the internet and complain that Northwestern did not win a Big Ten game enough in a period of time where they are averaging like one big ten win a year. We got ‘em. The Bruins came into The Lake with their interim coaches and their fucked up Body Clocks, they didn’t come back, and you can go ahead and chisel that W on the Wildcats’ schedule.

 

Welcoming the west coast teams to Chicago's Big Ten Time Zone, uh file not found for the Oregon game

Maybe it will mean something. Maybe Northwestern can somehow manage to get another couple of wins from more combobulated Big Ten teams and get in prime position in case ESPN runs out of bowl teams. Maybe it will just mean that they won a Big Ten game on The Lake before they fold it up and put the stadium into storage like a crooked circus.

A HOME-STYLE HOMECOMING

As far as I can tell, schools try to schedule their homecoming games against a team they think they can beat, which is why Northwestern plays what seems like at least three road homecoming games every season. Last year, because Northwestern was desperately trying to assemble the lakeside stadium out of scrap metal and lincoln logs, they scheduled one of the funniest homecoming games possible: a late November Wrigley Field game against future national champion Ohio State in a venue that was at least 90% Ohio State fans. I wrote about this last year, but watching all of the stadium attractions programmed to Northwestern Mode in front of probably the most overwhelmingly away-team heavy crowd I have ever seen at an ostensible Northwestern home game was surreal. These people, I thought incredulously, don’t even know who Corey Wootton is.

You think that's Steve Schnur 

This year, Northwestern has taken the opposite tactic. They’re playing on campus at The Lake against a Sun Belt team from Northern Louisiana. I don’t know about the traveling predilections of ULM football fans, but it seems likely that Northwestern’s homecoming will actually feel like a home game, as much as it can feel like a home game in a stadium so small that the crowd noise on the television broadcast sounds like a golf tournament, and not even one of the rowdy golf tournaments like the Waste Management Open where Scottsdale hospitals spend the day full of cases like “fell into pool of own vomit, cactus” and “the warning from the Cialis commercial.”

I would never lie to the readers of this blog unless for some reason I thought it was funny, so I will admit that I know nothing about ULM football. I am not sure I have ever watched a ULM football game, not even the 2012 AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl. Northwestern has never played the Warhawks; even if a ULM team from the earliest days of its program in the 1930s wanted to get on a steamer and head up the Mississippi looking for midwestern football teams to tussle with, they would have to go through far too many squads and take far too many violent 1930s style tackles from Normal Schools and dental colleges especially tough air force reserve programs before they even got to the Quad Cities.

ULM comes into the game 3-1, with wins against FCS Saint Francis, a UTEP team team winless against the FBS, and conference foe Arkansas State. Their only loss was to Alabama, who wiped them out 73-0 in what was probably an expression of the complete derangement of everyone around that program who have reacted the program merely being “pretty good” by a descent into total madness. Northwestern is heavily favored, but the ‘Cats are also a big target. Any team that comes to Northwestern for a paycheck game sees the Wildcats as a rare opportunity to pin a Power Four pelt on their wall.

It’s hard to measure these things, but ULM is possibly a tougher matchup than UCLA. Sure, they don’t have a million-dollar five star transfer quarterback, but their run defense does not appear to graciously usher tailbacks to the first down marker with linemen spreading garlands of flowers before they ineffectually fall down. It’s clear that this year’s Northwestern team wants to just run the ball at ball people as much as possible with their large offensive line, sit on the clock, and happily punt. For six quarters against Western Illinois and in the first half against UCLA, Northwestern looked dominant doing that. If they have to start trying to move the ball beyond just letting Komolafe run over guys and Himon run around them, things may get precarious.

If Northwestern manages a win, they will be 3-2 heading into a gauntlet of a schedule that includes three ranked teams and a Friday night game in Los Angeles against a dangerous USC team. Northwestern does have some games against fellow Big Ten West Slop Alumni, but I have absolutely no idea how competitive the ‘Cats can be against the likes of Nebraska, Minnesota and Even Purdue this year. Whoever took a reeling, Fickell-addled Wisconsin team off the Northwestern schedule this year must be found and held accountable. I don’t have high expectations for this season, but any shred of hope would die with a loss on Saturday. But I do believe that this year’s homecoming has to be better, if only because I assume ULM doesn’t have some weird self-proclaimed mascot guy running around the stadium in body paint.

INVISIBLE BIG TEN CITIES I

Tony Petitti does not necessarily believe Marco Polo when he describes the various cities of the Big Ten. In the life of any Conference Commissioner, there is a pride in conquering vast swathes of new territory and a melancholy and relief of knowing he should give up any thought of knowing or understanding them. There is a sense of emptiness that comes in the evening, with the smells of unlimited Brazilian meats waft into his Rosemont headquarters and the traffic from the Jane Addams intensifies into a steady roar of passing cars rather than the grind of stalled traffic, and the din from the Chicago Dogs baseball stadium has died down. Only through the tales from the Venetian explorer could Commissioner Petitti grasp the subtle patterns.

Cities and transportation infrastructure 1: Angelina

Angelina is a great city of roads. The roads form a great circuit around the city and the residents travel through them all day every day to unknowable ends. The city is divided into those who can still remember the purpose for which they set off on the road and those who have forgotten and only travel upon the roads for lack of understanding of what else to do. 

Travelers are constantly broadcasting their complicated routes to other travelers and describing the parts of the city they have heard about– the beaches, the gardens, the tar pits, the elevated street taco place that’s still authentic– they are all constantly explaining these plans and meticulously broadcasting them to other travelers who are making and explaining their own plans. The travelers all take to the airwaves to talk about their routes and then appear on other travelers’ broadcasts to have the same conversation.

Somewhere nestled in the mountains through ribbons of road there is a large, flat, bowl. The sun sparkles on it before setting into a picturesque scene, like a softboiled egg nestled in a purple broth. And yet, the bowl is empty. Travelers discuss games that take place there, they relay explanations of complex plays and detailed descriptions of violent tackles, but no one can verify them since they are not there. They have played an infinite number of games, each one altered by a traveler who has not seen it but has heard of it, the games warp in the retelling and become another game. In some accounts these games turn into perverse spectacle and others turn into farcical comedy, impossible comebacks, the endless, recursive return of onside kicks into touchdowns.

No one has seen the games because no one is there. The travelers of Angelina are circling the stadium in loops simultaneously arriving and departing until it is impossible to determine which is which. It all blurs into the same road.

Cities and waterfowl 1: Eugenia

The citizens of Eugenia complain of neck pain because they are always looking up. Their necks stick that way. Older residents are no longer able to see their own shoes and need to have them placed on by children with more pliant, flexible necks. Toddlers crawl and call out obstacles on the ground to older relatives, an imperfect system since they do not have a keen eye to discern obstacles, but they have been deputized for this important job by being lowest to the ground.

The residents of Eugenia must keep their heads up at all times because the city has a duck. Every day, the man-sized duck flies across the city on a nest of zip lines. The tallest buildings have been repurposed into zip line towers, and this duck zooms around, low to the ground, its webbed feet constantly clattering into unaware heads as distracted citizens are knocked into creeks and merchant stalls filled with fresh fish. Before the Eugenians adopted their signature pose, the duck was knocking scores of people to the ground every day as it zips around toward a purpose that no one has discovered.

Every day, the Eugenia go about their business to the din of the zipline and enter their low-ceilinged buildings where they read and write on their own ceilings and hang their belongings so they do not trip on them. Doctors say it takes five years for outsiders to be able to look up vigilantly enough to avoid the duck and unaware visitors expect to get kicked or belly bumped by a ziplining duck at least three times each day, depending on the duck’s activities.

The people of Eugenia like their duck and are horrified at any suggestion that the duck should be harmed or stopped from maniacally ziplining into the populace. You should get out of its way, they say to anyone who protests. This is simply what the duck does in this city. You should not carry large bundles of eggs or panes of glass. 

The duck is whimsical. Every small joy of looking forward or bending over to smell flowers or even to avoid stepping into a pothole or pile of animal waste is subsumed to the enjoyable spectacle of a duck flying around, hopping from line to line, expertly lining up in front of a baker carrying an enormous layer cake unaware of the duck’s whereabouts. 

No one needs to bicker or spread gossip. The only acceptable topic of conversation in Eugenia is what the duck is up to or speculation about where the duck might be going next or even talking to each other as if they were the duck him or herself even though the duck’s own thoughts are entirely inscrutable. People come to Eugenia with hopes and dreams and fears but they happily subsume them to hopes and dreams and fears about the duck in an annihilating relief.

The duck also has a motorcycle.