NOBODY BEATS THE NORTHWESTERN WILDCATS IN A BASEBALL STADIUM 8 TIMES IN A ROW

My understanding is that the standard for a Big Ten West-style game is that it is an unwatchable slog with teams whose competence passing the ball is so low that it seems intentional or almost spiteful, and the game outcome depends largely on punting mistakes. But I think it is also possible to have a high scoring and exciting Big Ten West game that hews closely to the spirit of the division by being increasingly preposterous.  Perhaps this is the only way that Northwestern could finally win at Wrigley Field, secure a bowl berth, and move towards the close of a season that lapped my expectations.

Jubilant fans celebrate the end of one of  longest losing streaks in American sports after Northwestern wins a game at Wrigley Field 

Since Northwestern began playing at Wrigley in 2010 as a one-off, one-endzone novelty and then began playing games there more regularly first as an annual gimmick game and then as an emergency stadium replacement, I'm assuming that Northwestern had plans on what to do if they won a game. They'd fly the W flag.  They'd put 'Cats Win on the marquee. Maybe they would even play a version of "Go Cubs Go" that had  a voice sloppily dubbing "'Cats" over Cubs.  It was impossible to know because every time they played there they lost and usually lost badly.  

It didn't look like that would happen at first. The 'Cats dominated the first quarter and raced out to a 10-0 lead off a long Caleb Komolafe touchdown run. But between some ugly special teams gaffes, an inability to score touchdowns in the red zone despite desperately working Ryan Boe into doomed option packages, and Minnesota quarterback Drake Lindsay finding a rhythm, Minnesota got up 21-13 at the half. By the beginning of the third quarter, it was 28-13. A black cat crossed in front of the Wildcat dugout. A goat was ejected from the stadium. A fan in doofy old-fashioned headphones interfered with a football in play. The Wrigley demons were unleashed and roaring. 

NOOOOOO!!!!!!! 

But Preston Stone had no interest in losing this game. The senior quarterback who has been increasingly tasked with simply handing the ball off as Northwestern has slid more comfortably into its ground-based trench football, turned into the star passer they needed. He took advantage of a reeling Minnesota pass defense that functions like a machine that turns even the most plodding Big Ten West quarterbacks into Drew Brees. Stone had time in the pocket and Griffin Wilde made the Gopher defensive backs look like henchmen trying to capture Jackie Chan in the world's largest ladder warehouse. Stone finished with 305 yards and two touchdowns. He didn't throw a single incompletion in the second half. No Northwestern quarterback has thrown for 300 yards since Ben Bryant did it in 2023 while also leading a comeback against Minnesota. Every other Big Ten team experiences a Northwestern game as tank warfare; to Minnesota they're the Blue Angels.

And yet, Northwestern still needed some magic of their own. After another touchdown drive stalled and the 'Cats had to settle for a go-ahead field goal, they left two minutes on the clock.  That was plenty for Lindsay, who had Minnesota on the other side of the field what seemed like instantaneously. With only a few seconds remaining after a lengthy review when the Gophers had nearly blown the game by taking too long to launch a desperation endzone pass and running out of time, they brought out their field goal unit for what looked like a routine 40-yarder to tie it. No good. If the end of last game had allowed sports commentators to indulge their worst impulses and call Michigan's last-second field goal at Wrigley a "walkoff" then the tortured baseball metaphor for what happened to Minnesota is that they had their cleanup hitter up with the bases loaded and he immediately struck out then fell down and vomited. It wasn't pretty, but they finally won at Wrigley. Hopefully they won't be back for awhile.

David Braun, who last week gave an emotional "look we're actually trying to win games here" speech after the Michigan loss, which is not the type of thing that other Big Ten coaches actually have to say, was emotional and choking up on the field. Northwestern, left for dead at the bottom of the Big Ten after a miserable season last year, was going to a bowl game. 

The first recorded instance of a Northwestern coach smiling after a game at Wrigley Field 

If the people in charge of college football had a sense of humor they'd send them to the Pinstripe Bowl.

I'M NOT PLAYING AROUND ANYMORE GIVE ME THE HAT

But the season didn't end at Wrigley. The 'Cats have unfinished business remaining in Champaign. For most of the 2010s, the season ended with the Hat safely in Evanston, as the 'Cats lorded over the Illini in the standings by being decent while Illinois set records in ineptitude. But the tide has turned since Bret Bielema arrived at Illinois.  With the exception of the 2023 season, we've seen him strutting around with the Hat like he owns it.   

One thing I appreciate about Bret Bielema is that he looks like a real life Far Side cartoon  

Illinois came into the year with real expectations. They  ranked 12th in the preseason AP Poll and dominated their first three opponents on the way to a #9 ranking and a showdown with rising Big Ten power Indiana. It had been a very long time since we've seen a consequential game between these two historically lousy teams; only Indiana's meteoric ascent under Curt Cignetti has allowed it to finally no longer have the record for most losses in college football history and leave that indignity to some shitty program that someone would have to be an idiot to follow, imagine of being a fan of and perhaps even writing long overwrought blog posts about such a team. The Illinois-Indiana game was not an instant classic. Indiana crushed and humiliated Illinois. The Illini were like the buzzing of flies to them. 

With the exception of a classic Body Clocks ambush against USC, Illinois has beaten the crummy teams on the schedule and lost to better teams. That was until last week, when a Wisconsin team that had spent most of the season in a state of offensive ineptitude that would even embarrass Kirk Ferentz took them down. Wisconsin's defense beat the absolute crap out of the Illinois offensive line. Quarterback Luke Altmyer was running for his life. The Illinois punter even had a rough time in one of the funniest plays of last week when a bad snap bounced off his hands and he saw a tidal wave of mean red linemen charging at him with the demonic intensity of special teams players who have realized they have a an opportunity to legally run over a reedy little kicking specialist who leans on The Rules for impunity from the violent parts of football that don't involve kicking. 

Illinois is still a formidable team. Northwestern, with its attrition on defense, has been looking increasingly vulnerable to the pass in ways that I think a veteran like Altmyer who has seemingly been playing since the Obama administration will be able to exploit. Northwestern will keep trying to run the ball and ideally have one possession take up an entire quarter, but it will be interesting to see if Stone can continue his strong play or if it was a product of Minnesota's defense seemingly learning about the legality of the forward pass fifteen minutes before kickoff.

It would be nice for this game to have juice beyond guys nicknamed "juice." Northwestern and Illinois have almost never been good at the same time. This season, though Illinois came on strong and carried a ranking into last week and Northwestern has been predicted to lose every game since Purdue, they are on a collision course to the middle. If Northwestern wins, both teams will finish with identical 7-5 records. 

The Hat Game is less fun nowadays because Illinois under Bielema is consistently good and favored to win most years and also because their coach is not a maniac who is producing his own anti-Northwestern graphics. Bielema is a fun character as an adversary, a weird mix of presenting himself as a blustery oaf who is also an irritating rules-monger who goes through the regulations with a jeweler's loupe and will find and exploit loopholes not just to win games but for the sheer joy of figuring out weird rules exploits. This is some Model UN-ass football. For me, the enduring image of Bielema's tenure at Illinois was when he nearly got into a fistfight with South Carolina coach Frank Beamer at the Cheez-It Bowl over obscure touchback gestures.

This looks almost identical to that meme of the lady yelling at a cat 

Look can be deceiving in college football.  It is Northwestern that wants to play the most oafish smash-you-up football that is legally allowed while falling for the ol' punter/quarterback switcheroo because they didn't do enough homework, and it is the team with a coach who looks like he spends a lot of time smashing through walls to serve Kool Aid who wants to stop the game to well actually the referees.

But regardless of how the Illini are playing or what variety of maniac they have coaching, it doesn't matter because they currently control the most coveted rivalry trophy in sports: the Hat. They have the Hat and all that matters is getting it back no matter the circumstances, and if David Braun and his staff have to scour the rule books to make sure they don't get had and, if they lose, only lose because of normal football. Northwestern has had a much better season than I could have ever imagined. I never thought they'd make a bowl game. Why not finish it off by prying the Hat off the most bulbous head in the conference.

THE CHICAGO BEARS ARE GETTING AWAY WITH IT

 

The Bears don't look like a particularly good team. The defense stinks, the offense runs hot and cold, and they keep needing miraculous comebacks to beat bad teams. They are also 8-3, in first place in the NFC North, and have somehow completely reversed last season where they were losing games too preposterously for a team to even do that intentionally.

Every game there are 30 seconds left and a wind gust somehow upends the opponents' kicking net that snares several key players and a referee has to go into the bowels of the stadium and get a special pair of scissors and then flags them for "excessive entanglement" and then Ben Johnson goes into the locker room and screams "MEN, THAT IS HOW YOU WIN FUCKIN' FOOTBALL GAME, IN THIS LEAGUE." 

They wouldn't be able to make these crazy comebacks without Caleb Williams, who has gone from a quarterback whose obvious gifts and flaws seemed like they were designed in a lab to somehow make quarterback-deranged Bears fans even crazier. But while Williams still looks like a work in progress, he is helming one of the few functional Bears offenses I have ever seen in my life. He is almost impossible to sack; he has this move he does 35 times a game where it looks like a pocket is collapsing on him like that house falling on Buster Keaton and he does a little spin move and is darting to the sideline to either pick up a few rushing yards or try to throw an insane pass that he sometimes completes.  

At least right now, it looks like the Bears have finally hired an Offensive Mastermind Coach who knows what he's doing. Johnson is a fascinating figure to me, a madman who looks like an anthropomorphic clenched jaw and at all times looks his tendons are going to explode from his body in an expression of football intensity.  It would be a ridiculous way to be as a coach and human being if the team was playing traditional Bears football and getting their asses handed to them week after week, but right now the team seems to be having the time of its life winning games like they are playing chicken with a freight train.

This guy looks like he is opening a packet of gravel and shoving it in his mouth like Big League Chew 

Things will be getting tougher.  The Bears' wins have mostly been against a motley crew of bottom-feeders and backup quarterbacks. Starting Friday, they will have to face the terrifying Eagles, last year's super bowl champions who, despite having an identical record to the Bears and coming off a literal championship, they apparently are not winning hard enough for Philadelphia's perpetually aggrieved fans who are miserable and want to have the coach fired and possibly assassinated.  The Bears also have the hated Packers on the schedule twice, plus a Lions team that destroyed them earlier and a bunch of other playoff teams.  Their crappy defense is already decimated with injury, although it looks like at least some of their depleted secondary could be slated for return.

After years of the Bears not only losing but looking like one of those joke franchises that never does anything right, I'm enjoying this little run without believing anything about it. The battle is already over. Ben Johnson is a competent coach. Caleb Williams is at the very least a viable quarterback. They didn't completely blow it. And if the Bears are playing like the early 2000s spread offense Northwestern teams that couldn't stop anyone, it's at least something different. At least they're not playing like the Chicago Bears.   

LET 'EM OFF THE HOOK

No person has ever better explained the feeling of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory better than former Northwestern head coach Dennis Green when he screamed “they are who we thought they were, and we let ‘em off the hook!” before slapping a microphone stand and stomping away after his Arizona Cardinals blew a Monday night game to the Bears. Northwestern had Michigan down one with a couple minutes left and everything on the line: a bowl berth, a win in the cursed confines of Wrigley Field, a win against the eternally annoying Michigan Wolverines, a win against Michigan in a Wrigley Field completely full of Michigan fans none of whom woke up that day with the thought of losing to Northwestern even occurring to them; and they let ‘em off the goddamn hook. 

In Green's rant he also managed to make the single most accurate and existentially true statement about the Chicago Bears ever recorded. "The Bears are what we thought they were" should be inscribed at Halas Hall.

Perhaps it is not surprising that they lost. Michigan outplayed Northwestern in this game. They successfully bottled up Caleb Komolafe, which is a problem because the Wildcats’ offensive gameplan is a BASIC computer program that says “<10> give ball to Komolafe” and GOTO <10>. On defense, Michigan just kept running the same RPO play where Bryce Underwood would throw to a wide open Andrew Marsh for the best day in their young careers; you can understand why Pat Fitzgerald once got so mad at that play after getting torched by Daniel Jones that he described it tn the most damning phrase a meathead who grew up in the 1980s could muster, calling it “pure communism.” 

Fitzgerald, a well-known amateur scholar of Marx, was of course referring to Marx's lesser-known follow up to Kapital Das LaufenOderPassenOption

But Michigan’s offense made enough silly mistakes to keep the ‘Cats in it. The Wolverines' offense either resembled a smooth yards-chewing machine or a sputtering turnover factory. Northwestern recovered five of them in this game and these takeaways, along with a desperate switch from the oozing across the ground offense to one where Preston Stone just started hucking balls to receivers making insane catches after three quarters of passes getting repeatedly battered down at the line of scrimmage or skipping across the field like a fucking baseball as the announcers constantly reminded us because this football game was actually being played at a stadium where they usually play baseball got Northwestern back into the game and clinging to the smallest lead you're allowed to have.

But when Northwestern just needed one more stop to ice the game and revel in glory, they couldn’t do it. Despite a heroic effort from the defense all game long, Michigan marched down the field one third down at a time, set up a field goal with no time remaining, and blasted it through. Fine. Crown their ass.

I watched the final drive in fast forward, knowing what was coming. It was an obscene and frankly alarmingly beautiful day on Saturday and instead of sitting at the TV getting mad, I chose to spend the time outside and only watched the game after the sun had set. In the third quarter, with Northwestern looking hapless and down 21-9, I decided I had enough and looked up the score and was startled to see that they had come all the way back but fell short. I still didn’t know what happened, but as the game clock ticked down and I saw that it was going to be a walkoff field goal I somehow got mad at something I already knew was going to happen in a strange temporal distortion. A gut punch doesn’t hurt less when you see it coming.

A win on Saturday could have exorcised the demons at Wrigley, ended their losing streak, and stuck it to Michigan, but they lost in heartbreaking fashion. Now they are clinging to a bowl berth with the tips of their fingernails. They need to figure out how to win at this ballpark.

PLEASE STOP RUINING THE CONCEPT OF "WRIGLEY FIELD" FOR ME

Wrigley Field in the summer is one of the country’s great ballparks built for long summer days watching a ballgame slowly unfurl itself over the course of a lazy afternoon. But in the fall, the ivy turns into sticks, the clouds form a gray ceiling over the park, and Northwestern loses a football game. As much as I enjoy watching baseball there, I have come to dread Northwestern games at Wrigley ever since Mikel Leshoure put 350 rushing yards on them while players were barred from using one of the endzones because it was a brick wall. Northwestern has never won a game here. It is the graveyard of Wildcat football.

This is a problem because if the ‘Cats want to achieve their most important goal imaginable and qualify for a crummy-ass bowl game they are going to need a win against Minnesota in this cursed stadium or have to beat a very good Illinois team in Champaign. In my expert football opinion, they probably should have considered simply winning the Michigan game.

Minnesota is in theory a less daunting opponent than the last two ranked behemoths on the schedule and even Nebraska. They are 6-4, but winless on the road, and, with the exception of a 24-6 beatdown of the Huskers, have gotten walloped by good teams and squeaked by the sagging lower middle of the Big Ten. I was very surprised to see that the oddsmakers have Northwestern favored in this game, which might be the first time that’s ever happened at Wrigley.

How much of a “road game” will this be for a Minnesota team that is inept outside of the Twin Cities? I expect Minnesota fans to flood Wrigley like all Big Ten opponents, but the fact that Northwestern has sent me several emails offering discounted tickets to this game and the fact that the vibes for Minnesota seem kind of lousy this year– their fans have become grimly resigned to the sobering reality that other than beating a hobbling Wisconsin team that is playing like they just got caught in a bear trap and are waiting for Walker Texas Ranger to punch them in the face, a win against the ‘Cats would be their biggest and most impressive of the season– means that it is possible that Wrigley looks less like its festooned in maroon wallpaper and more like a post-Labor Day afternoon crowd when a 75-win Cubs team is playing the Reds for fourth place in the NL Central.

When you're going to see some green seats in the upper deck 

Regardless of what happens on the field, another Wrigley game has guaranteed more tortured baseball references from announcers. I would hope that someone has told the announcing crew that this is the fifth Northwestern Wrigley game in three years and Wildcat fans simply cannot listen to a guy say “he threw that like a dang shortstop” one more time. I just looked up who the announcers were to see if maybe there was a repeat crew that had used up all of their baseball material but this game has been swept to the dregs of the Big Ten Network and, while I do not want to alarm readers, if you are watching this on television you are inviting Matt Millen to be a part of your Saturday. Maybe that announcer choice, along with the offer of low-priced ticket-and-hotdog combos are part of the effort to get people to this game and not watching on TV.

I would like to think that the fact that Northwestern hasn’t really been blown out except against Oregon and in the second half against USC only after blowing a touchdown and being victimized by some of the most shameful punt-chicaneries ever inflicted on an honorable football team means that they will easily bulldoze an equally mediocre Minnesota team, but of course that is wishful thinking. This is a Big Ten West Legacy Game in a very silly place to play football and Minnesota and Northwestern are evenly matched. Northwestern needs this win like water for a realistic shot at a bowl game capping off a vastly more successful season than anyone imagined, but Minnesota needs this one only slightly less.

The formula for the Northwestern this year is simple. They need to run the ball on long, agonizing drives that speed up the game on offense and avoid big plays on defense. They will give up that same goddamn sideline route on third down constantly and if the opposing quarterback can hit that pass, the ‘Cats will be in big trouble. It’s the same Hope A Big Ten West Quarterback Is A Big Ten West-Style Lummox strategy that got them to so many Ticket City-style bowl games in the 2010s. 

Being a football fan is a goofy enterprise even if you are rooting for a big time team with real ambitions. It is much harder to explain the concept of getting insanely mad that a team that will never actually win anything could miss an opportunity to play in the America’s Gizzard Producers’ Innards Bowl in front of 3,900 people against a team that is somehow simultaneously in two conferences because of an administrative error. Please let them just get this out of the way before they get down to the much more serious and important Hat Business.

INVISIBLE BIG TEN CITIES

The Great Commissioner brought his foreign envoy Marco Polo to the seat of his empire’s greatest crown jewel. It sits at the nexus of all known types of transportation with rail lines and great highways and even airplanes landing majestically overhead. He takes them through a complex of inns and sites of great exhibitions of goods from lands that even Marco Polo has never heard of. It is ringed by portraits of an unsettling man with an uncanny head of hair impossible to exist in nature. 

The Great Commissioner takes Marco Polo to the seat of his empire, an ornate palace that shares a parking lot with a meat restaurant. It is across the highway from a minor league baseball stadium named for a hot dog where the ketchup mascot is regularly imprisoned and humiliated to reflect the tastes of the populace who abhor that condiment. 

“Tell me, Marco Polo,” the Commissioner says. “In all of your travels and all of the cities you have told me about, could you ever envision a city like this?”

“No,” Marco Polo said. 

Cities and Language V: Minna 

One arrives in the great city of Minna by road or perhaps even by the river through the gates and marvels at the enormous inflatable buildings and structures ingeniously designed to shield its residents from the harshest of the elements. The city is prosperous and tidy as residents bustle around conducting their business. It is only when a visitor attempts to speak to a Minnan that they will be utterly befuddled by how they communicate in this city.

The residents here speak in an almost impenetrable argot of slogans and acronyms. For example, a visitor simply attempting to greet a stranger and perhaps ask for directions will be told “Board the Train!” and when they ask for further clarification being told that “train” is an acronym that stands for “take risks and invalidate naysayers” before the person will chestbump the visitor. 

Even those practiced in Minna-speak can get tripped up. An experienced guide who spent a happy childhood in Minna and then left to pursue studies in other parts of the Commissioner’s vast kingdom before returning to serve as an interpreter for visiting dignitaries suffered a humiliating breakdown while trying to convey the meaning of G.A.R.G.A.N.T.U.A.N. somewhere around the second G. Even years later he could barely get through the story without holding back tears. “That is too many letters for a motivational acronym,” he said. “A child could see that.”

Despite the bizarre and oblique methods of speaking by telling each other to “readying hard means going hard” when “h.a.r.d.” is an acronym that in some tortured way ends up meaning trying hard, the people of Minna understand each other. There is a sort of labored poetry to their words. Unfortunately, this type of speech can lead to problems. I once witnessed a man greet a friend with “maximum drive means driving your max” and the two men disagreed with whether the V in drive stood for Velocity or Vicissitude. The two men came to blows on a sidewalk, pulling each other’s dri-fit quarter-zips over their heads exposing the shirt and tie they wear underneath and pummeling each other until passersby urged them to be K.I.N.D. (kindness is never donnybrooking).

The residents are kind and welcoming, largely because they are happy to sit down for hours and explain what their various sayings and acronyms mean. They are excited because it has taken their ancestors hundreds if not thousands of years to compile such a beguiling and twisting language that follows its own logic, even if it is kind of silly. But because they cannot speak without their comforting store of aphorisms and sayings, every conversation mushrooms into an even more impenetrable nest of references. I recommend staying away from Minna at all costs.

Punter Perfidy

Northwestern was hanging in there on the road against USC in the Coliseum. The offense was leaning on the Trojans and gradually spilling across the field like a gravy stain spreading over a paper tablecloth. They were matching them point for point. And then the USC quarterback fumbled a ball right to a gigantic Wildcat defensive tackle who was plowing straight ahead towards the end zone for a devastating go-ahead touchdown, and apparently that's when USC had the ‘Cats right where they wanted them.

Inches before Najee Story triumphantly gallumphed into the endzone on a picture perfect big man touchdown, USC quarterback Jayden Maiava streaked across the field, lowered his helmet, and smacked it into Story’s hands, jarring the football loose, and turning a momentum-swinging touchdown into a deflating touchback. The fumble out of the endzone rule is one of the most punitive in sports. It’s hard to think of equivalents– perhaps a batter getting blasted in the kneecap by a fastball only for the New York Review Center to determine that several molecules of his bat hit the ball and instead of being at first, he foul tipped and struck out and also needs a new knee. It would be like if the penalty for missing a free throw is that a referee performs a flying knee strike to the player’s ball sack. Few things are more dismaying.

But something even more disturbing happened before this play. The infamous trickster and charlatan Lincoln Riley once again got away with a fiendish and illegal scheme so disgusting and contrary to the principles of Fair Play and Sports Man-ship that he should not only be fired for his actions but possibly imprisoned in an oubliette in the hopes that his crimes against the game of football can perhaps one day be forgotten by a shocked and stricken nation.

On November 7, 2025, the USC Trojans impersonated their own punter. This man had all the makings of a punter: a punter’s stance, a punter’s helmet, and even the punter’s jersey number. But the person who came in was not a punter but a backup quarterback in disguise who, using the well-honed form and swashbuckling élan of a passer and instead of a punter’s ungainly lunge, easily threw to a wide open receiver. The USC coaching staff had secretly and, I assume, after many sinister meetings held in torchlit antechambers sealed off from the prying eyes of decency, changed quarterback Sam Huard’s number to 80, the same as their punter. They had to do this because otherwise the Wildcats would have easily been able to tell that Huard was going to throw the ball, not only from his quarterback number, but because he presumably had the Mark of the Huard that instantly identifies him and all members of his family as backup quarterbacks, a trade which they have practiced in all corners of the globe since antiquity

  

My sources say the death penalty, for punt shenanigans, being considered for USC. I am pro-special teams and take no pleasure in reporting this.

Technically, USC switched the punter number in the official gameday program that was freely available to Northwestern, who did not effectively scour the roster for any suspicious late jersey movement among backup quarterbacks. But, according to Rodger Sherman, who I trust more than anyone living on knowing the rules surrounding elaborate fake punts, the Trojans got away with using their real punter for subsequent punts. You can’t use two guys with the same number; USC should have been flagged for Illegal Number Duplication every time he appeared on the field and also the referee should have tackled him for a citizen's arrest. The Big Ten agreed and released a statement from its Rosemont headquarters/Brazilian Meats Restaurant saying the Trojans should have been penalized for “Unfair Tactics.” The conference continues to review the incident, which I hope will mean that USC will be forced to surrender the win, disband its football team, and send the coaches who contemplated such a scheme in exile to the University of Iowa where they respect punting and punters. Any attempt by these mountebanks to design an avant-garde punting trick there would be received by Kirk Ferentz contemptuously squinting at them while biting into a raw onion.

 

If USC wants to use a quarterback as a punter by giving them the same number, he should also be required to undergo experimental Face/Off surgery and completely take over his life, slowly going insane while realizing he is going to have to kick a ball if the opponent is going to take him seriously

Shame on Lincoln Riley for his dastardly plans. Is this the type of thing that he wants associated with a university, which is a place for education? What is he teaching his players, that it is ok to violate the trust of their opponents like he is performing some sort of cheap three card monte-style chicanery with his punting? Can we not expect basic integrity when it comes to special teams? Also shame on him for figuring out in the second half that Northwestern couldn’t really cover Makai Lemon and repeatedly throwing to him as they easily pulled away in the second half without having to resort to trap doors or infiltrating the Northwestern sidelines, or coming out in ghillie suits and hiding in the grass only to pop up and score touchdowns.

The clock is ticking for the ‘Cats, who now only have three more chances to earn a bowl berth the honorable way. Fortunately they are playing Michigan, a university that would never resort to trickery, skulduggery or disguises to gain an advantage on the football field.

OH GODDAMMIT THEY HAVE TO PLAY MICHIGAN WHERE?

I can’t think of a more catastrophically annoying idea than the concept of “playing Michigan at Wrigley Field.” Home games against the Wolverines are bad enough when Ryan Field was turned into the world’s largest outdoor Harrumphing Concert; add in the novelty of Wrigley Field and the chorus of maize and gold-clad people complaining about holding penalties will be louder at Wrigley than the time I saw Nelson Velazquez hit a grand slam to bring the Cubs all the way back in a game they were losing 7-0 by second inning.

This is the top google search for The Most Annoying Wrigley Field-Related Baseball Image that doesn't involve Jeff Garlin 

Michigan is in a second consecutive “underwhelming” season off of their triumphant 2023 where the program both won a national championship and also completed what football experts are calling the most irritating sports season in human history. The Wolverines spent the year enmeshed in one of the stupidest football scandals I’ve ever seen when some low-level maniac created an oafish spying program to decipher opponents’ signals that also involved him sneaking around the sidelines at Central Michigan like he was codenamed Gaseous Snake. The Michigan Spying Episode fed us sillier revelations each week until it ended with the NCAA leveling a bunch of pointless penalties and Michigan fans, every single one of whom is a lawyer, all simultaneously suing.

 

Michigan is still dealing with the consequences. Sherrone Moore was suspended two games this year and will miss the first game of next year’s season against powerhouse Western Michigan. The game had been scheduled to be played in Frankfurt, but Michigan moved it back to Ann Arbor. I’m not sure if the suspension has anything to do with it, but it would have been very funny playing a game in Germany while explaining that the head coach could not be there for espionage-related reasons. 

But a “down year” for Michigan is still an excellent year for the vast majority of college football teams, and they will be heavily favored against Northwestern even in tough "road game." The Wolverines have looked a little sluggish in recent games against the bottom of the Big Ten; for example, they allowed Purdue to score points, which is pretty embarrassing. 

Northwestern, at the same time, is leaning more and more into its possession-based oozing football. Every week they become more dependent on using Caleb Komolafe as a battering ram to the exclusion of almost any other offensive play. I am not complaining about this; I love seeing them become more and more leather-helmeted and hope they can have a drive that takes 25 minutes even if they don’t score a single point. If Michigan lets the ‘Cats turn this game into a clock-running slopfest without taking an overwhelming lead into the fourth quarter, they may regret it.

Another variable is that they are playing at a baseball stadium that in nearly all of its games has had a miserable surface. I don’t know if they got things under control; at least last year there did not seem to be the field issues that have plagued the games there in the past such as giant sink holes opening up in the grass and swallowing players who have had to be retrieved with a giant hook. I will never forget the image of ply stopping for several minutes near the goalline in the Iowa game a few years ago so the grounds crew could ineffectually stomp dirt into ankle-devouring divots nor the time a Purdue kicker somehow slid during his kicking motion.  Northwestern has famously never won a game here, and the novelty has worn off; I don't know how other fans feel, but I'm getting a little tired of having to go from having games at a Ryan Field that is 60% visiting fans to 90% visiting fans at Wrigley. Football games only belong in baseball stadiums in one situation and that is horrible bowl games in cold weather cities that no one wants to go to.

Northwestern’s last two losses have sort of taken the wind out of my sails. It is frustrating to remain stuck on five wins week after week against tough teams. It is not likely and I wouldn’t bet on it, but if Northwestern manages to break the Wrigley curse, beat Michigan, and get bowl eligible on the same day I will end up spending the rest of the day on the ceiling.

INVISIBLE BIG TEN CITIES

The Great Commissioner has an atlas that shows all of the cities in his conference’s empire. He shows it to Marco Polo who sees them unfold from coast to coast, popping up features. The explorer remembers the freeways of Angelina unfolding before him in a shimmering, endless ribbon whose haze formed a curtain between the real and the possible. He remembers the great and terrible grotesques of Lafeya, their hammers poised above his head. And he remembers Piscataway, where he once had a nice sandwich.

"When you return to Italy, will you tell the people about the cities that you see?" the Commissioner asks.

“Each person is only able to receive the stories they can understand. When I talk about a city where memories are at war with the living, the gondolier or stevedore hearing it can only understand from the context of their own memories, their own ghosts. That city will be entirely different than the same city I tell you about, Commissioner. The cities all exist simultaneously to buttress and destroy each other.”

“What’s the cable TV market like for football where you’re from?” the commissioner asks.

It is an unwise traveler to Anna who arrives without legal representation. The city of Anna is a city of formal complaints, lawsuits, and hearings. To walk down the street is to invite a summons or be deposed as a witness to a dispute happening several feet away. 

The citizens of Anna are busy appearing in courts, writing letters, and demanding evidence. They move furtively through alleys and sewers to avoid further complaints and denunciations and subpoenas. Or they sneak about themselves, trying to track down the targets of their lawsuits. The largest growing industry in Anna are people who will disguise themselves to deliver notices. They pop out of garbage receptacles and paint themselves like tree bark; they hoist themselves onto ceilings and dangle themselves from light fixtures. The most diabolical of them disguise themselves as someone their target is serving papers to only to whirl around serve their target before anyone has time to activate a smoke bomb and melt into the streets.

The city is filled with discarded paper from letters and transcripts. They blow into alleys and onto people’s faces. There is so much official paper flying from windows and open doors and briefcases accidentally jarred and flying open while a dimayed Annan sinks to his knees that the sheets stick together and congeal into hardened bricks. These paper bricks form into large structures that are the only things built in Anna. It is legally impossible to do any sort of construction, and people cram into wobbling paper buildings to hide from each other or to spring through the walls unexpectedly.

The people of Anna send their disputes to courts, committees, and government bodies. But these organizations are beset by infighting and formal complaints as well. All day, matters are referred to responsible bodies whose members are off filing motions each other or disguising themselves as statuary in order to serve papers to rival members. They all form networks of complex alliances and constantly betray each other. They ambush each other with trick complaints that actually turn out, when read aloud, to be a complaint against the person reading it. No dispute has ever been successfully settled.

The citizens of Anna have heard about this section of my writings and dispute it. I have already had fifteen pointed legal documents delivered by a boat navigating around the most treacherous capes to get here and demand my appearance in Literature Court before getting another note that Literature Court had been dissolved and placed under the aegis of Literary Court and then another telling me to disregard the previous letter, Literature Court had in fact never gone anywhere and is in fact suing the members of Literary Court for Court Infringement before getting another letter telling me that Literature Court is actually dissolving and I was hearing from the true Committee on the Activities of Literature Court and not a series of belligerent imposters, who had sent the previous letters and are themselves the target of multiple lawsuits. I also received a letter that was just a drawing of a hand making an obscene gesture.

Under the advice of counsel, I should like to tell the Great Commissioner that Anna is an ordinary city with no unusual features.

Abrupt Movement

It was all in front of the ‘Cats. Nebraska was reeling, coming off a complete dismantling at the hands of Minnesota. There were rumors circling around Matt Rhule and Penn State. And everyone in Nebraska thinks that they will easily roll Northwestern even though the two teams have largely played football games that resemble cats hissing and batting at each other until one team is eventually forced to win in a very stupid way. The ‘Cats improbably sit just one win away from a bowl game. The game was right there for them until it wasn’t.

 

Northwestern did what it wanted to do on offense, which was to feed the ball to its running backs and hang out in the huddle and watch the clock slowly drip away and eventually kick a field goal or even just punt it away knowing that they have caused their opponents to watch the clock wind down on another slow, excruciating drive questioning what they are doing with their lives. The ‘Cats might be the only team running plays called “existential angst.” But Nebraska was equally fearsome on the ground and, especially in the first half, the ‘Cats had no answer for Emmett Johnson, who smashed and zig zagged through the Northwestern line as he galloped down the field. In the second half, the ‘Cats couldn’t get off the field on third down. Time after time, they forced a third and long, and the Huskers would throw the same infuriating sideline pass a yard or two shy of the sticks and watch the Nebraska receiver just fall down into a conversion.

And yet, Northwestern remained in the game. They had chances to win. Caleb Komolafe burst free for a 75 yard scramble in the fourth that set up a game-tying two point try. The ‘Cats were driving for the win after an interception. But then Preston Stone threw a pick of his own, and Nebraska took advantage. The game came down to mistakes and Northwestern’s turnovers and special teams miscues that allowed a kickoff return ultimately doomed them. Stone’s desperation heave to Who Else But Griffin Wilde at the end of the game involved some pretty handsy defense from the Huskers, but the refs are never going to call defensive holding there unless a defensive back does a Mortal Kombat finishing move on the receiver. One the other hand, Northwestern did benefit from a penalty I have never seen in decades of football watching called “abrupt movement,” which is the type of referee gibberish I would make up alongside “Illegal Intent” or “Deceptive Deployment” or "Malicious Squabbling.”

My criteria for a fake penalty is whether it would work as a the title of a post-2000s Seagal movie. Incidentally "Abrupt Movement" is the only type of movement you would see from Steven Seagal in one of his latter-day pictures.

On the one hand, it is encouraging that Northwestern remains a tough out against the type of decent Big Ten team that before the season the ‘Cats seemed to have no chance against. On the other hand, it is annoying that Northwestern let this winnable game slip through their fingers before facing a schedule that is nothing but tough road games and “home” games at Wrigley Field that will be at least 85% visiting fans. Now if Northwestern wants to get bowl eligible they’ll have to do it against USC, Michigan, or Minnesota before the ultimate Hat Showdown. I still think they’ll do it somehow, but I don’t think they’re surprising anyone anymore.

ROSE BOWL REMATCH 

If you already weren’t aware of Northwestern’s looming Friday Night game against USC, you could have learned about it while watching the most tense baseball game of the year. As Jays and Dodgers fans endured extraordinary psychological damage in the agonizing torture chamber of a World Series game 7, Fox did one of the funniest things imaginable and ran promos for USC vs. Northwestern. There was a picture of Preston Stone up there. Fox baseball commentator Joe Davis had to talk about it in the same way that Joe Buck had to do promos for Fox short-lived early 2000s reality shows with names like “Diaper Island” or “Real Estate Dojo” or (and this was a special treat) they would make him read ad copy about an obviously doomed Friday night sci-fi show and say things like “He might come from a maze, but now the Minotaur most face his deadliest puzzle yet: the mind of a serial killer. An all-new Labyrinth P.D. Fridays on Fox.”

I was split between including an early large-format Doofus Epic like Roar and a bracing reminder about the absolutely deranging experience of Fox television in the early 2000s, but either way I'm indebted to the essential 21 Years of Joe Buck Fox Promos video

The contrast between the highest-stakes baseball game possible and the two teams thrown into a Friday Night Big Ten game that still feels as natural as the combination of Jeff Goldblum and a house fly could not possibly be funnier. I can’t imagine someone sweating out an extra innings bases loaded situation and then saying to themself wow I can’t wait to see if the least popular football team in the country can defy preseason expectations and qualify for the Ironic Showbiz Pizza Revival Pop-Up Bowl. Put that on the calendar.

Baseball is over, so this game is going to be on Regular-Ass Fox. For the first time I can recall, Northwestern is getting a prime time nationally televised network game for no apparent reason other than some fine print in a media contract.

And yet, while there is no recent history to speak of between Northwestern and USC, the Big Ten accidentally landed on a matchup with some historical intrigue. This year marks the thirty year anniversary of the 1995 Rose Bowl team that put the ‘Cats back on the map as an actual football team and not an elaborate prank. And while it was an incredible achievement to take the Purple to Pasadena, they still had to play a whole football game when they got there, and they lost to USC. Since there is no other meaningful history (they played a few other times in the 1950s and 1960s, all Northwestern losses), I am sure the broadcast will be wall to wall coverage of the ‘96 Rose Bowl in order to give it some meaning beyond “guys in a room wanted to make more money;” college football stretches back long enough that they can usually reach for something.

 

I don’t have any strong feelings about USC football. I generally appreciated them at their height in the early 2000s when they would be brought in like a Final Boss to absolutely annihilate whatever boring, Chad Henne-ass Michigan team made it to the Rose Bowl while knowing that opposing fans were largely losing their minds listening to the band play that three-note fight song after every play. And I also enjoyed watching them lose what I think might be the greatest football game of all time to Vince Young and then whine about it.

USC is doing well this year. They come in ranked #20 with wins over Nebraska and Michigan and otherwise treading water against a largely mediocre Big Ten schedule other than suffering a brutal Body Clocking at the hand of Illinois and unforgiving Central Time Zone. Things seem to be going better for Lincoln Riley, whose USC team remains a buzzsaw on offense while seeming to avoid having an apocalyptically grim defense.

I have decided to go into this game with a positive attitude. Although Northwestern will not be favored in any game on their schedule and no longer has the power of The Lake on their side, I think they at least have a shot in every game. Big Ten teams do not realize how annoying the ‘Cats have gotten in their last few games, and, as long as they don’t make colossal mistakes and are able to achieve their main goal on offense to bleed the clock and run into people, I think they can hang around. Every game they lose from here on out will add more and more pressure to get that final win although I can also admit that inexplicably getting to five wins and then losing out but sneaking into a bowl game as a five-win team would be both infuriating and also extremely funny.

FICTION SECTION: TONIGHT ON FOX

Everyone thinks it is easy to promote Fox shows during the World Series or during football games. They don’t even consider that anyone even writes them. I bet most of the brainless hogs sitting there with their mouth open watching some roid-addled doofus try to hit something with a bat (big deal, I hit things with bats all the time and instead of being given millions of dollars I am usually asked to leave) think that Joe Buck simply goes off the top of his head and says things like “Tomorrow night it’s an all-new Grease Pyramid. Three more contestants try to climb the grease pyramid for $75,000 but they’ll have to fend off the Whackers, the Smackers, and their own friends and relatives. Are you slippery enough to beat the grease? An all-new Grease Pyramid tomorrow night. On Fox.” Do you think Buck actually could come up with “beat the grease?” Well even if you do, he didn’t.

Every day I wake up and open up The Box, which is a heavy safe that contains a half dozen different brands of smelling salts and I stick my head right in it and scream at the top of my lungs. Then I sit and watch four to six hours of new Fox television programming that I will need to come up with a promo for. This is a lot harder than it looks. You need to get to the essence of the show and sell it in a couple of sentences. You can’t just loiter around the point and hope the audience will get there because they are a bunch of dead-eyed cattle who think it’s impressive that a fat guy can throw something 90 miles an hour. So you can’t take 35 seconds to tell viewers that next Thursday on an all-new Stack, Stack faces his greatest threat yet: his own dad without telling people that Stack is actually a dog that turned into a man and became a detective with a powerful sense of smell like Phil did that time. You can’t just assume that people know that Stack is a dog-man!

You need to know what gets to the heart of the matter. There is an art to writing “Wednesdays on Fox, you’re gonna be glad you don’t have smell-o-vision with a brand new episode of America’s Stinkiest. Who is going to be the one who brings guest judge Breckin Meyer to his knees? America's stinkiest. After an an all-new Wyoming Plaid.” That requires a totally different type of promo than when you’re writing for “The Stink,” which is about a detective nicknamed “The Stink” who is as brilliant as he is irascible. These shows did not overlap, by the way. 

You think I care what happens to these shows after I write my promos? I don’t really watch TV anyway outside of work. The only thing that I know, for example, about Mantis & Mantis is that it is 2002’s hottest law drama and on this week’s episode a high-powered attorney’s biggest case yet is how to conceal his steamy affair with the opposing lawyer. Or that tomorrow night on Fart Circus, someone’s going to get farted on “real bad.” What I like to do is I go out late at night with my friends to an industrial park and line up a bunch of empty cans and we drive our motorcycles through them repeatedly which we call “riding the shark.” That’s the kind of stuff I’m into.

So the next time you hear Joe Buck say “Tuesday, it’s America’s funniest and rockin’est new comedy Butterface. Five friends. One band. Can they make it in L.A.? Who will end up with the bassist next door? And will the record company make them change their band name from Butterface? With original music by Shep Lunk. It’s Butterface, Tuesdays, on Fox” you’ll know that it wasn’t just some dumbass who came up with that. This is what I do.