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.
