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.
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
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.
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