Northwestern Triumphs over 2025 Playoff Team

There is not really an upside for Northwestern playing an FCS team. A Big Ten program should be expected to clobber FCS opponents, and anything less than that sends out alarm bells. Anything good the team does can be dismissed as facing a lesser level of competition, and anything bad looks magnified, even when the team in question is South Dakota State, a perennial FCS powerhouse led by a veteran, star quarterback and a roster that is more imposing than the average FCS team. And the Big Ten team in question is Northwestern, a team that should never be expected to blow anyone out and a program that has repeatedly paid FCS teams to come to Evanston and beat them-- a 2006 loss to Chip Kelly's University of New Hampshire, a ludicrous 7-6 loss to Illinois State, and an embarrassing loss 31-24  to to Southern Illinois in 2022 as part of Pat Fitzgerald's winless in the continent of North America campaign. 

The opener was also the unveiling of the new Northwestern offense helmed by Chip Kelly and transfer quarterback Aidan Chiles. It seemed to immediately pay off. Northwestern's first offensive play was a 71 yard bomb to former Jackrabbit Griffin Wilde and the second was a touchdown pass to enormous transfer tight end Alex Honig. But the offense stalled for the rest of the half, with the Wildcats constantly committing drive-killing penalties and (this is an almost unthinkable horror for a Northwestern team) shanking punts. The Big Ten Network sent out former Gopher quarterback Tanner Morgan who you may remember from his fourteen year college career as an analyst and every single time Northwestern committed a penalty he would say "wow that's uncharacteristic from one of the least penalized teams in college football last year" like a malfunctioning speak-and-spell. 

Morgan was also enamored with Kelly's comically enormous sideline playbook, we are going to get Chip Kelly reveries all season, which will either mean Northwestern has a good offense or it has a crappy Northwestern-style offense and we will all get a chuckle out of that playbook

Northwestern's defense, down two linemen, allowed South Dakota State to march up and down the field with impunity but refused to let them score a touchdown until late in the fourth quarter. The game stayed close with South Dakota State within two with less than five minutes remaining, but a wide receiver let a sure touchdown bounce off his hands, they missed a field goal, and Joseph Himon scored with seconds remaining to ice the game and make the score look less close. 

I'm not going to nitpick the 'Cats in this one. South Dakota State is just about the worst type of FCS team to face in week one. Chiles looked a little choppy but still passed for 273 yards and didn't turn it over, and while the defensive line definitely missed key end Michael Kilbane, the secondary looked strong, Oklahoma transfer Kobie McKenzie was a menace at middle linebacker, and the trio of Himon, Caleb Komolafe, and newcomer Gavin Sawchuk ran all over the place. Northwestern also got good news after a very scary-looking hit on Jackson Carsello saw him stretchered off the field. 

Northwestern will have some time to figure out some of the problems as it enjoys an insanely early bye week like they just played an international opening game in Munich. The combination of Northwestern's hell schedule with no bye week in October or November makes it even harder to imagine the 'Cats being able to get into a bowl game this year. They are going to come out of that late stretch of playing Oregon, Iowa, and Ohio State like they had just been in one of those Marvel movies that all end with 35 minutes of weightless CGI guys getting thrown into buildings.

There's much to be made about the differences between FCS football and Power Four football in 2026. The Big Ten commands a ludicrous financial advantage over any FCS school. But Northwestern is oddly situated in the Big Ten. Would anyone have been surprised if the 'Cats fell to South Dakota State? When one thinks of the Big Ten as one of the two agenda-setting powerhouse football conferences, does Northwestern feel like a real member wielding its might against teams from less rich conferences? How many power conference buy games does South Dakota State play against a team that plays in a smaller (albeit temporary) stadium? And the most important question: would the Big Ten replay review team find an extra second for Northwestern if they weren't able to pull away from Sacramento State?

PHANTOM SECONDS

Northwestern's important and gutty win over South Dakota State was overshadowed by a disaster occurring in the same time slot. Michigan was getting bulldozed by last year's MAC champion Western Michigan. This was the debut of new coach Kyle Whittingham who was here to try to win at Michigan without becoming engulfed in scandal. But with the clock seemingly down to zero, Michigan's hail mary attempt floated out the back of the endzone with time expired. Or had it?

The Big Ten replay officials, after a long review that consulted the broadcast video, the stadium clocks, and post-structuralist faculty members who were able to confirm that the notion of linear time is in fact an imperialist construct while Marxist faculty added that it was invented by railroad companies in order to hasten the domination of capitalism, decided that the broadcast had deceived viewers. There was, in fact, a more official clock, unseen to anyone watching the game, that still had additional tenths of seconds on it, enough to give Michigan one more shot at the endzone. They converted and won another bizarre and tainted victory.

 

I think we've all been too hard on James Franklin now that we know the Big Ten operates with an additional secret clock invisible to television viewers

The fact of the matter is that Michigan did absolutely nothing wrong. The Big Ten replay crew initiated the review on its own. Michigan did not cast some sort of Rune of The Extra Second or have some weird manifesto flunky infiltrate the booth in an unconvincing fake mustache. The team was granted an extra shot at a miracle play and somehow got it. The conspiracy theorizing that the Big Ten used a heretofore unknown "secret clock" to give one of its marquee programs an extra chance does not really have anything to do with anything the Michigan football team or coaching staff did.

But Michigan fans, perhaps scarred by years of being made fun of for sideline espionage and illegal hamburger recruiting do not know how to simply let something like this go and enjoy benefiting from a world-historical replay clusterfuck. Instead, we are treated to slow motion video of various clocks showing that the clock was actually correct and the replay review made sense. At any moment, the Michigan internet can be activated to show that any weird football play that goes for them proves that the decision was in fact the greatest kind of victory for a Michigan fan: technically correct. 

One of the strangest Big Ten stories of the last few years other than Indiana becoming a national powerhouse in football (while their beloved men's basketball team has not beaten Northwestern since 2021 by the way) is Michigan becoming the conference's outlaw program. Part of the reason why the extremely stupid and fake Jim Harbaugh espionage scandal was so funny was because it happened to Michigan, the fanbase where you are most likely to hear someone say the phrase "rules-based international order" in the stands. The fact that they are now accused of leveraging secret clock replay rules to narrowly avoid losing to a local MAC team to which they reportedly paid a $1.5 million jobber bonus is extremely funny. 

I don't believe that Michigan could have possibly engineered this or that the Big Ten deliberately found an extra second; the real scandal here is the intrusion of technology-fueled instant replay technology that pedantically finds miniature infractions beyond the limits of human senses that warps the way that sports are officiated beyond the intentions of any rule set in a way that has been confounding spectators in every sports in which it has been let loose in the past two decades. At the same time, this will not stop me from accusing Michigan of using illegal Time Manipulation Techniques and Trick Clocks for the rest of the season.

THE CHICAGO CUBS WENT FOR IT AT THE TRADE DEADLINE BUT STILL CAN'T PITCH

Every year at the trade deadline, Cubs president of baseball Jed Hoyer would put on his investment vest or his quarter zip and explain to reporters that starting pitching was too expensive in order to justify why his biggest trades were for two 35 year-old relievers. Hoyer is cautious and many Cubs fans including me, thought it was to a fault. This tendency, along with the fact that the Cubs have recused themselves from the top end of the free agent market and kept repeatedly winning exactly 83 games, made Hoyer seem like he was terrified to make a major deal and hamstrung by orders from an ownership group that had become notorious for winning a World Series and then giving up as a big market team not to go into the luxury tax.

It is generally a good idea for good teams to trade prospects for proven MLB veterans. Most prospects don’t pan out or won’t really have a place to play on the big league squad. On the other hand, when a team does spin that wheel and ends up giving a very good player, it stings; a team trading a superstar for a rental is the most catastrophic transaction possible. Mets fans, for example, would probably like to have not traded Pete Crow-Armstrong, who has broken out as a superstar for the Cubs and is currently the frontrunner for National League MVP, over two months of Javy Baez playing very well for them but also being part of a team that collapsed so rancidly that he and Francisco Lindor started using a thumbs down as a getting on base gesture as a response to New Yorkers booing the team’s lackluster Mets-style baseball.

In 47 games for the Mets, Javy hit .299/.371/.515 with 9 home runs and 5 stolen bases and the Mets still went 29-45, the PCA trade is like a once in a generation natural disaster trade for them  

Instead, after last year’s encouraging run to the playoffs and a splashy signing of Alex Bregman, Hoyer decided to go for it for the first time in his tenure. The Cubs sent out big name prospects including Jefferson Rojas and the delightful baseball sphere Moises Ballesteros for playoff starters Clay Holmes, Kevin Gausman, and theoretically good reliever and guy whose last name is a phonetic spelling of how it’s pronounced in Chicago Ryan Zeferjahn. The Cubs needed pitching because almost every key pitcher for the Cubs has exploded into a pile of loose tendons. The injuries have ranged from been predictable– Cade Horton and Justin Steele with the Tommy John-style ligament injuries now de rigeur for every pitcher and the oft-injured Edward Cabrera demonstrating his most repeatable skill– to the ridiculous such as Hoby Milner going out with appendicitis or Matthew Boyd injuring his knee in a horseplay incident with one of his kids. Ben Brown, who stepped into this depleted rotation, looked like a potential star until he fell to the same neck injury that ended his season last year; perhaps he should be training violent neck motions with former spherical Diamondback Mike Fetters, known for snapping his and glaring at hitters before every pitch like a lizard doing one of those dominance displays where it inflates its neck. The Cubs, more than anything, just needed people with functioning body parts.

I once had an opportunity to throw a pre-game first pitch at a baseball game and bounced it because I was overcommitted to doing a Mike Fetters impression on the mound 

The Cubs will not win the central again because the Brewers have assembled a perfect regular-season baseball machine that simply never loses games, but they could be a dangerous team in the playoffs mainly because of Crow-Armstrong. PCA, who announced himself as more than just the best center fielder in the game last year by having an absurd first half propel him to a 30-30 season, was bad enough in the second half where he looked like a defined baseball archetype. He was a Javy Baez-style free swinger who was good enough to have insane stretches but would never be able to stop swinging at pitches that were being thrown at neighboring ballparks. He was a menace on the basepaths but didn’t get on base enough. Then, after a miserable opening month hangover from the world-historically dour American WBC team, Crow-Armstrong did something I’ve never seen a baseball player do in my life and just stopped swinging at crappy pitches. He started walking a lot, and once pitchers had to actually throw strikes to him began clobbering the ball. I have never seen a free swinger like PCA just decide one day to have plate discipline. He is having one of the greatest Cubs seasons I’ve ever seen.

At the outset of September, the Cubs have one of the funniest and most frustrating teams in baseball. They are hands down the best defensive team in baseball with gold glovers all over the field and Crow-Armstrong as the best defensive player in baseball making at least one insane, impossible catch every week. The Cubs also boast one of the top offenses in baseball led by Crow-Armstrong, Seiya Suzuki, and Bregman, who has started hitting like he is in his trashcan-fueled heyday. And their pitching remains some of the worst in baseball. The bullpen is decimated by injuries and the major free agents Hoyer brought in are injured or ineffective. Star closer Daniel Palencia has been useless on the mound since recovering from an injury, and the 35 year-old reclamation guys Hoyer brought in are turning back into pumpkins. The Cubs are on the verge of setting a record for home runs given up. Now that the playoffs are now decided almost entirely by teams’ stable of flamethrowing bullpen guys coming in in the fourth inning, the Cubs look like they have no chance at a deep run unless they can somehow score eight runs a game. 

THE DODGERS GALACTICOS MOVES MADE EVERYONE FREAK OUT BUT THEN THEY STARTED TO STINK AND THEIR OWNER MIGHT BE ARRESTED 

The Cubs’ active deadline, though, was overshadowed by the Dodgers making a move by trading for superstar pitcher Tarik Skubal. Skubal, available because the Tigers made it very clear they would not pay him and because no other team was willing to give up serious prospects to rent him because only the Dodgers, it appears, are willing to offer him the money it would take to sign him, and because the Dodgers are a factory that just acquires and churns out prospects (the major prospect in the deal originally came from the Cubs, who dealt him for very good everyday first baseman Michael Busch).

There was a hysterical reaction to the Dodgers increasing its stable of galacticos by trading for Skubal. The discourse around the Dodgers is more salient than ever with owners expected to impose a lockout at the end of this season as they make what seems to be their most determined push for a salary cap since the disastrous 1994 strike. The league itself is pushing this narrative by subjecting MLB.TV viewers to commercials emphasizing that a cap would bring fairness to a sport with an enormous payroll disparity. The fact that the Dodgers have been gobbling up nearly every superstar on the free agent market and with trades and that it seems like a fait accompli to get the next ones are all working for this owner narrative from fans of other teams who are sick of seeing a parade of superstars going Los Angeles and want someone to do something to make the situation fair.

One of the stars moving in the offseason was Kyle Tucker. Tucker got viciously booed in his return to Wrigley Field even though his second-half collapse was marred by injury and the Cubs at no point seemed to make a serious attempt to sign him long term and he took an unprecedented contract with the Dodgers that no one else was offering. Tucker seemed wounded by the booing, which was completely unfair for all of the reasons I just stated except for the fact that Tucker is the only player I have ever seen who has become disliked and polarizing just by being so extraordinarily boring and robotic that it seems actually unhinged. Things are not easy at the home park for him either, as he is posting a catastrophically bad season where the combination of his contract and underperformance would doom every single team in MLB except for the Dodgers

It does not seem a reach to assume that the owners and Rob Manfred are cynically exploiting fans’ exasperation with the Dodgers to push for the cap. The owners of baseball teams are not exercised about competitive balance in the league because many of them are not even trying to win games and exist in a perpetual state of rebuilding and selling whichever players manage to emerge from their rotten organizations into functioning baseball players for more exciting prospects when it is time to pay them. It is hard to take the owners’ concern about the Dodgers seriously when they keep trading superstar players to them.

Anyone who is so angry at the Dodgers that they are rooting for the grizzled vultures in MLB ownership is also missing a catastrophic result of a cap in baseball: it would make following baseball almost impossibly annoying. Every other major men’s league in the US runs on various cap structures, all of which are equally confounding. The NBA’s salary cap is so arcane that it requires using a special website just to see if trades are legal, and the entire discourse surrounding the league is less about players than about contracts and salaries to the point where any NBA podcast resembles arcane numbers stations where a nasal guy reads off every single player’s salary in an unending loop and another guy says “that puts them a tick under the second apron.”

The NFL cap currently involves agents reporting fake contract numbers that are inflated by nonexistent “void years” years like they are reporting industrial outputs in Smolensk to a Soviet commissar. Every season, teams and agents change a word on a contract and somehow a players’ contract doesn’t count on the cap anymore except it might impose draconian “dead money” penalties if they cut a player early. I apologize if someone reading this is an NFL Salary Cap expert and I am not describing the situation entirely accurately but I would also rather sit in a Houdini-style underwater device where I can only be freed by a mechanism where a Bears quarterback accurately throws a football at a lever than know anything about the NFL salary cap.

The situation with the Dodgers has changed significantly since the initial outrage. For one, the Dodgers have been in a tailspin and looked crappy. Skubal has been good but not the world-ending final boss he looked like last year, and the rest of their rotation is, as is tradition, injured. The Dodgers are hoping that the guys they pay handsomely to sit out the regular season and come back for the playoffs will make their late-season swoon (which included a sweep by the Cubs) irrelevant, but it is almost unprecedented for a team to simply activate a roster of Cy Young candidates in October that has been laying dormant or on a training table for months on end.

The other factor is whatever is going on with their owner Mark Walter. Walter is under investigation for insurance fraud and, after only a year, sold the Lakers to a group headed by former Disney head Bob Iger, the other Kushner brother, and whatever sinister vat of money that is also involved. It is too early to understand what is going to happen with Walter given that these things take years in court to tease out and the fact that white collar crime is no longer illegal, but it is possible that the fearmongering that the Dodgers will end competitive baseball will no longer apply. Perhaps, if Walter is indeed guilty of wrongdoing, smarmy Dodgers fans will simply pivot to explaining that other owners are not willing to compete by committing insurance fraud.

The rhetoric around the Dodgers is unfair and cynical, but I also find that it is annoying to dismiss it as sour grapes from uninformed fans. What the Dodgers might be doing (or had been doing, pending the fallout from the Walter investigation) is not illegal or wrong or "bad for baseball." However, it is annoying. It is OK to admit that a team leveraging its advantages to build a baseball death machine is irritating if you root for a team that may have to actually compete against them, and it is possible to be mad at the team you root for for not going toe to toe with the Dodgers in the expensive superstar space, it is still irritating. 

But when the Cubs have the worst pitching in baseball and the Brewers are able to send out a team that bleeps and blorps perfect hits while sending out an unstoppable army of guys who throw 102, the Dodgers might not be the problem. Baseball must investigate the Brewers for being too good at developing baseball players.