tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55471345713644905342024-03-13T13:46:44.368-05:00BRING YOUR CHAMPIONS, THEY'RE OUR MEATnumeatchampionshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13076433467205008793noreply@blogger.comBlogger333125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-15263567836832535902023-12-28T17:49:00.003-06:002023-12-28T17:49:37.364-06:00Northwestern Punts to Victory in Las Vegas Bowl<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">ESPN's mandate to put something, anything on television in December led to this: a Saturday night matchup between a Northwestern team that disappeared from public consciousness after Pat Fitzgerald was fired for hazing scandal that included references to the motion picture "Shrek" and the rump remains of a Utah with many of its best players refusing to play because they are transferring or trying not to get injured before the NFL draft that resulted in zero points scored until the end of the second quarter. And yet, there was nothing but jubilation from Northwestern players throwing the gatorade on David Braun at the end of the game as the program reached its eighth win, ending the strangest football season I can remember that did not involve empty stadiums and coaches wearing tactical respiratory masks over their eyeballs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMQvOYBTcysgjCxm8Y7Mn9n0zrDDARsAiY8UYKpFOpcW3Ox4kUBYKysGPxetUCjA7Aj-zDSaK-2h4t46RRFGJ8F1e_ERKfF5RVnxirUSkU2rpY7Iaywax3xuWTcxlZ8HJR2SLug8ra1PjzRB-SpISGgF4febWCE6Br-4TiKtbBFtAVde3QgzpUFzlYXrU/s653/david%20braun%20vegas%20bowl.JPG"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMQvOYBTcysgjCxm8Y7Mn9n0zrDDARsAiY8UYKpFOpcW3Ox4kUBYKysGPxetUCjA7Aj-zDSaK-2h4t46RRFGJ8F1e_ERKfF5RVnxirUSkU2rpY7Iaywax3xuWTcxlZ8HJR2SLug8ra1PjzRB-SpISGgF4febWCE6Br-4TiKtbBFtAVde3QgzpUFzlYXrU/s320/david%20braun%20vegas%20bowl.JPG" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I will never run a picture of David Braun with his mouth closed <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Anyone who has paddled in the sewers of the Big Ten West this season can appreciate the Las Vegas Bowl where the game was tense and close because neither team could manage to get near the end zone. Last time these teams played in the 2018 Holiday Bowl, Northwestern managed a stunning second-half comeback because the Utes turned the ball over six times in a rainstorm; this year, they managed to halve their turnovers, but in a game that featured thirteen punts and offensive playbooks from the Sisyphus coaching tree, they seemed more impactful. I do not know what bowl sponsor SRS Distribution does, but if their model involves distributing anything via punt, they may have made the one of the greatest marketing investments in bowl history.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This game was also marred by injury and violence. Both quarterbacks were evaluated for concussions only to return; the broadcast repeatedly compared a hit that Ben Bryant took to the infamous hit that sidelined Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa while the cameras lingered on his distraught family; under those conditions it seemed pretty strange that he returned to lead the game-winning drive. We also saw a Northwestern defender rip off an opponent's helmet and attempt to bludgeon him with it during a post-whistle tussle, which is an innovation in the tussle space (Northwestern was flagged for a facemask penalty).<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Every single broadcast this year tiptoed around the hazing scandal and subsequent lawsuits and tended to focus on David Braun and the Wildcats overcoming adversity but trying very hard not to explain what that meant, especially once the team started winning games. Sean McDonough, the play-by-play man for the Las Vegas Bowl, instead decided to turn the end of the game into a bizarre podcast about Pat Fitzgerald. McDonough, laundering his point of view from a Northwestern assistant, dismissed the hazing allegations as bullshit and talked about what a fine job Fitzgerald had done and how Northwestern would have won eight games this year with him at the helm. He even mentioned that he reached out to Fitzgerald who declined to comment on his dismissal because he is currently suing the university for $130 million. This was also going on in the middle of a football game, with plays and everything. Apparently he did not talk to any of the former players who are suing the university or ABC has a mandate against using the phrase "shrek-themed humping ritual" while a team is lining up in punt formation.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">McDonough also broke news that Mike Bajakian told him he was departing the program and that Braun could replace as many as five coaches. One of them, according to McDonough, would be former linebacker Tim McGarigle as defensive coordinator. No one from Northwestern has corroborated any of this yet, but significant staff turnover in the wake of the scandal and coaching change makes sense. If McDonough is right, then Northwestern fans can enjoy a soothing winter of coaching rumors and moderate flight tracking. <br /></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTTDYHhzFu7vQLLAEcq3xNswI7nXVTZH_qds39mpaiKLoa-N4utrDNZV6mfYq4JYmSZDVhMs1Datuf1BHcQbDtPIlM4viqLaxwJ3rjr8ArBxU_OwKUziONwIrr19ngeFud-wXFPhRvpcM_GxWHfFfEiVmk6o1X2NhWq64fHn_WfoexAEvXwwjL2vKTaOo/s900/northwestern%20not%20afraid%20to%20work%20overtime.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTTDYHhzFu7vQLLAEcq3xNswI7nXVTZH_qds39mpaiKLoa-N4utrDNZV6mfYq4JYmSZDVhMs1Datuf1BHcQbDtPIlM4viqLaxwJ3rjr8ArBxU_OwKUziONwIrr19ngeFud-wXFPhRvpcM_GxWHfFfEiVmk6o1X2NhWq64fHn_WfoexAEvXwwjL2vKTaOo/s320/northwestern%20not%20afraid%20to%20work%20overtime.jpg" /></a><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rumored new defensive coordinator Tim McGarigle pictured above wielding a chainsaw</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don't think even the most deranged corners of the Northwestern sports internet (including this blog, which is I think the final step before the existence of some sort of Northwestern athletics dark web) could have imagined seeing the Wildcats finish the season with eight wins and a bowl victory over Utah. I thought the season would be over after getting thumped by Illinois, with most of the team in the transfer portal, Northwestern undergoing a brutal and dispiriting search through the dregs of head coach candidates, and the symbolic destruction of Ryan Field. All we would have to look forward to is another offseason of grotesque lawsuit revelations. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Instead, Northwestern managed to win some games and found an exciting, young head coach who excelled in impossible circumstances. Will that be enough as the team is forced to wander around the Chicagoland area in search of a home field for the next two seasons or to remain competitive without the comfort of existence in the Big Ten West? Will any of that even matter as information from the lawsuits continues to pile up? I have absolutely no idea. I don't know what else to even say.<br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-53169109184860963982023-12-23T13:38:00.000-06:002023-12-23T13:38:17.927-06:00I Will Never Tell You The Secrets of Success on the Field and In Business by Coach X<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">After weeks of making fun of the Big Ten West for being a collection of hideous punt-lummoxes, Northwestern and Illinois went out there and put on the highest-scoring game in their history that was one of the wildest and most entertaining games of the season. The Illini were playing for their postseason life, Northwestern was playing to clinch a winning season and a slightly higher rung in the inexplicable Hierarchy of Bowl Game Prestige that is determined on how late the game is played and whether it is sponsored by a company that sells a product that most people would recognize versus a game that is sponsored by a mysterious online financial venture that will declared illegal within seven months; both teams were of course playing for the most prestigious trophy in North American sports: The Hat.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ceLzYFbCHNhBhP3E9cnAIvwcS3ocfT1SYeOxLPGY0luXPwTAEoeoZHCe4IF34j_zSmghyphenhyphenmsUr9zVUkRygpalMiDSInjbqMd4VlPH31c0G_zjQLvoqJ6DKhZUO1EvzHwfPsG9hVq6kuCcHW5H8LDnH_AeqGt_v2lqRNz7swYa1gee1ykFD8WZ414byNE/s620/northwestern%20HAT%202023.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ceLzYFbCHNhBhP3E9cnAIvwcS3ocfT1SYeOxLPGY0luXPwTAEoeoZHCe4IF34j_zSmghyphenhyphenmsUr9zVUkRygpalMiDSInjbqMd4VlPH31c0G_zjQLvoqJ6DKhZUO1EvzHwfPsG9hVq6kuCcHW5H8LDnH_AeqGt_v2lqRNz7swYa1gee1ykFD8WZ414byNE/s320/northwestern%20HAT%202023.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat</span> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was a good game to wear the number 14 as Cam Johnson had his best game as a Wildcat and his numerical counterpart Casey Washington went absolutely nuts for the Illini for more than 200 yards receiving and three touchdowns. Illinois probably should have won this game except they doomed themselves with a sequence where they fumbled a punt, allowed Northwestern to score in nine seconds, and then fumbled the ensuing kickoff for a touchdown, which was one of the funniest things to happen in an Illinois-Northwestern game since Tim Beckman accidentally got trucked by an official on a fumble return and then had the ref throw an unsportsmanlike conduct flag on his prone body for going onto the field of play. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You would think that coughing up 14 points because the return teams were sent out wearing novelty foam claw hands would have been enough, but both teams were at this point foaming at the mouth in their berserk Hat Reverie. Northwestern, up eight, only needed to stop Illinois from scoring a touchdown for less than a minute. Casey Washington had other plans. On the second play of the drive, he found several airplane hangars worth of space in front of the Northwestern secondary and easily scampered to the endzone while I stood in front of my television watching The Hat fade away like a sibling in Marty McFly's polaroid. There was no doubt who the Illini were looking for on the game-tying two point attempt but Northwestern defenders somehow found a bulldozer and ran Washington over with it in the endzone and the officials picked up their flag saying that the ball was tipped so it was "legal to hit a receiver with construction equipment and groundskeeping tools." Bret Bielema raged about the call in the postgame press conference, bellowing that it was Bullshit, but it was the impotent fury of a Hatless man. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRBxI31XrNZczayzeS2qzK6PTKLCpafczzvsspAMwBz1KqqUZay-MrGtXuxv88Zc6cMw3P1ZAS_GEuPud_zRHDvOXaATXGLVeiuptgiYU3-DWQrIxo85m8iYY4oDebDjXTqHbufcEMWV_3qzhR2IG9hNYdzhbU9yy_GeH1Jw67GKtJ3jTwEMRSxUiChc0/s1326/Screenshot%202023-12-09%20115538.png"><img border="0" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRBxI31XrNZczayzeS2qzK6PTKLCpafczzvsspAMwBz1KqqUZay-MrGtXuxv88Zc6cMw3P1ZAS_GEuPud_zRHDvOXaATXGLVeiuptgiYU3-DWQrIxo85m8iYY4oDebDjXTqHbufcEMWV_3qzhR2IG9hNYdzhbU9yy_GeH1Jw67GKtJ3jTwEMRSxUiChc0/w400-h151/Screenshot%202023-12-09%20115538.png" width="400" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I wanted to look up whether the Maine Red Claws had ever sold foam lobster claws and got this incredible website copy "whether you need this claw to cheer on your local team or used to promote your business, this claw will surely serve your marketing interests" and have been thinking about someone ordering a Business Claw </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The most improbable season of Northwestern football ends with the Hat back in Evanston and atop the screaming head of new coach David Braun.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjE2DN22o9L-2xJIcM-o44q0xpk0cYGZvHP8-syrIqzNNyjMJp33A1g4G8FeRTEOFdnY7etCtr6fMuTUluSASbIkbPh67sfmYakdciJI0Lhezh5VQqQ9r90EU6Dk02-TitXjRzRz4ty3CK4zBXdASGv3xB1imWFHXOUw6mhajMl5DrrEnuD5c5yXvvDvE/s1932/david%20braun%20yelling%20rows.png"><img border="0" height="76" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjE2DN22o9L-2xJIcM-o44q0xpk0cYGZvHP8-syrIqzNNyjMJp33A1g4G8FeRTEOFdnY7etCtr6fMuTUluSASbIkbPh67sfmYakdciJI0Lhezh5VQqQ9r90EU6Dk02-TitXjRzRz4ty3CK4zBXdASGv3xB1imWFHXOUw6mhajMl5DrrEnuD5c5yXvvDvE/w400-h76/david%20braun%20yelling%20rows.png" width="400" /></a><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A tableau of yelling David Braun heads. In my season-long quest to figure out what this guy's deal is, apparently he is canonically photographed like a muppet in the middle of singing a song about shapes</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Northwestern Wildcats winning their seventh game and running out of Memorial Stadium with The Hat ends the most improbable and weird season I've ever seen. It is not exactly a triumph. It was certainly an impressive achievement for Braun to keep the team together and win games in the wake of the hazing scandal but it is also fair to wonder what exactly has changed when you look at what appears to be a toxic and awful culture pervasive in the program for decades and then feel better because they got rid of one guy who may have been fired for being bad at coaching within a year or two anyway. I understand fans who want to stay away from the program regardless of how many wins they get and bowl games they go to. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">From a football standpoint, I can understand how Northwestern managed the turnaround. They brought in a competent defensive coordinator and a steady, veteran quarterback, and a group of excellent wide receivers and were able to go back to the Northwestern blueprint for winning games in the Big Ten West. It turns out that the defense was good when Mike Hankwitz was here, awful when Jim O'Neil was doing whatever he was doing, and good again under Braun. Mike Bajakian's offense was acceptably gross with an experienced quarterback and a vision of football that causes Sam Neill to remove his own eyeballs with a rotating series of inexperienced signal callers caught in a slew of injuries. But I did not understand that. I thought that the turmoil in the program and abrupt firing of Fitzgerald would trigger a program-wide exile, make the school radioactive, and essentially kill Big Ten football here altogether. I remain skeptical of the long-term future of Northwestern in the upper echelon of college football programs because the idea of Northwestern remaining in a Super League of College Football because they played games against Illinois in 1912 funny, but if they get thrown out it will be because of money and not because of whatever horrors get unearthed by the legal discovery process.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I did not really expect to watch a lot of Northwestern football this season. I almost never watch live games during the warm months, so I figured I'd watch a few games on DVR, see them get blown out in the first half, try to figure out with prurient interest how the Big Ten Network would try to artfully sweep all of the allegations under the rug while depending on such precise orators as Matt Millen and J Leman, and write a bunch of silly stories for my blog until the whole enterprise seemed ridiculous or disgusting. Instead, I watched most of the games, got excited for the big comeback against Minnesota, and actually went to a game in order to see Ryan Field before it is taken apart and hauled to a dump. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern got extremely lucky that the team won, that Michigan Espionage Doofus Connor Stalions sucked up all of the college football scandal oxygen, and that they avoided a coach search by seemingly stumbling into a young and promising coach. The fact that Braun took largely the same group of Fitzgerald's players to a bowl game after Fitzgerald struggled to win games in the United States of America essentially killed any sort of rump pro-Fitzgerald cells in the program, and the last players that could be associated with the hazing scandal will graduate within the next year or two without (as of yet) being named or disciplined. Braun will come under greater scrutiny next year when an enormous number of key players graduate, the Big Ten West goes away, and Northwestern is forced to play at Stevenson High School or wherever they end up; the university will continue to face lawsuits from athletes and from Fitzgerald. I hope that the administration learns something from this about fostering an environment for normal athletics programs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>VEGAS</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It would be almost impossible to predict this in the beginning of the season, but the Wildcats are playing in a bowl game. They will travel to Las Vegas to face Utah. The Utes had a promising season as a major force in the final year of the decimated Pac 12, but they had a ton of injury problems and ultimately got buried by the dominant Washington and Oregon teams to end up here: a pre-Christmas game in Al Davis's Desert Mausoleum against one of the virtually identical slop teams of the Big Ten West. Of all the early bowl games, this is one of the nicer ones; it is in prime time on Actual Broadcast Television on a Saturday night and in a place that commercials tell me is a Family Friendly Vacation Destination even though in my head it is teeming with 53-year-old Bill Simmons guys all yelling at each other that "Vegas wants you to take the under" and "they're giving away free money with Jared Goff in the playoffs" while yelling lines from Swingers at each other before they are subdued by security personnel. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Although Utah is obliterated by injuries and has numerous players opting out of the game (Northwestern only has one starter opting out on the offensive line), they are still heavily favored. I am not a gambler, but I believe this continues a streak of Northwestern coming in as betting underdogs against every single FBS opponent this season. I have no idea how this game will go, other than Utah coach Kyle Whittingham routinely puts a tough, hard-hitting team out there. Northwestern has a more intact team, and this will the be final game in purple for many of its top players, many of whom have been around roughly forever because of Covid eligibility extensions. Utah is still probably smarting from the last time these two teams met in the 2018 Holiday Bowl during an unlikely San Diego downpour when Northwestern came back from down 20-3 in the second half because someone had told Utah players that the moisture falling out of the sky was some sort of liquefied lard product and they were unable to hold onto the ball for more than three consecutive plays.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEVzcyVSvVsJbM3ArKAkBOnXCC_LuQSlTdALcRdaZaLNi7j3yRy0Ja-g8sR9jGlul7mBivWFUK8UUflpUxVVIqylKhw-k-9kdm4TbRKD4WwwyTD3H5Qhj0W4RPTza86sKFgw09Tl1pXJioMii8wARH2YEmYwRtnY-6heCLB3FCEJbTCt5N3sN7NmxKcg/s1200/utah%20get%20me%20two.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEVzcyVSvVsJbM3ArKAkBOnXCC_LuQSlTdALcRdaZaLNi7j3yRy0Ja-g8sR9jGlul7mBivWFUK8UUflpUxVVIqylKhw-k-9kdm4TbRKD4WwwyTD3H5Qhj0W4RPTza86sKFgw09Tl1pXJioMii8wARH2YEmYwRtnY-6heCLB3FCEJbTCt5N3sN7NmxKcg/s320/utah%20get%20me%20two.jpg" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Utah, get me two bowl games against Northwestern</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have given up on trying to predict Northwestern games this season. I can't believe they're even here. They might as well win it.<br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">NORTHWESTERN BASKETBALL UPDATE</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is incredibly fun when Purdue is the top-ranked team in the country because they have the biggest guy. I have written about this before, but there is a certain aesthetic quality to watching a player dominate a basketball game because they are a giant that is very gratifying simply because the player is so close to the hoop. Whenever I watch Zach Edey play, it is almost impossible to believe anyone could stop him. All he has to do is lumber within three feet of the basket and drop it in, pass it to a wide-open shooter, or go to the foul line because the only way to defend him is to grab onto his leg like a desperate peacemaking Van Gundy. This is not to take anything away from Edey, who is as tough, smart, and skilled a player as anyone with his size who is not one of those gangly NBA freaks can possibly be. It is just that there is a certain primal quality of seeing Edey come fee-fi-fo-fumming out of the tunnel and wondering how it is possible that any basketball team could ever beat that guy's team, especially when the opponent is Northwestern, and then watching it actually happen because the Wildcats have Boo Buie.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern basketball, despite its famous tournament drought and overall misery, has had some excellent players come through. But there is something about Boo Buie over the last few seasons that have elevated him from a great player to something of a Northwestern folk hero. He has led Northwestern teams to huge upsets against quality opponents. And he has done something that I can't remember any Northwestern men's basketball player ever doing and that is intimidating other teams' fans. I can't remember any player ever terrorizing a team the way Buie has horrified Michigan State fans. And I can't think of another player whose return for another year annoyed so many other opponents. At a time when players constantly transfer or declare for the NBA draft almost as soon as they set foot on campus, a player deciding to stay at the same school for as long as Buie has makes him seem like he has been here since time immemorial. I hope that the team is able to get back into the tournament and give them a crack at going further than any other team has gone. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">With Buie and Northwestern defeating Purdue again, I have to imagine they have simply crushed every single opponent that Northwestern paid to come into Welsh-Ryan arena and lose and I'm not looking further into this.<br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">I WILL NEVER TELL YOU THE SECRETS OF SUCCESS ON THE FIELD AND IN BUSINESS</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">They say the sports biography racket is a tough game. It is. But anyone who thinks I’m not tough enough gets to meet a headbutt from feared linebacker Conrad Dobler. As told to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is a cutthroat business. An athlete or coach is about to talk, to as told, and the vultures start circling. I’m not above it. Circling’s my business too. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Drench Cranen spent fourteen months spotting Tom Thibodeau in a dank basement slowly working anecdotes about how to succeed in basketball and in life in between bench presses. Then Drench Cranen was spotted falling 14 stories from the Tribune tower. They say he jumped. Money problems. Three weeks later I see <i>The Ice Man Yelleth</i> by Tom Thibodeau with Frank Manztek from the Trib creeping up the bestseller list.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Back in the ‘90s, I got a telegram telling me that Mike Tyson wanted to write another book. This was right after the ear biting. I knew it was too good to be true, but if I was wrong, if another writer got to him and asked him “why’d you bite that guy” I could never live it down. The telegram told me to meet him an abandoned meat packing plant in Queens. There was someone there, alright. It wasn’t Tyson but it was certainly someone who had pugilistic experience. I guess Mitch Albom was not too happy I started interviewing his old professor on Mondays. At least that’s what I think happened. The goon he sent was much better at repeatedly showing me the location of my liver with his fist than explaining himself.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You have to have good instincts in this business. “There’s pain behind these goggles,” is what Éric Gagné told me when we met to start working on his book. “There’s plenty of green behind ‘em too,” is what I said. I knew at that point we weren’t going to work together, though he made that clearer when he demonstrated the circle change grip on my face.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">They told me there was some young coach out in the midwest who took a team to a bowl game after they threw out the old coach at the last minute. Nasty stuff. Ogres involved. Everyone thought this kid would get eighty-sixed into the lake, but I got a tip to head out there and check it out after they won a couple of games. I was free in early November and already in Wisconsin after the publishers canceled my book with Craig Counsell called <i>From Brewer Boy to Miller Man: Why I’ll Never Leave Milwaukee.</i> <br /><br />You never approach a sports personality through an agent or a team communications person. That’s a good way to get the word out. Next thing you know, you’re getting a free ride in Mike Lupica’s trunk while he goes to interview Jason Grimsley. I like to approach them in a dank alley or in a parking garage. I heard Rick Reilly hides in their houses and slowly descends from their ceiling while saying things like "They told him that basketball players couldn't play tight end. But then again, he never had much patience for gatekeepers, even if it was in his name: Antonio Gates."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I thought I had worked out a good system to get to this Braun guy, but someone had dropped a dime on me by the time I had gotten to Evanston. Maybe it was the shifty looking cabby who seemed a little too interested in my book on both guys named Vernon Wells. Maybe it was the guy standing a little too close to the airport phonebooth. Either way, I got a nasty present waiting for me at the hotel, someone grabbing the back of my neck. “Stay away from Braun if you know what’s good for yous,” he said. I don’t know what’s good for mes. “I was expecting flowers,” I said. What I was actually expecting was the inevitable sap to the back of the head. Henchmen are always a tough crowd.<br /><br />I woke up in a dumpster in an alley under the train tracks. The guys who worked me over thoughtfully gave me a spit of expired gyros meat for a pillow. The train rumbled overhead and the drizzle helped usher the meat grease from my hair into my eyes. Good for the skin, I guess. The Greek Treatment. It was a long hike back to the hotel but I needed the fresh air and didn’t trust a cab. The doctor had told me I should stop getting hit in the back of the head. That was three saps, two blackjacks, and a ceremonial parliamentary mace ago. After Tony La Russa hit me at his golf tournament to raise money for drunk showbiz chimpanzees because I told him he should’ve brought in a lefty when he shanked one bad enough that it went into the Celebrity Ape Gallery. Nearly made Dustin check out. I lost out on writing <i>Gifted Handedness: The Tony La Russa Story</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I crawled back to the hotel looking for a shower and a nap and I got neither. Someone had been in my room looking for something, and it looked like how my head felt. I was about to pick up the phone to have a full and frank discussion with the manager about their key policy when it started to ring. I picked it up. The voice was badly disguised. Someone was trying to do a cockney accent. “You won’t find yer book ‘ere,” the voice said. “Braun’s a puppet, poppet. You ‘ave no idea. When they win The Hat.” “Shouldn’t it be The ‘At?” I said. They hung up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Something was off. I decided to fish around the practice facility. By the time I got there the night was busy putting out the last few ashes of the afternoon. I decided to hide out by the dumpster until it got completely dark. Sometimes I wish someone told me how often I’d spend my evenings siring lady dumpster around a loading dock before I decided to become a sports personality biographer.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I figure about an hour passed when I saw something flicker from inside the dumpster. Someone was lighting up a smoke. Maybe it was a janitor taking a break. Maybe it was some knuckle-duster out to get the jump on me. I decided to investigate but as soon as I opened the lid I heard a voice. “Keep it closed,” he said. “Stay there. We need to talk.” A puff of nicotine wafted from the lid.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“He’ll never let you get close. He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s pulling the strings. And he’ll kill you if you figure out his secrets to winning on the gridiron and in the board room. You can trust me on this. I'm close. I'm not exactly against the new guy, but against the world. But you'll never get to him.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Who?” I yelled. “Who?” “What are you, some kind of owl?" he said. I grabbed the lid and flung it open ready to give this fella an ornithology lecture with my left and my right but he was gone. The dumpster wasn’t a dumpster at all. It was a fake, and it had a false bottom. I tried to climb in but the door at the bottom was bolted fast. Even if the guy I talked to was only capable of moving a few yards at a time, he'd be long gone before I got it open.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I had nothing to do but to walk back to the hotel. I only closed the door and loosened my tie when someone knocked. Telegram. It simply said “meet me in Little Birmingham.” “What the hell is Little Birmingham?” I wondered. “You can see it right over there,” the telegram man said. I turned my head and that’s when the blackjack came out. This time, the lug made a mistake. I hadn’t taken off my hat yet, which contained a small but resilient helmet shell within the lining specifically to ward off blows to the back of the head. I ordered from the back of a magazine I got at the doctor’s office called <i>What’s That? A Magazine for the Frequently Bludgeoned.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I whirled around and socked the man telegram operator in the jaw. He was a oaf, the type of guy who looks like he spends a lot of time in a single-strap unitard. I grabbed the sap and sent him a telegram of my own with a few full stops around the skull.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Little Birmingham did in fact happen to be right where the telegram guy was pointing before he tried to put my lights out. It was only a few blocks away but it felt like a different world. I thought it would be pockets of industrial England selling peas and textiles. Wrong Birmingham. There were rows of stores selling Birmingham Stallions nick-knacks. “Y’all come in here,” they all called to me from their stores. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I knew I was in a dangerous spot. Suddenly, I was surrounded by a group of large men in 2022 World Games Fistball Champions sweatshirts and hustled into a vacant storefront at the end of the block. They shoved me down a staircase into a dark basement. At least no one gave me a knock on the bean.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“You’ve been asking a lot of questions around here,” a voice said to me in the dark.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I just want to know if the coach who is winning games at Northwestern wants write a book about Leadership,” I said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Then you are asking the wrong person. Let me ask you something, do you think a defensive coordinator from North Dakota State could orchestrate a 21 point comeback against P.J. Fleck and his All Anagram Defense? Do you think he could figure out how to stop the UTEP rushing attack in the second half? Do you think he could do all of that while scouting players for the USFL supplementary draft?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“USFL? Wait, a minute, are you…?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Who I am is none of your concern. I’m running a USFL team as well as four other college teams you don’t know about, two NFL teams, the Fehérvár Enthroners, two lacrosse teams, and a team in a sport so secretive you’ve never even heard of it. My family has been doing this for generations. And I don’t need any two-bit hacks digging into it. They already are getting close on what my father did to Ryan Day.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“What you’re going to get from this project is nothing,” he continued. “No interviews. No nuggets. No secrets of success from the quarterback room to the board room. No analogies for overcoming adversity on the gridiron and in life. You will stop. You will go back to writing about golfers or basketball players or polo players for all I care, but your questions about Northwestern football stop.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“So why would you tell me all of this?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“To be honest, what I’m doing is very impressive and I’m sick of secrets. I am sick of seeing this gape-mouth clod get the accolades while I sit here in the shadows. But of course you can’t be trusted." "Klaus!" he yelled suddenly. "Kristian!” I could hear the two burliest fistballers clomping down the stairs. I knew they were itching to practice their new passing techniques on my kidneys.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Look out!” I yelled. "It’s former Louisana Tech Athletic Director Bruce Van De Velde!”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The mystery coach fell out of his chair. In the confusion, I bowled over either Klaus or Kristian and then shoved the other Klaus or Kristian out of the way before sprinting out of the storefront and making a beeline out of Little Birmingham.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I did not even go back to the hotel where there would certainly be another bigger and meaner galoot waiting there to play the accordion on my spine. Instead, I headed straight for the train station where I wanted to put as much distance between me and Evanston as possible.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is a nasty business and a nasty town. I now understood the lawn signs I saw that said "We've had enough" with the N and U capitalized. I had eNoUgh as well. I got back to the office but there was a dame waiting for me there. She was dressed in the widow’s black and looked like she was working directly for Trouble, Inc.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Please help me,” she said. “I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. I simply must know how Brad Underwood feels about how success on the court can translate to success in business and in life.”<br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-36435247843434486732023-11-25T13:11:00.002-06:002023-11-27T13:42:49.218-06:00Bielem It! The Bret Bielema Motivational System<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>EVANSTON--</b> Throughout the game, the scoreboard flashed ominous warnings about how anyone who entered the field of play would be captured and thrown into an oubilette, but when the clock hit zero, Northwestern fans were on Ryan Field celebrating a victory over three-win Purdue, a possible Quick Lane Bowl berth, and the imminent destruction of their own stadium. It was the greatest moment in a populated Ryan Field in five years.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The actual game itself was a festival of Big Ten West football. Northwestern missed an extra point. Purdue ran the ball at will until they got close to the endzone and then immediately turned the ball over; Purdue also kept going for it on fourth down and failing including one sequence that gave them multiple tries from within the one yardline. Neither team made a single kick in the first half.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5yp0M51VVIqToKM3FY7jjvaLIKO3U5ggQIaSZHCWpP3ML7-Qw7HwEcYpZTg-y8WUgxS4BmX6kTGCqdZOlGntJuIAQaDfVCWhZ9OLsX36ybewpAIMhspbObKwmmVI4C4N_eLV_p1SDHUTyFBvEO8ivO6hZUFsEFVaeJyl_eCS-HtJl9p4ANLPOaC18NfM/s1434/willie%20pants%201%20edit.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5yp0M51VVIqToKM3FY7jjvaLIKO3U5ggQIaSZHCWpP3ML7-Qw7HwEcYpZTg-y8WUgxS4BmX6kTGCqdZOlGntJuIAQaDfVCWhZ9OLsX36ybewpAIMhspbObKwmmVI4C4N_eLV_p1SDHUTyFBvEO8ivO6hZUFsEFVaeJyl_eCS-HtJl9p4ANLPOaC18NfM/s320/willie%20pants%201%20edit.png" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another disturbing turn of events is that it appears that Willie Wildcat has joined a militia <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The overall disgust and misery that the Big Ten West has brought to college football in this, its last glorious season, has been one of the highlights of the year. In recent weeks, I have been trying to think of reasons why the division is the way it is and why every big ten west game seems like a four-hour presentation on why football should be illegal. It is not accurate to say that the Big Ten West uniformly plays an outmoded version of football that existed before the invention of the forward pass; the play is more like a collection of teams that have all been told that the forward pass was legal exactly four weeks ago. It seems like it should be possible that even a single team has discovered a dynamic and exciting way to play but there is only one program trying to change to a forward-thinking pass-wacky style and it is a Wisconsin team that is still mainly made up of rowdy Wisconsinites who all won state championships in shoving, and they are operating the air raid with a bunch of fullbacks who are having trouble learning the nuances of the system because they need to spend each week between games getting extracted from walls they have headbutted too hard.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Big Ten West has never been good. The division's representative has lost every single championship game in its history although this is misleading-- it is more accurate to say that no West team has ever been better than Ohio State or Michigan, which are the only two teams to represent the east, although that is something that can be said about the East division as well. But the Big Ten West's outstanding oafishiness this year is remarkable. I think that part of it comes down to a down year for Wisconsin, which is usually the default West favorite. Part of it comes down to the West being dominated this year by Iowa, the most ridiculous team in college football. Iowa is a bizarre meme team with weird dynastic politics that have left the offense in the hands of an inept princeling like they are a Crusader Kings game where the heir to the throne has rolled perilously low skill in football coaching and has developed the trait "disturbing punt fetish." Every week, this team goes out with a dominant defense and the most diabolically wretched offense I have ever seen and I am speaking as someone who has grown up watching the Chicago Bears, and you see all of the japes and jokes online and think to yourself they can't possibly be this horrible to watch, they've got to at least be able to run the ball a little, and then you turn on the game and they are just falling down behind the line of scrimmage and the quarterback is spinning around and passing the ball like a discus thrower and two wide receivers have gotten their facemasks stuck together and are desperately trying to pry themselves away from each other while the ref throws the flag for "aesthetically disgusting" and still they are dominating the division by winning every game like 8-6 on a walkoff safety, and despite my natural enmity for the Iowa Hawkeyes I have to admit this is one of the greatest bits I have ever seen a football team pull off.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I also think that some of the reason for the Big Ten West's transcendent putridness comes from a process that is not identical but adjacent to the tech process known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification">"enshittification."</a> There, once a tech platform has gotten users and vendors locked into its services, it no longer has any incentive to improve and exists to extract money form both users and suppliers. In the Big Ten West, none of these teams can ever compete with Michigan or Ohio State, so there is really no incentive to actually try to not play functional toilet football. They just have to be slightly better than the other Big Ten West teams and become comically more inept and disgusting for their fans and for Big Ten advertisers who are trying to sell extra-large men's pants to people who are lapsing into punt-induced comas.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or maybe it's because the midwest just doesn't really produce anyone who can throw the ball good.<br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">NORTHWESTERN IS GOING TO A BOWL GAME</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There were many ways I could see this season going, but I didn't see it ending in December. It looked to me like the hazing scandal would destroy the program and lead Northwestern back into its 1980s nadir. Instead, the team started winning games, first miraculously and then methodically. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have absolutely no idea if David Braun will be an effective coach going forward, but it's impressive that he managed to keep the team together, win football game, and not do anything obviously embarrassing during this bizarre and turbulent season. It also has helped him that college football media has turned its focus entirely on a very stupid and harmless scandal where an array of the Upper Midwest's goofiest motherfuckers have been running a Coen Brothers sign-stealing operation while Michigan's most litigious alumni have been preparing legal briefs on their message boards and Jim Harbaugh shows up every week in a wrestling singlet saying he is training to wrestle on the moon's gravity, which has overshadowed Northwestern's very real and awful hazing scandal. I suspect that once college football re-enters its summer doldrums and the lawsuits begin in earnest, the grotesque practices of Northwestern's football program will reappear in the news, but Braun got the luxury of operating in the shadow of national indifference to Wildcat Football.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Of course, the university has imposed another challenge on Braun for year 2: wander the earth. The Evanston City Council ruled this week that Northwestern can build its fancy new stadium and hold additional events and concerts there over the stringent objections of neighborhood groups. Demolition of Ryan Field will begin very soon. Northwestern football will not have a home for two full seasons. I have no idea where they will play, although I guess it will be some combination of Wrigley Field and Soldier Field. It is possible they will play somewhere funnier, like a local high school or the parking lot for the disused suburban Kmart where the National Guard gave me a Covid vaccine. The single season that Northwestern basketball played at the All State Arena while they renovated Welsh-Ryan Arena was a complete disaster-- it is kind of absurd that the small amount of momentum the program has gained to keep it away from the permanent bottom of the Big Ten might be easily destroyed by an obsession with putting Pat Ryan's name on another building that is already named after him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have <a href="https://bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com/2022/10/a-loss-so-bad-theyre-destroying-stadium.html">written before</a> about my bewilderment and sadness that Northwestern wants to build a fancy new stadium, but it hits harder now that Ryan Field is being advanced upon by bulldozers. Let's not mince words: Ryan Field is a shithole. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdsqUyLZM5rXnf7NzYw9sTL6zPHWN5OgVlE2jEEDyVPsuUn-yBdosQxU-_FE_efuIbXB8p2GwLjzBkNgHsNdescrVMBOb-CbYMxxqtNQPgZSQ3fPznVVelQQoGK_k1UvO8Nx5yrsXrtH_pl7Dgkp-PWY37fX7Ju58j6jiHD0m1GTUD9GaeW42oq6Ej0fc/s2030/ryan%20field%20rust.jpg"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdsqUyLZM5rXnf7NzYw9sTL6zPHWN5OgVlE2jEEDyVPsuUn-yBdosQxU-_FE_efuIbXB8p2GwLjzBkNgHsNdescrVMBOb-CbYMxxqtNQPgZSQ3fPznVVelQQoGK_k1UvO8Nx5yrsXrtH_pl7Dgkp-PWY37fX7Ju58j6jiHD0m1GTUD9GaeW42oq6Ej0fc/w400-h193/ryan%20field%20rust.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">At the very least, Northwestern could have the barnacles scraped off the hull once in awhile<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is a ridiculous place to watch a Big Ten football game. It is small and simultaneously cramped and empty. It does not have lights. The grass turf is lousy. But it was also very accessible and easy. It doesn't feel like a Big Ten stadium, but it feels like some field they're playing football on in the middle of a neighborhood. It doesn't feel like some sort of Cathedral of Football but just a sort of run-down place where a game is going on, which really matched the vibe of Northwestern football for a long time. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a stadium for this program that will still never have more fans than an opponent in its own building no matter how many times they decrease the seating capacity is so ridiculous to me that I can barely fathom it. I am really disappointed that no one triumphantly tore out the tarp and threw it into Lake Michigan.</span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">GIVE ME THE DAMN HAT</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern's unreal season can be capped with one more improbable feat: to go into Memorial Stadium and reclaim the hat from the Illini. There was a stretch when Northwestern won The Hat six years in a row and came close to evening the all-time record between these teams. It took three more Illinois coaches to pry The Hat from Northwestern heads between Tim Beckman, unleashing an unholy cackle as he rode an unending tide of anti-Northwestern propaganda to victory in the greatest Hat Game of all time which was also a battle for bowl eligibility, and Brett Bielema stretching the trophy on his gigantic noggin unceasingly since 2021. But enough is enough. The Hat must come home.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Illinois has a lot to play for. Their eight-win season last year was followed up with a sour sequel, and the Illini must win this game in order to qualify for a bowl. Northwestern can qualify for a "better" bowl game whatever that means with an additional win and rise in the Big Ten West standings. There is also the matter of the Hat itself, which has never been worn by many of Northwestern's players. Here's <a href="https://www.insidenu.com/2023/11/21/23970597/david-braun-illinois-game-week-press-conference-notes">Braun on his indoctrination in to the Hat Cult</a>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“It’s been a great learning opportunity for me to ask the staff, to ask
our Leadership Council this morning, what this rivalry means to them.
The consistent message is ‘Coach, we want the HAT back. It’s time to
bring the HAT back.'"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkOezXVXKDw7uQte7S4c3zJm8i5Nr4Vr53AwB0iHiFUfZWRSxdZppHgyG1h2vaF3gN_u8qg5aYK0DUkd42kRVFZ9LiizJOwgwjTlaIil3uzFkGynypjwaS71fdVtuZBXU31QmJGtY4Ad9j2qI00OzZWzez0p1lIX_cF9IdDxYTC6gbJv8mq3NNnirCW8Q/s950/hat%20trophy%20i%20think%20you%20should%20leave.png"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkOezXVXKDw7uQte7S4c3zJm8i5Nr4Vr53AwB0iHiFUfZWRSxdZppHgyG1h2vaF3gN_u8qg5aYK0DUkd42kRVFZ9LiizJOwgwjTlaIil3uzFkGynypjwaS71fdVtuZBXU31QmJGtY4Ad9j2qI00OzZWzez0p1lIX_cF9IdDxYTC6gbJv8mq3NNnirCW8Q/w400-h188/hat%20trophy%20i%20think%20you%20should%20leave.png" width="400" /></a> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hopefully Braun has spent the week staring at pictures of the Hat and becoming hypnotized by its power and the prestige that it conveys in this rivalry and in the North American sports landscape. </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">BIELEM IT! THE BRETT BIELEMA MOTIVATIONAL SYSTEM<br /></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I did not expect to be shivering at Willard Airport and waiting for a someone to take me to the Henry Dale and Betty Smith Football Performance Center where I was supposed to meet Bret Bielema, the head of coach of the Illinois Fighting Illini to talk about his book. I was out of my element here in the midwest-- my life was on set or in writer's rooms punching up scripts and sampling a blend of exotic cocaines. For thirty-five years, I've been saving shitty writers and producers from themselves in Hollywood, and I was the best. They called me Doc Frankenstein for a long time because I'd drive up and dig up some parts of some other failed projects and then use some unholy magic to get the whole thing to work, at least they did until some jagoff executive producer didn't understand that Frankenstein referred to the scientist and not the monster and after he said "hey someone tighten the neck bolts on Frankenstein over there" I tried to run him over with the Batmobile (I was responsible for about 85% percent of Arnold Schwarzneegger's Mr. Freeze cold puns and I am specifically the person who came up with "stay cool bird boy" after which Arnold personally sent me a reproduction of his grotesquely red and swollen head from Total Recall from his own collection in gratitude). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Every day producers would line up outside my office and beg me to rescue their crummy shows and save their asses. I started from the absolute bottom of the industry. We were filming on a set on <i>Eraser</i> and production had halted because Arnold just shot an alligator in the face and no one had any idea what he says (the dummy who wrote the script didn't have anything, like Arnold was just going to shoot and alligator in the snout and then just stand there like a fuckin' idiot) and I, a lowly PA who was already nearly fired for telling James Caan to get his own fucking walnuts and was saved only because Caan said he "liked the balls on this kid" just stood up and said "now you're luggage" and everyone was really pissed but it worked (the writer cut out "now" because he felt he had to do something). Before long, I was Arnold's top emergency murder pun call. I was also the person responsible for saving the movie Lake Placid by telling Betty White to say "fuckin" and "shit" and also rescued the dying Texas football soap opera by writing the part where that moon-faced kid kills the guy with a shovel, you're welcome.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I made a crucial mistake, though. I wanted to finally make something on my own. For years, I had secretly been working on a treatment of the classic Chekhov story "The Nose" that I had never really read except for instead of a Russian bureaucrat, the titular Nose came from a tough-as-nails Chicago cop named Eddie Noczinsky who just beats the hell out of people for 90 minutes and whose tagline is "I smell crime." None of the big studios would finance it, not even after I selflessly saved their shitty movies for three decades, so I decided to sink all of my own money into it. We ran into problems immediately. No one could get the nose suit right, and none of the top costumers would work with me after I threatened them with one of Christopher Lambert's swords from Highlander III: Sorceror which he gave me after I told them to forget about the goddamn aliens and put the bad guy in a cave. Also, I had already given millions of dollars to the great Dennis Farina to voice the Nose before he passed. Unfortunately, I had burned a lot of bridges while desperately trying to raise money for the movie by threatening, attacking, or pissing in the offices of many of Hollywood's top executives, so I started to take whatever bullshit writing jobs they could cobble together. I don't think that anyone even knew who I was when I was sent over to meet Bielema.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The large, jolly man who picked me up from the airport was Bielema himself. "Hey man, how the hell are ya?" he asked me as I tried to climb into the truck. It was covered in cameras and camera equipment for a TV show he was pitching called "Live from Bret Bielema's Car" where he would interview people from the sports and entertainment world with a variety of ridiculous questions. "Quick, top Thanksgiving foods," he asked me while practicing staring into a camera while switching lanes. "I don't know. I haven't had Thanksgiving since 2002, when Dino De Laurentiis threw me out of his house for trying to slap Bill Paxton with a fist full of cranberry sauce while I was out of my mind on a designer drug called "The Gobbler." "Whoa, look at this fuckin' guy," Bielema said chuckling as we pulled into his office.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Bielema had a little shtick for everyone we met on the way in. He shadowboxed a security guard. He had a complicated handshake for one of the assistants. He did an elaborate gun finger point at a walk-on which involved him feigning being gut-shot and staggering around a lot before collapsing to his knees and vowing revenge. It was spellbinding.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When we got into his office, he told me that his publisher explained to him him that they liked to take some life lessons from football and put them into business situations. They'd sell books, but more importantly they were selling the lecture circuit, boardrooms and hotel banquet halls, a money printing machine. I asked him if he ever said anything cool after beating someone like "eat some turf" or "touch down to hell." "One time I called a guy a prick and the university had to send an official apology," he said. "Hell yeah," I said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As we talked, I realized that writing this bullshit coach book was a waste of both of our time. Bret Bielema was a dynamo, a star. And he had a TV show. Sure it was just a goofy little web series he was trying to sell to Big Ten Network Omega that would also air a select gas stations and interstate rest stops, but I saw something bigger here. I saw a big, lovable tough guy who would have everyone in the palm of their hand. I saw Bielema transcending midwestern football and me getting out of the Hollywood gutter. I saw Eddie "Da Nose" Noscinsky. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Forget about the fuckin' book," I said. "Everyone's got a motivational book. Dick Wolf's assistant has a book." He looked at me blankly. "P.J. Fleck's got a book," I said quickly remembering the name of a football coach I had seen on TV one time looking really weird. His brow furrowed. "Really?" "We can do better than that," I said. We need to go big. We need to go to TV. We need to get into Bret Bielema's car."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I thought I'd collect a few bucks to meet with Bielema, get his pitch and then go back home and buy some illegal lizard gland stimulants and just write the whole thing in a week, but I couldn't go back. I hauled out my original screenplay for The Nose. I would have to make some serious changes in order to accommodate most of the action taking place in an SUV instead of on city streets. We also would have to accommodate Bielema by filming mostly in Champaign-Urbana and make make The Nose an expert on football crimes where he spent a lot of his time hanging around football fields and film sessions. In this version, the Nose would smell out a guy stealing signs and then throw him from the top of the stadium into an active volcano. But I knew I could make it work. We just had to cobble together this first season secretly by stringing along the publisher and then we'd get our sets and our actors and our feature budget.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It took about a week to convince Bielema to come onboard. I spent every day in his office or hounding him on the practice field, showing him pages of the script and telling him how much easier it would be to get great football players to come to the university if he was an international acting superstar. He finally one day just said, "ah what the hell, I always wanted to be a detective. Let's do it." It felt amazing, like the first time I convinced a producer to spent an extra million on a helicopter because how fucking cool would it be to have a helicopter here. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I did have one major problem. There was no nose costume. I didn't have the money to fly anyone out or even hire someone locally. The whole thing didn't work without a giant nose walking around dispensing nostril justice and giving scumbags the Big Sneeze. In desperation, I decided to make the nose myself. I have no idea how to even go about doing something like that. I always just wrote something and it appeared. But now I was absolutely fucked. I walked into a Michael's and told them I needed to make a giant nose, but no one was that helpful. Eventually, I found an old mattress next to a dumpster. I figured I could get something vaguely nose-shaped out of that, get it on Bielema for a fitting and then make some adjustments. I worked for days not sleeping, measuring, cutting, duct taping, and spray painting until I felt I had a nose good enough for a test pilot. The nose was too big and unwieldy for me to carry so I found an old wheelbarrow and bedsheet to cover it and pushed it for miles to the Illinois football offices. The guard stopped me. "Cool it, buddy, I've got a nose here for Coach Bielema," I said. He told me to get lost. It took a lot of pleading, begging and even tears until they finally called Bielema and he came down. He pulled the sheet off and took a look at the nose, which after the end of my nose-obsessed reverie I now saw was just a dirty, mangled mattress with uneven nostril holes and a deviated septum. "Why don't you put that away and we can talk later," he said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It took a few days, but Bielema finally told me to come by his office. I appreciated that about him. No bullshit, a straight shooter. "I'm not going to bullshit you," he said to me. Bielema finally talked to his agents about the Nose and they told him the whole project was insane and in fact really stupid. He told me they didn't want him working with me on the book either because I clearly was a "crackpot." I wasn't that upset. I had been thrown out of fancier offices than the Henry Dale and Betty Smith Football Performance Center. One time, Michael Ovitz had a dumpster flown in from an especially disgusting Chipotle parking lot for his goons to throw me in after I told him that First Kid should have been called First Shit. But this one stung. "Look, for the record, I really liked the part where the Nose drove my car into a guy so hard that he landed in a paint manufacturing plant and then I said to him 'let's paint the town red,'" Bielema told me. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I was waiting to get a plane back to Chicago and eventually Los Angeles when I got a message on my phone from a number I had never seen. It was from James Franklin, the coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions. The college football world is small and talks a lot. "First of all, does the Nose drive an ATV?" he asked. "Consider that my first note." <br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-58605866463792299832023-11-18T08:06:00.000-06:002023-11-18T08:06:04.472-06:00Journey to the Heart of Madness: Ryan Walters's Guide to Success in Football and Business<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When people say college football is predictable they mean that Alabama and Ohio State are in the playoffs every year and the same half dozen programs are in position to win the big championship that ESPN cares about but they do not account for a scandal-plagued Northwestern team going up to Camp Randall against a Wisconsin team with one of the flashiest coaching hires of the offseason and absolutely beating their ass. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don't recall any Northwestern team ever doing that up there. Usually if Northwestern beats Wisconsin it is because the referees have nullified several Wisconsin touchdowns while the student section rains snowballs on the field in disgust or because Wisconsin's coaches have seen their metric ton offensive line wipe the Wildcats across the field like a five-man squeegee but then let their quarterback who has been the same guy for 35 consecutive years throw a single pass that is so bad it causes them to instantly lose the game. I have never seen a Northwestern team go up there and shove the Badgers around like they are the dyspeptic trucker touching up Clark Kent in that part in Superman II when he loses his powers and has no idea how to fight anyone other than by getting repeatedly thrown into a jukebox. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The boos rained down on the Wisconsin team as they trudged off the field at halftime losing 24-3, and the sarcastic cheers came out when they scored with less than twenty seconds left to pull it to 24-10 and avoid the indignity of their worst offensive output at home since a 3-3 tie with Illinois in 1995, which I have scientifically determined is very close to the funniest Big Ten score line possible.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl-as8crer6_NHgx19tRiFJIIJ2poRVPnzmvoDU2uQkQiDu8mgdcDMUAtP0NYyYMUxQsNzMkaRWlX1tRdPtWhsPP7Yd1JqdY0zBMMEiZjwxKjID6Z2MnYiWJJ9Ej4xzJldkC9fn1LBugZxzuF21Xbl0Rd4kDc9bU97RSoa7Pij9ZGctMyI8_y4u_LGbZc/s341/computers.jpg" style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl-as8crer6_NHgx19tRiFJIIJ2poRVPnzmvoDU2uQkQiDu8mgdcDMUAtP0NYyYMUxQsNzMkaRWlX1tRdPtWhsPP7Yd1JqdY0zBMMEiZjwxKjID6Z2MnYiWJJ9Ej4xzJldkC9fn1LBugZxzuF21Xbl0Rd4kDc9bU97RSoa7Pij9ZGctMyI8_y4u_LGbZc/w400-h174/computers.jpg" width="400" /> </a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">After years of running the data, Big Ten football scientists have determined that the objectively funniest score in a Big Ten game is Rutgers 2, Iowa 1. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Wisconsin has been in a recent tailspin with losses to a putrid Indiana team and a hollowed out Northwestern. New head coach Luke Fickell is trying something that is on its face completely insane: a transition from the school's proud tradition of unstoppable Oaf Football to a complicated air raid offense while the team is still made up largely of players that were recruited to shove people. It i like asking the Blue Angels to execute their precision aerial maneuvers except they are now all flying blimps. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It would seem rational for Wisconsin fans to give their new coach and his radical new system a chance to settle in, but I believe that I understand why they are so irate. For one, the Badgers have been in a steady holding pattern of boring competence for so long that it remains genuinely shocking for them to get thrown into a dumpster by the Northwestern Wildcats at home regardless of whether they are transitioning to the air raid offense or to Olympic Breakdancing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another reason why Wisconsin fans are so irate is because this is the last year of the Big Ten West and I believe it has driven the entire division insane. The Big Ten West has been the conference of dreams since its inception because every team in it has ranged from beatable to unwatchable while no one in the East has any hope of unseating one of the two big teams-- no team other than Ohio State or Michigan has ever represented the East in the conference championship game. Every program is desperate to win the Big Ten West this year before the West Coast teams come in and the easy path to Indianapolis disappears, and in that desperation every team seems to have grown more feral and Big Ten West-like as they develop more exotically repellent offenses and break new frontiers in cowardly punting. In its final year, the Big Ten West has reached its apotheosis as the most aesthetically disgusting collection of teams in the entire sport and possibly in the history of college football since the forward pass was invented and teams were no longer literally stomping each other to death in the mud. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Consider that nearly every Big Ten West team has the exact same record and that every game ends on a score of approximately 17-9. Consider that the division's standard bearer is Iowa, the most absurd winning team in the country that is so allergic to basic offensive competence that it has become some kind of bit in the same way that people in the early 2000s discovered that Christopher Walken being weird was funny and then every one of his roles after that was him performing as a caricature of Christopher Walken; this is exactly what happens when people make fun of Iowa football and its manifold Ferentzes and then you watch a game and they do actually punt that many times and throw passes exactly that badly in a way that is scarcely possible to believe is possible for an FBS team and yet they cannot be stopped.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK7jychJj1HHyrDkttYyFc7j2B7WlCJrlXQ6oMHWzRbgNUUIRg_qteIMSRHHM1jt7t5-aLdy1uLOnYUUOBbr__mcBdYdXAz1Lg2oX0inwqrKFimLY2bUzQ5sj34-zD0CMOf0g5-iD_qsTwdZbIYE5ARLX8GGlnMKPpg_L1TcoZCOU40w795czzXK329pc/s800/walken%20deerhunter.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK7jychJj1HHyrDkttYyFc7j2B7WlCJrlXQ6oMHWzRbgNUUIRg_qteIMSRHHM1jt7t5-aLdy1uLOnYUUOBbr__mcBdYdXAz1Lg2oX0inwqrKFimLY2bUzQ5sj34-zD0CMOf0g5-iD_qsTwdZbIYE5ARLX8GGlnMKPpg_L1TcoZCOU40w795czzXK329pc/s320/walken%20deerhunter.jpg" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">An Iowa fan watching the team attempt a play on second and nine<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Wisconsin didn't lose that game just from playing poorly; Northwestern looked fantastic. The offense shredded Wisconsin's defense in the first half with pinpoint passing and gouging runs that led to first down after first down. The defense shut down Wisconsin's run game stifled their newfangled passing attack. The unexpected and thorough destruction of Wisconsin finally gave the university an opportunity to take away David Braun's interim status and hand him the keys to the program. The team's performance has been so remarkable that it is almost shocking. I don't think anyone thought Northwestern had any chance of even being mediocre even in the generous confines of the Big Ten West. Nearly prognosticator before the season pegged them as the worst major conference team in the country. My posts from August and September still exist, and you can see I thought the future of the team was bleak: they would lose and lose and players would desperately try to escape while it would be nearly impossible to convince anyone to ever play here again. I thought the combination of the scandal and the fact that Northwestern historically struggles to be seen as a real football team with uniforms and everything would essentially kill the program as it no longer offers anything to the Big Money Big Ten. That may still be the case, but after the Wildcats wobbled on the precipice in the dying years of the Pat Fitzgerald Imperium, David Braun has somehow managed to keep this group together and has them tantalizingly close to qualifying for the Ahab and Sons Barnacle Solutions Bowl. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzLGY8M-MQqRZjMkhOeZ-aPYAzuJfmKww0rX-ddp_YeyoZHYlYBYx4i7K2DpqG_8JRxyEX83Z6NdBYc7AsdbQYbktjfqKRKTtER0bTsHCNUsRt5fOTSdODgGS06qRBZYUXAAYGdL1t-aWp9OJV0v08wYtfMB_ay7qjyD_X20wMM6j8i7velXaTOVq8yJw/s1200/wanny.jpg"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzLGY8M-MQqRZjMkhOeZ-aPYAzuJfmKww0rX-ddp_YeyoZHYlYBYx4i7K2DpqG_8JRxyEX83Z6NdBYc7AsdbQYbktjfqKRKTtER0bTsHCNUsRt5fOTSdODgGS06qRBZYUXAAYGdL1t-aWp9OJV0v08wYtfMB_ay7qjyD_X20wMM6j8i7velXaTOVq8yJw/w400-h225/wanny.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">After seeing this graphic, I am crushed that I did not learn the news about Braun losing the interim tag from Dave Wannstedt Tonight <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A lot of stories about Northwestern will frame this team as going through adversity and while the circumstances are adverse, this is the most self-inflicted trouble imaginable. This is not the Big Ten and NCAA coming in and threatening to suspend people because some goofus was going around doing Marine Recon Infiltration Maneuvers against Central Michigan but because the program tolerated an alarming amount of weirdo sadism among players for decades. We've learned that David Braun has something that players respond to and an ability to keep a team that seemed likely to break together. We've also learned he is, at the very least, much better at telling defensive players how to successfully tackle someone than Jim O'Neil, who was apparently showing players instructional tapes of hired goons surrounding Jean-Claude Van Damme and then ineffectually attacking him one at a time only to get victimized by The Splits. What remains to be seen is whether Braun can do something more important than taking the 'Cats to a bowl game which is finding a way for the football team to function without gross Shrek rituals.<br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">NORTHWESTERN ATTEMPTS TO DESTROY PURDUE, OWN STADIUM<br /></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern can do the seemingly impossible and qualify for one of the infinite Dreck Bowl Games by simply beating the team in last place, the Purdue Boilermarkers. Purdue also has a very young first-time head coach in former Illinois defensive coordinator Ryan Walters taking the reigns after Jeff Brohm went home to Louisville. Purdue has only won three games this season but two of them have been offensive outbursts. Last week, they ran over a fading Minnesota team while P.J. Fleck desperately acronymed on the sidelines. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The records indicate that Northwestern has a pretty decent chance to win. But nothing is given in the Big Ten West, where records and statistics have no meaning from week to week and games tend to resolve themselves based on what is stupidest and most baffling. There are no easy wins in this division because every team is almost equally bad; for Purdue, Northwestern is also one of the most winnable games on their schedule. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is one fascinating subplot to this game is that it is possibly the final game that will ever be played at Ryan Field. The stadium plan remains stalled in the grinding mechanisms of Evanston city government, but it at least seems likely that Northwestern will get its way and build one of the most inane and pointless stadiums in the history of inane and pointless stadium boondoggles. If the city approves the plan, Northwestern will spend several years wandering the Earth before they will cut the ribbon on their new football Xanadu for visiting fans. Of course, Northwestern is not a real sports team flinging its weight around because absolutely no one cares about Wildcat football-- it is possible that Evanston ultimately rejects the stadium based on the school's demands for more events than seven football games and a graduation ceremony, in which case it is important to note that the team being forced to return to a Ryan Field that has decayed into unimaginable decrepitude on the assumption that it would be torn down is in fact extremely funny. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">While I would like to see a Northwestern win here, there is one force that it is making me uneasy. It has nothing to do with anything going on with Northwestern or Purdue or the players or the tactics. Northwestern and Illinois are both currently 5-5. If both Illinois and Northwestern lose (Illinois is matched up with the apparently indomitable Iowa Hawkeyes), next week's Hat Game will serve as a Bowl Game Eliminator Showdown. It seems impossible to believe that a game between Northwestern and Illinois to determine who gets to go to the Quick Lane Bowl will not be the glorious end that the Big Ten West deserves.</span></p><p><b style="font-family: georgia;">JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF MADNESS: RYAN WALTERS'S PLAYBOOK FOR SUCCESS IN LIFE AND BUSINESS</b></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">The following is repurposed from the journal and correspondence of film director Wolfram Krenkel relating to his unfinished documentary Journey to the Heart of Madness: Ryan Walters’s Playbook for Success in Life and Business before his mysterious disappearance in 2023.</span></i></p><p><u><span style="font-family: georgia;">Letter to the Institute of Wolfram Krinkel Studies, June 21, 2023</span><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></b></u><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I was on location in a remote island I am legally not allowed to disclose filming a new picture called “Murders from God” when I got a telegram from the United States. The film was not going well. My entire crew was suffering from an ailment that translated loosely as “the devil’s rivers” that was known around the camp as “diarrhea 2.” Our financing had run out two weeks before when accountants noticed that the eccentric count who had lavished us with funds for the production was declared legally demented and his heirs were preparing to tear each other apart in the legal system. We were trying to get to the mainland to regroup. The leading man played by the insane actor Kaspar Bullenhoden had been rampaging throughout the set for weeks in a home-made “reverse loincloth” that covered his entire body from the neck down except for his nipples, buttocks, and genitals. He menaced everyone he encountered after telling us he was beginning an intense biting regimen and was only held at bay with staves fashioned from tree branches. The telegram had told me that an American University in the midwest was offering me a substantial amount of money to make a film about their annual headbutting championship. I was intrigued. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><u>Journal Entry, July 18, 2023 </u><br />I have arrived in West Lafeyette, Indiana, but quite late. They were anticipating me flying, but I explained that I had instead chosen to travel with a group of steamship enthusiasts crossing the Atlantic in a homemade vessel. The seas were violent, and I spent most of it ill alongside most of the crew. When we were not vomiting, the steamship enthusiasts quarreled among each other about the authenticity of the rivets and whether the food on board was period appropriate. Every night, a particularly irate retired professor of train literature from Italy threatened to mutiny with much screaming and wagging of his elaborate mustaches. Finally, this man managed to successfully pull off his coup after we had arrived in port by getting off the ship first and declaring himself the captain to a baffled customs agent. The crew got into an intense shoving match that lasted four hours until police intervened. The university bursar who I told about my voyage in order to try to convince him that I had a valid reason for arriving late had no interest in hearing about the debased madness of man at sea.<br /><u><br />Journal Entry, July 19, 2023</u><br />There are complications with the film. It appears that while I was on my sea voyage, I had missed some budgetary window to secure funding. The film professor who contacted me told me he had found some funds if I was willing to alter my project. It appears the football team was looking to document the activities of the team and had money for a film. I was instructed to meet with Lorenzo “Wayne” Kragg, the chief financier of the football team who somehow had no direct ties to the university but is instead a man who made his fortune selling decorative truck genitalia. I have no knowledge or interest in football but the professor was so apologetic that I felt I had to have a meeting out of politeness. <br /><br />I was taken to Wayne Kragg’s mansion overlooking the scenic Celery Bog Nature Area. Mr. Kragg (“Call me Lorenzo “Wanyne,” he said) met me at the door and led me into the foyer. Everywhere I looked there were images of trains. On one wall, the famous nineteenth-century film “L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat” ran on a loop from a projector while speakers blared train noises and whistles constantly. This agitated me greatly. I do not like trains, which I have always seen as the vanguard of man’s violent incursion against nature. Also I was told that my maternal great-uncles were all killed in separate and unrelated train accidents. One of them was bludgeoned to death, but it happened on a train. Lorenzo “Wayne” led me to a room covered in pictures of football players. He told me he had heard that I am a filmmaker of some international renown and he was honored to host me. I could tell he had not seen any of my films, not even my popular bird documentary “Shrieks of Hostility.” <br /><br />He told me he wanted to make a motivational film about the leadership techniques of the program’s new coach. The coach was young and inexperienced and Lorenzo "Wayne" wanted to burnish his reputation and rally the other rich men who donated their money to the football team around this man. I told him I appreciated the attention, but I do not make those kind of films. I know nothing about football. In fact, I find the spectacle of violence and pageantry disgusting and anathema to everything I think about humanity. I am not opposed to violence, for example if a man is torn to pieces by a large, flightless bird. But the organized, symbolized warfare in American football is something I find odious and intolerable. <br /><br />Then, I noticed something that changed my mind. In the corner, I saw a gigantic totem of a man wearing a football uniform and a hard hat. He is not quite a man. He is a grotesque caricature of a man, like if a person was drawn by a disturbed child like my school friend Dieter who was taken away and described as Bavaria’s youngest pyromaniac. This totem has gigantic bulging, dead eyes and a swollen, jutting chin. He carries a hammer. It is the stuff of waking nightmares. I asked Lorenzo “Wayne” what is this repulsive creature? He told me it was the school mascot “Purdue Pete” and he prowls the sidelines during athletic contests. I told him I must study this perverse abomination and the unhinged people that worship him. He said great, people here love Pete you can put him in the movie as much as you want. He also offered me enough money to restart my other film and hire a person specifically to restrain Kaspar from his normal course of biting and gouging attacks between scenes.<br /><br /><u>Journal Entry, July 20, 2023</u><br />I met the football coach Ryan Walters in his office. I told him I was there to learn his leadership secrets. I had already decided that my film would include none of the nonsense about leadership and I would instead investigate the twisted iconography of the terrible train goblin that had repulsed and intrigued me, but I needed to maintain the pretense. Coach Walters laughed. He told me that he thought that a motivational film about a first-year head coach was absurd, but he figured it was an easy way to keep Lorenzo “Wayne” happy, and he had to indulge him from time to time. Consider that his first Leadership Secret. I immediately liked him. I understood that you need to occasionally entertain the whims of maniacs in order to secure funding for your football program or film about a man who loses his mind trying to build a homemade spacecraft while you simultaneously try to build a homemade spacecraft as part of the filming process. Over his shoulder I noticed a smaller totem of the Pete grimacing at him and seemingly peering into my soul. I asked him what he thought about Purdue Pete. He told me that everyone loved Pete. I asked him why because he looked like he was a demon dedicated to murder. Walters’s face changed. “I don’t think it’s a great idea to make fun of Pete like that. People here don’t like that.” <br /><br />I thought he was joking but he appeared deadly serious so I changed the subject. I told him that I noticed from the pictures on the wall in the facility that many of those who came before him seemed to have large mustaches. Perhaps he should consider growing a mustache. “I haven’t earned mine yet. Not until he says so,” Walters said. Not until who says so? Uh, not he, I meant them. The fans. The fans, he said. Then he told me it was nice meeting me but he had a practice to prepare for.<br /><br /><u>Journal Entry, July 21 2023</u><br />I went to the library to research the iconography of Purdue Pete. The librarian handed me a dusty book on past showing the evolution of the Pete mascot through the years. He told me to enjoy the book and flashed a sinister smile. It turns out that Purdue Pete had gone through several changes dating back to the 1940s. The book showed photos and drawings of earlier, cruder designs where Pete was somehow more menacing and more deranged. In one earlier incarnation, he has broad shoulders and a tiny pin head emanating malice. In another, he has rosy cheeks like an evil California hamburger mascot. I wanted to retch and recoil but I could not look away. I sat for hours staring at these photos lost in some sort of demonic reverie. An unearthly cackle seemed to bounce around my skull. Eventually I threw down the book and ran out as the librarian chased me and scolded me, but I could not bear to touch the book anymore. On my way out I passed a drawing of a Purdue Pete reminding students to return their books and I threw my knapsack at it in disgust, exploding the half a turkey sandwich I had saved from my lunch all over a poster explaining the Dewey Decimal System.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><u>Journal Entry, July 21, 2023</u><br />Last night I was unable to sleep. I had a vision that I was trying to move but was unable to because I had ingested some sort of psychedelic or poison that prevented me from using my limbs. I was affixed vertically on some sort of plank like I was standing up and could not see below me but I felt a rattling. I was able to move my eyes enough to see that my plank was mounted to a railroad track. I heard a blood-curdling bellow that sounded like someone trying to make a train whistle. That’s when I saw it coming. A shadowy figure was pumping one of those old time railroad vehicles and heading straight towards me. There was a blinding lantern mounted on it but I could see it also had a battering ram shaped like a Purdue Pete head. As it came closer, I could see the figure pumping was a malformed Pete, a sort of hideous amalgam of all of the historical and discarded Petes. The pump car was increasing speed and coming straight for me. Right when it was about to collide with me, I woke up screaming.<br /><br />In fact, I had actually faced this exact situation when I was filming "The Grim Melánge" with the insane actor Kaspar Bullenhoden. We were in the desert and had run out of Kaspar’s favorite sarsaparilla brand. One night, I awoke to find myself lashed to a train track and Kaspar coming at me with a similar hand cart. His eyes were wide and he was singing passages from "Salome" in an agonized shriek. He rammed me thirteen times. My ribs were badly bruised. I could hardly speak and the doctors told me that if I laughed I would collapse into agony but fortunately I never laugh. <br /><br /><u>Journal Entry, July 24, 2023</u><br />I arrived at the football facility to get practice footage. The players are engaged in inscrutable drills and the coaches are bellowing out an indecipherable array of football jargon. During breaks, I filmed short interviews with whatever players were around. I received very few usable answers. My line of questioning was simple and straightforward: what do you think about nature’s indifference to man’s thoughts and suffering? Most of the players simply laughed or said "I don't know" or asked me who I was and what I was doing there. One player told me that “I am the indifference of nature to man’s suffering, on the football field.” I was so disturbed I had to leave.<br /><br />I tried to interview Coach Walters on film. It took me several hours to light his office. The Purdue Pete on his shelf still stared at me, and I ended up covering it with a camera case. But when it was time for him to start, an assistant told me the coach was too busy. I began to pack my things. As I put away my camera equipment I thought I heard something stir at the door. I looked up but no one entered. Then a piece of paper shot under the door with my name on it. I opened it. There was a hasty and careless scrawl that only said “Pete Says Stop.” I opened the door and looked to see anyone who could have slid the note, but the hallway was empty. The door slammed behind me and locked with all of my equipment inside. I had to try to convince a janitor to let me back in, but he had to talk to three different people in the football department to find someone who had heard of me until I found someone who had recognized me as the villain from the action movie "Operation: Cobra Strike: A Jack Kicker Film."<br /><br />As I headed back towards the hotel, I noticed something strange. A startling number of people I passed had large, blond mustaches. I thought I had noticed a slightly larger number of people you ordinarily see with a blond mustache, but now I was seeing them everywhere. And every person with a blond mustache seemed to look at me, if even for a second, and glare at me. I have only seen that look of pure hatred once in my life, and it was when the insane actor Kaspar Bullenhoden had chased me for three days through the Cambodian wilderness with a homemade nunchuk because I had told him to say “excuse me” instead of “pardon me” in a scene. <br /><br /><u>Journal Entry, July 25 2023</u><br />It is the middle of the night. I have heard a nonstop rattling in my room for several hours. I initially thought it was the air conditioner, so I turned it off and the room immediately became impossibly warm and humid in the steamy Indiana night. I am soaked in sweat. I tried to call the front desk but no one answers and the humidity seems to have swelled my door closed and jammed. A storm has rolled in and the rain pounds on my window while the thunder bellows outside. I pound on the door and scream for help but no one answers. Perhaps I am going mad. But I have suffered from the entire scale of filmmakers’ madnesses in my career: desert madness, jungle madness, and space madness, and this does not feel like any of them.<br /><br />I look outside the window and see only my own face reflected in the window, but when a flash of lightning illuminated the courtyard I could swear I saw the face. The eyes. The chin. I thought I should</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">The journal ends there. Wolfram Krenkel has not been seen since.<br /></span></i></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-18697050695402573572023-11-11T12:26:00.004-06:002023-11-11T12:27:23.352-06:00Football Leadership Book, by Luke Fickell<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Everyone spent all week saying that the Iowa game was going to be repulsive and disgusting and set back the game of football forever etc. and the casinos said I bet you don't think they can score the fewest points we have ever let you gamble on and the TV networks said we will not allow this to be broadcast on the airwaves where it is subject to FCC regulation and instead put it on a streaming service where they can show whatever they want like illegal badger baiting competitions and cooking shows called American Botulist and everyone had a good laugh at Iowa-Northwestern playing their signature brands of shit football at each other in a baseball stadium from the 1910s and then somehow the game was actually worse than that. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Iowa vs Northwestern but it’s a Silent Film <a href="https://t.co/tmEGbSMyrY">pic.twitter.com/tmEGbSMyrY</a></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">— Mr Matthew CFB (@MrMatthew_CFB) <a href="https://twitter.com/MrMatthew_CFB/status/1720940636738564183?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 4, 2023</a></span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Twitter user Mr Matthew CFB cut the highlights of this deranged contest into a silent film </span></span> <br /></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> It was 0-0 at halftime. Northwestern managed fewer than 30 passing yards in the first half. I had thought to myself that there was a possibility that Iowa offensive coordinator and son Brian Ferentz, who had been Future Terminated like he was in a 1980s science fiction movie and therefore had nothing to lose would pull out all the stops and just run the most insane plays possible like double flea flicker reverses and those plays where the quarterback pretends he can't hear understand the call coming in from the sideline and wanders towards the coaches only for them to snap the ball to a running back, or a pass that travels more than 14 yards, but I suppose if Brian Ferentz was capable of doing things like that he would not have been pre-fired. Instead, the Iowa offense did what everyone expected the Iowa offense to do and fell down a lot and called for the punter and absolutely nothing happened for approximately three excruciating hours.</span><p></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a call="" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjibKWhGYzqebm040SG3SWKrTbb5WOk8cxiqfuYrZKCUNDGXMAuFKxZG4DhD4sgdBgRd2POWaXCx7tFlvJTeSo8CImGWGs4DqdMXQjjggDHo0KGF3PeD55CZD0KGnfK8XqlerPwmB_63AG3uqy6xfnyW31NhW5QVwQDsL3GwdwF62IEvemx_V-zoluLko8/s320/sears%20you" ll="" now.gif=""><img border="0" call="" ll="" now.gif="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjibKWhGYzqebm040SG3SWKrTbb5WOk8cxiqfuYrZKCUNDGXMAuFKxZG4DhD4sgdBgRd2POWaXCx7tFlvJTeSo8CImGWGs4DqdMXQjjggDHo0KGF3PeD55CZD0KGnfK8XqlerPwmB_63AG3uqy6xfnyW31NhW5QVwQDsL3GwdwF62IEvemx_V-zoluLko8/s1600/sears%20you" /></a></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">You said you'd call for the punter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">It's third and three we can get a first down.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">It's fourth and two.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">I'll call now</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The star of the game was the Wrigley Field turf, which continued its mission to maim and devour football players. Last year, players slipped and slid all over the field like it was a hockey rink. This year, a few downs of vicious goal-line football produced a gigantic sink hole at the two yardline. It was if the earth itself had seen and rejected the nauseating attempt at football going on around it and tried to intervene. The game paused for several moments as the shovel-wielding grounds crew desperately hacked at the hole and did sad little riverdances on it to try to fill the divot. It was perhaps the most literal interpretation of the Timeout On The Field. This was the most exciting part of the game.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The game managed to have some juice at the very end, when Northwestern somehow managed to find the endzone and tie the game at 7-7 with fewer than 2 minutes to go. I thought it would be very improbable that Iowa's towtruck offense could march down the field in time to score, but a few penalties and the one actual pass completion of the game got them in field goal range for a kicker who had already doinked one from similar range earlier. Instead, Iowa got it through the uprights, won the game, and the kicker made the very rude go to sleep gesture and the Hawkeyes secured their place at the top of the putrid Big Ten West.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now Northwestern faces Iowa's erstwhile rival for the West crown, a sputtering Wisconsin team. It's a new era for Wisconsin football under Luke Fickell. Fickell, who had turned Cincinnati into a powerhouse in the AAC, is trying to do something different at Wisconsin. The Badgers tended to promote their own and run the same kind of Badger football you remember from time immemorial where the five largest men in Wisconsin are airlifted onto Camp Randall every week and knock over everyone so they can run the ball while three to four times every game a quarterback throws the crummiest pass you've ever seen. Fickell, though is trying to chanve this. He brought in Air Raid guru Phil Longo to run the offense and SMU transfer quarterback Tanner Mordecai. This was a shocking development-- I imagined Wisconsin trying to run the Air Raid like a military trying to form an air force by driving tanks up a ramp. The results have not been there for Wisconsin this year. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Wisconsin, playing at home, is heavily favored against Northwestern. But the Wildcats have been managing to hold their own against Big Ten West opponents, and Wisconsin is coming off a loss to an Indiana team whose coaching situation for most of the season could best be described as "death throes." Both teams face quarterback uncertainty with Mordecai's status in question for Wisconsin and Northwestern potentially bringing back Ben Bryant, who had played under Fickell at Cincinnati. Once again, the key for Northwestern is to make the game as horrible as possible. The Wildcats thrive playing in Big Ten West slop conditions much like how the Predator requires a hot and humid climate in order to successfully tear apart Carl Weathers. If anyone has any fun at all watching this game, it augurs poorly for the 'Cats.</span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">THE NCAA KILLS JIM HARBAUGH WITH DEVASTATING DEATH PENALTY OF NOT BEING ABLE TO COACH THE TEAM FOR THREE HOURS A WEEK</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Michigan sign-stealing scandal continues to take up all of the oxygen in college football media, much to the relief of Derrick Gragg, who is probably sending an edible arrangement to one of Connor Stalions's dead drops. Last year, my running bit on this blog was a series of short stories about a fictional NCAA investigator named <a href="http://bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com/search/label/Buck%20Duckett">Buck Duckett</a> where the central joke was that the NCAA had no power anymore with NIL and the investigators who spent their time digging in trash cans for P.F. Chang's receipts from illegal recruiting visits or whatever no longer had anything to do. I did not see the NCAA's investigative wing having a such a major resurgence because a weird guy with a silly name was (allegedly!) doing recon wet work on the Central Michigan sidelines. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This week, the scandal has escalated on two fronts. On one, the increasingly Coen Brothers-inflected saga of Connor Stalions took more strange turns when we learned about how his vacuum repair business got him into an argument with his HOA where he legally responded by claiming the entire dispute was a psyop directed by his Michigan State fan neighbor named Jeff who was out to sabotage Michigan's football operations by complaining about the dozens of vacuums Stalions left idling on his porch in a business that also apparently included Michigan's star running back who denies any affiliation with Stalions' vacuum repair operation.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkp2ceDyMDdCShCpwzMZqbNSbD2qWBSQjr-ciUyLmhhpTwVtsD93Yc9YL_pzH8yRJAQdWn__wBovMIcfOOjeTLf_GDrZKISbxefBFfVf20x0-TvTZ25QLu9F-YLt8X61-vvjUZqfyWnyWTn32FJp2Fmr-LfOaF6A2UTuX1QIIjPuhenRBBi9HP6qdtfL8/s900/stalions%20vacuums.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkp2ceDyMDdCShCpwzMZqbNSbD2qWBSQjr-ciUyLmhhpTwVtsD93Yc9YL_pzH8yRJAQdWn__wBovMIcfOOjeTLf_GDrZKISbxefBFfVf20x0-TvTZ25QLu9F-YLt8X61-vvjUZqfyWnyWTn32FJp2Fmr-LfOaF6A2UTuX1QIIjPuhenRBBi9HP6qdtfL8/s320/stalions%20vacuums.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Any Big Ten team that does not use this picture as part of its sideline signals when they play Michigan is not a serious program <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The other is that the Big Ten is taking action. On Friday, the conference swooped in to levy a punishment against Harbaugh by banning him from the team's sidelines during games for three weeks but not suspending him in any other capacity. The punishment was a masterclass of college football bureaucracy: it did nothing other than inflame Michigan and its fans who claim the conference acted against them without the opportunity to even defend themselves and irritates Michigan's opponents because it's a pointless horseshit penalty that doesn't do anything. The fact is that Michigan will fight tooth and nail against anything the conference or NCAA will do to it, so they might as well have gone all in and ordered that Harbaugh has to be sent to the international space station or allowed on Michigan sidelines only if he is restrained like Hannibal Lecter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Michigan saga unfortunately seems to be turning a corner from a delightful series of increasingly absurd revelations to the tedious arguing in various courts phase. This certainly pleases Michigan fans who get the benefit of feeling persecuted for being too good, which is the greatest feeling that can ever be accessed by a college football fanbase. Michigan fans, who fairly or not have the reputation of being pedantic rules-mongers, also now have something even more pleasing to them which is a set of regulations to comb through and the opportunity to compose long-winded briefs about bring wronged. If this is the trajectory that the scandal is going to move along, which has been dominated for the past 24 hours by an impenetrable argument about the timing of when an injunction can be filed or something, I no longer care at all because that is boring and just need to know whether a Michigan staffer named Jackson Rhinoceros has been spotted hiding under a tarp at Ryan Field.<br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">FOOTBALL LEADERSHIP BOOK BY LUKE FICKELL <br /></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Luke Fickell doesn't eat anything. I'm sitting across from Wisconsin football coach Luke Fickell at "Well I Can Eat," one of Madison's trendiest new restaurants and I'm trying to figure out what to do. I got in the habit of meeting sports people at restaurants when I was profiling them for magazines because it made a great lede: "Marv Albert digs his spoon into the chicken a la king;" "Jeff Van Gundy orders an entire Thanksgiving meal off-menu;" "Buddy Ryan eats a steak with his bare hands;" but if I was profiling Fickell, I'd be at a loss. He doesn't order anything, not even a glass of water. He is staring at me like he's trying to see through my skin. "Jeff Van Gundy told me this place has incredible cranberry sauce," I say. "No thanks," he says.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I wasn't here to profile Fickell. My magazine writing days hit a speed bump when <i>Man's Man: A Magazine for Men</i> got purchased by thirteen different companies in two years, got spun off into a series of branded bar and grills and a show on the short-lived streaming network "THIS," and then finally got liquidated with the back issues sold to paper magnate Glen Masted, the Pulp King of Michigan City. After a brief plagiarism scandal (I lifted a chapter from Rick Reilly's <i>Who's Your Caddy*</i> because of a bad reaction to gout treatment) and the recent resurfacing of some profiles of women from the early 2000s I wrote that had these censorious outrage-mavens desperate for an apology even though I have a mother and a step-niece, I was looking for work. That's how I ended up traveling around the country trying to pitch coaches on leadership books. They certainly did not exist in the higher literary plane I had lived in when I wrote things like "What's Eating Gordon Ramsay?" and "Rick Fox is Ready for His Closeup" but they were fast and easy and tended to sell well if the person was famous enough. With enough traction, I could even go around giving lectures in hotel ballrooms. But I had been having a tough time finding collaborators. I had already been turned down by Quin Snyder, Dawn Staley, Ben McAdoo, Jim Boylen, and Jim Boylan. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"So," I say to Fickell. "If we were to start working on this book, what do you think you'd want to focus on? "Leadership," Fickell says. "What elements of leadership? You know you were really thrown into the crucible there with Ohio State, with, you know the whole Tressell thing." Fickell got his first head coaching job unexpectedly when his the famed NCAA Investigator Buck Duckett caught numerous Buckeyes players in the grip of a notorious midwestern pants-trafficking ring. The NCAA moved in to punish Ohio State coach Jim Tressell for the infractions. Tressell wouldn't go quietly-- the result was a thirteen hour siege of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. They took Tressell to a maximum security NCAA facility for three years where he had no access to football or pants. While locked up, he penned <i>Tressellball: The Art of Integrity- In Conversation with Chad Crad</i> that topped the New York Times bestseller list for 49 consecutive weeks. In the midst of all of the chaos, Fickell, then serving as the defensive coordinator, got promoted into leading the powerhouse program. "I don't want to talk about that," Fickell says to me. "That's personal."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Perhaps, I suggest, he could talk about his second stint as defensive coordinator. After his one season in charge of Ohio State, the university fired him as head coach and brought in the former Florida coach who had retired for health reasons to a TV job but suddenly found himself invigorated by the Ohio State offer. Fickell stayed on as defensive coordinator under Meyer, which is certainly an unorthodox move in college football coaching. "Maybe you can talk about what you learned about leadership under Urban Meyer." "No," Fickell says. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">(Fair enough. Last year, I pitched an <span>exposé </span>detailing Meyer's time with the Jacksonville Jaguars as an A Told To with Josh Lambo called <i>Who Kicks The Kicker?</i> He declined.)<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"OK, maybe we leave your own personal history out of this and approach things a little more philosophically. How do you personally prepare a team to win?" I ask, starting to panic a little. "Winning mentality. Winning mindset," Fickell says. "That's perfect," I say. "How do you instill this winning mindset?" Fickell's brow wrinkles. "Winning mindset. You have to be about winning." "OK. But how do you become about winning?" I ask. "Because you want to win. Either you do or you lose," Fickell says, looking as close to incredulous as I can see a person look who does not have facial expressions. "OK," I say.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I try one last move. "Look, we can talk about what's in the book later on, but these things really move with good titles. I was thinking 'A Fickell Twit of Fate.' Or, how about 'Football: Not For The Fickell?'" "No," Fickell said. "No Fickell puns." The man had no idea how literature works. I could have sold a profile on a football coach called "Luke's Not Fickell" to <i>Man's Man</i> sight unseen even though my main sports editor Victor Flugge would have no idea who Luke Fickell is. He did not even know the basic rules of football and only watched an illegal, combat-oriented version of Jai Alai called "Montserrat." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"OK then, thanks for your time, Coach," I say. I pay for my bloody mary that was mainly three full sized sausages and a quirt of tomato juice and start to head for the door. Thinking I was out of earshot I mutter to myself "Puke Sickell" but I guess I am not. I don't hear him move. I don't hear the chair and I don't hear footsteps from anyone coming near me, but before I reach the doorknob someone grabs me. It is more like being enveloped. My right arm feels like it is being torn from its socket and my left shin seems like it is somehow being thrust upward to stab my own knee. Fickell, a high school wrestling champion, has me in his legendary trebuchet hold that he had used to subdue 195 consecutive opponents from 1990 to 1992. Somehow, instead of just screaming out "aaaaahhh and my shin" I manage to blurt out "aaaaaaggghhh trebuchet trebuchet" and Fickell releases me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"I see you've done your research," he says. He's not smiling but he's no longer scowling. "You know, I like you. I think we can work together." He gestures towards the table. I limp back over there and order another sausage mary. "It's called Football Leadership Book," he says. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> --------</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">*This is a real book <br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-1678964552817847682023-11-04T12:42:00.003-05:002023-11-04T12:44:56.748-05:00Going Iowanfinite: The Rise of a Football Revolutionary<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Reports of the death of Northwestern's football program have been greatly exaggerated. The team, reeling from the fallout from the hazing scandal, the firing of Pat Fitzgerald, the promotion of a coach with so little experience that the university felt it necessary to install Skip Holtz as some sort of guiding figure, and a team that had looked barely competitive in its previous few seasons seemed to augur a disaster of a season from a win-loss standpoint, a return to the early 1980s Northwestern of entire seasons without a single win and a program turning into a weird nineteenth-century vestige in one of college football's expanding major leagues. And then that didn't happen. The Wildcats are fine. They are a perfectly cromulent Big Ten West team slopping around their division with other teams that are simply dealing with being Big Ten West teams. It is the strangest outcome to a season this season that I could have possibly imagined.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrhEPqUUK-Z6CRJwnWMsV2DGgxFUOxro7oRVzxnNdrbvS1qv-aij9aM3OKql69qQN5rGNdWhY0xInTeyEu4AOfG3KP7_RSrc9gn5lFzov2LQY6g8TrtFCT-_a6pOk4EvwQkoVKbcqzak1RMVAaQ3XsVtuV-b1x6nfRyeJNUkqaiiAdgQJ0PzASnq901M/s1110/Screenshot%202023-11-04%20121341.png"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrhEPqUUK-Z6CRJwnWMsV2DGgxFUOxro7oRVzxnNdrbvS1qv-aij9aM3OKql69qQN5rGNdWhY0xInTeyEu4AOfG3KP7_RSrc9gn5lFzov2LQY6g8TrtFCT-_a6pOk4EvwQkoVKbcqzak1RMVAaQ3XsVtuV-b1x6nfRyeJNUkqaiiAdgQJ0PzASnq901M/w400-h193/Screenshot%202023-11-04%20121341.png" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Evidence that Northwestern is not in last place</span><br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When Northwestern started playing other teams in the division, I thought they had a proof of concept of how they could win. They would go headbutt with the other Big Ten West teams in a frankly obscene display of offensive rectitude and occasionally come up with a victory. But that was not supposed to happen against Maryland from the Big Ten East, with its 5-0 record to start the season, star quarterback and ability to hang tough against the likes of Ohio State. Instead, Northwestern simply outplayed them. The defense harassed Taulia Tagovailoa to the tune of six sacks and an interception, Brandon Sullivan threw for 265 yards and rushed for 56 more, Coco Azema was everywhere and sealed the game with an interception, and the Wildcats managed to hang on. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern is now 4-4. They have a decent shot at a bowl game. They are even I guess sort of technically in the race for the Big Ten West but only because whoever leads the Big Ten West gets a phone call that says "seven days" and then J Leman crawls out of their jumbotron the next week and the team fumbles the ball 55 times and loses 6.5-3. This is remarkable. David Braun has seemingly stepped in and managed to get something out of this team that is enabling them to compete in football games and it seems more and more likely that he will at some point get a shot to take the job permanently. The fact that Northwestern is managing to even function at this point in a year where they were considered the worst major-conference team in all of college football has certainly raised some questions about what Pat Fitzgerald was even doing although I am sure his legal team will be prepared to discuss it.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Of course it is still difficult to separate what Northwestern is doing on the field with the lingering rot in the athletic department. On Friday, former players Rico Lamitte and Noah Herron spoke at <a href="https://theathletic.com/5028039/2023/11/03/northwestern-football-racism-hazing/">a press conference</a> detailing a culture of racism in the Wildcat football program dating back to their playing days in the early 2000s. More than 50 players have filed more than 20 lawsuits against the university in the wake of the scandal alleging incidents of racism, abuse, and sexual hazing in the football team and other athletic programs, and it is likely that more and more appalling incidents continue to filter out. <br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">WRETURN TO WRIGLEY</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, here it is. They took the most Big Ten West possible game and, in the final year of the Big Ten West, they have shunted it to a paywalled streaming service that mainly shows old episodes of Frasier, and they are doing it in an ancient baseball stadium which has yet to successfully mount a college football game without calamity. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjgerMSuZZVWp5w1XYqHHsjp8KLYHEPlloWvE6bv41rOl5Zf0q4uWfaTXQzh-PI2c5WNdRc-Zs53PZhu81ud4gwAxLS1Q0nct_P01XOAaGu-tLLqvRkVbVLozsNFyAVBiM46HrGAyElA_e-ZvbPUht5SPe0ATPvCIeki0C3XIuFRo-FWxfWoLEdA_hY8s/s1500/frasier.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjgerMSuZZVWp5w1XYqHHsjp8KLYHEPlloWvE6bv41rOl5Zf0q4uWfaTXQzh-PI2c5WNdRc-Zs53PZhu81ud4gwAxLS1Q0nct_P01XOAaGu-tLLqvRkVbVLozsNFyAVBiM46HrGAyElA_e-ZvbPUht5SPe0ATPvCIeki0C3XIuFRo-FWxfWoLEdA_hY8s/s320/frasier.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">NILES: I have never heard such disgusting, vile language in a crowd than from those visiting Iowans. Maris is glued to her fainting chair.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">FRASIER: Her fainting chair?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">NILES: We're having the couch upholstered, I had to improvise.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">MARTIN: Have you seen that rowdy crowd out there? I tell ya, those Iowa fans really like to see their team punt. They're even chanting for it.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">NILE: Punt? They were saying punt? (Grabs coat and sprints out the door) I have to intercept a strongly-worded letter I sent to the university provost.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the original Wrigley game in 2010, the Big Ten famously forced both teams to only go one way for fear that using both endzones would risk players smashing each other into brick walls only padded by dead ivy. Last year, the field was so slippery that a Purdue player could not even successfully execute a kickoff without falling down and it felt like they had just left the infield dirt, bases, and a few bats and catcher's masks laying around in the middle of the field. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now the Wrigley game features Northwestern's less than stellar offense against Iowa's notoriously non-functional attack. The pundits expect a shockingly low-scoring game, perhaps one in the negative numbers. This would fit in the parameters of historic Northwestern-Iowa games in this, the final season of the Big Ten West, where true aficionados of toilet football expect both teams to get together and produce one of the most disgusting football games available on the college football calendar. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are some actual stakes in this game-- Iowa is still somehow leading the Big Ten West title race and Northwestern can get closer to bowl eligibility with a win, but the real intrigue is in both coaching staffs. The Hawkeyes already did something very strange and pre-fired offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz, saying he will serve out the rest of the year but not return next season, as if to say that they no longer could sanction his putrid anti-football but he needs to keep doing it a few more times, as a bit. This awkward half-dismissal ends a favorite parlor game for a certain segment of online college football weirdos, which was to monitor Iowa's scoring output each game based on a clause in Brian Ferentz's contract that would reportedly void it if the Hawkeyes did not score 325 points by the end of the season (an average of 25 per game); it is possible that Iowa prematurely announced that Ferentz was not coming back because the athletic department noticed that people were having fun with some element of Iowa football and they moved immediately to quash it. Northwestern, on the other hand, is working with an entire interim coaching staff. This game might lead the nation in the most Temporary Coaches working a regular season game.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFiWGCt7svUpraRyKj1_zpqg_eZUhK95XtJeM1H_S-8pKxlL9qFJPknCpBlgFoaWk_iEeI45QW82Fsbs_UVSUifDQWMeCCk4Vu5amXtRBWkrVp-_sESTHe29zePI0KUF7qmT0AGrD2x6ccfp9wdlkcvIbC00f3qxYzlzn-8Q8T_W22jTRDCQv6C7lPB38/s900/Screenshot%202023-11-04%20122315.png"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFiWGCt7svUpraRyKj1_zpqg_eZUhK95XtJeM1H_S-8pKxlL9qFJPknCpBlgFoaWk_iEeI45QW82Fsbs_UVSUifDQWMeCCk4Vu5amXtRBWkrVp-_sESTHe29zePI0KUF7qmT0AGrD2x6ccfp9wdlkcvIbC00f3qxYzlzn-8Q8T_W22jTRDCQv6C7lPB38/w400-h266/Screenshot%202023-11-04%20122315.png" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">At the very least, the imminent dismissal of Brian Ferentz certainly will make for a tense Thanksgiving at the Ferentz house, where I imagine things already get irksome if anyone asks for a dish to be passed<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Despite its world-famous offensive ineptitude, the Hawkeyes are favored in this nominal home game for the Wildcats because they still boast a sinister defense. Wrigley will be completely overrun with Iowa fans. I am sure the broadcast will find ways to play up the baseball angle by comparing a potential low-scoring game to a pitcher's duel or discussing how Brian Ferentz has ordered his quarterback to bunt, but hopefully this game ends the Big Ten West the way an Iowa-Northwestern game has traditionally ended: as an unwatchable game that Northwestern wins on a very stupid Iowa penalty that gets at least three Iowa message board posters investigated by a federal entity. </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">GOING IOWANFINITE: THE RISE OF A FOOTBALL REVOLUTIONARY</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Note: The following excerpt from the author embedded within the Iowa football program in the spring of 2023, is from a book originally completed before the 2023 football season and published on Friday, October 27, 2023. </i><br /><br />“Let me ask you something,” Brian Ferentz said to his offensive coaching staff. He sat at the head of a large u-shaped desk at the Hansen Football Performance Center leaning back, his arms behind his head. “What’s the most efficient play in football?”<br /><br />He stared at the group before him, wizened old coaches whose heads bore permanent marks and indentations from years of headset squinting through half-glasses, eager young graduate assistants still in playing shape and looming like distant mountains in the corners of the room, afraid to say anything, and me, trying not to be noticed as I wrote everything down.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Three point three yard run,” wheezed out Mackett. Walt Mackett had been with the Hawkeyes since he played as a nasty fullback in 1952 and unofficially led the Big Ten in biting incidents. Mackett officially retired in 1997, but still hung around in meetings and prepared detailed longhand scouting reports that he passed around.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Wrong,” Ferentz said. “Plannitz.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Plannitz, a nervous assistant who had just graduated after five years as a walk-on and who never got into a single game because the one time they decided to send him in in a blowout against Western Illinois he was on the toilet, gulped. “Uhhh, five yard out,” he said.<br /><br />“Wrong.” He began randomly pointing around the room with his marker.<br /><br />“Tight end screen.” <br /><br />“Nope.”<br /><br />“Jet sweep.” <br /><br />“No.”<br /><br />“Flea flicker.”<br /><br />“That's not even real. Oh Grady, you think this is boring? Well, enlighten us.”<br /><br />Grant Grady, a hotshot receivers coach who was not too fond of Ferentz’s little quizzes, had been folding a playsheet into a paper giraffe in a sort of hostile origami. “I don’t know Brian, what about a fuckin’ punt.” <br /><br />Everyone laughed. The stagnant nature of Iowa’s 2022 offense was a running joke in the football media and one that Ferentz didn’t think was very funny, which is why he was in the meeting room.<br /><br />“You know what you’re not that far off.”<br /><br />Ferentz stood up and sauntered over to the whiteboard. He maintained the bulk and bearing of a former lineman. He uncapped his marker and wrote a two on the board. <br /><br />“Safety. How many plays did the offense run?”<br /><br />“The offense, coach?” said Plannitz.<br /><br />“Yeah. How many did we run? It’s not a trick question.”<br /><br />“Uh, none,” Plannitz said.<br /><br />“Damn straight.” He put a slash sign with a zero next to the two.<br /><br />“Fumble return, how many did we run?” He wrote a six on the board.<br /><br />This time two or three coaches chimed in at the same time. “Zero.” Six slash zero on the board.<br /><br />“Right. Punt return?” He wrote another 6 then a slash. <br /><br />All of the coaches said “zero” in unison as Ferentz wrote it on the board except for one or two that said “none” and Grady, who was intently drawing teeth on his giraffe. <br /><br />“How about a situation where a team lines up for an extra point or two-point conversion but somehow manages to lose possession of the football in its own endzone on the complete other end of the field?”<br /><br />“Zero,” they yelled out because that was the pattern but many of them looked confused. “That’s right,” Ferentz said and then wrote a one slash zero. “Do the math on those. Which one is most efficient? We’re talkin’ points per offensive play. Who here knows basic division?”<br /><br />A few brows furrowed. Plannitz pulled his phone halfway out of his pocket and then sheepishly put it back when he noticed no one else doing that. A heavy silence settled in the room.<br /><br />Grady looked up. “They’re all horseshit. You can’t do ‘em.” “You can’t divide by zero. It’s not allowed or something.”<br /><br />“That’s absolutely right. They’re all exactly the same. The same efficiency. Zero plays for the offense. It’s so efficient that it is scientifically impossible to determine. Every other offense in the country is running plays. They’re trying to do yardage. They’re trying to do points. Well guess what, you take the best offense in the goddamn country and you know what they’re doing? Look at their efficiency numbers. They exist. Ours don’t. There’s no defense in the goddamn universe that knows how to stop our shit.”<br /><br />Grady exhaled deeply.”<br /><br />“Got something to say, Grant?” <br /><br />“This is the absolute stupidest shit I’ve ever heard, Brian,” he said. Ferentz walked over to him and they met forehead to forehead. <br /><br />“Get the fuck out of my football performance center,” Ferentz said.<br /><br />“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Grady said as he gathered his stuff and walked out. “Good luck, fellas. I mean that. Good fuckin’ luck.” Ferentz grabbed the giraffe in his meaty hand and crushed it.<br /><br />“Undetermined. That’s our strategy.”<br /><br />**********<br /><br />You would not think that Iowa’s football team, a notoriously staid institution where Brian’s father Kirk has been churning out the same defense, tight ends, and punts operation for decades as the longest-tenured coach in the Big Ten would be something I would write about. My interests tend towards the cutting edge. For example, in <i>Jeeves Nation</i>, I explored the world’s most innovative search engine poised to remake the entire concept of searching the World Wide Web. In <i>Liar’s Pogs</i>, I examined the burgeoning pog economy emerging in schoolyards that turned into a complex international financial system of its own. My own interest in sports came out in <i>The Trestman Cometh</i>, a story about a coach whose battle to bring revolutionary strategies from Canadian football to the NFL was derailed by the fact that he looked like a ventriloquists’ dummy from the cover of an R.L. Stine novel.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">College football represents a far more diverse array of strategies than the NFL. Teams are limited based on their own resources and available players. Teams are also molded to coaches' idiosyncratic preferences. Some teams like to try to gradually run over their opponents like a slow-moving molasses calamity. Some teams try to move as quickly as possible and exhaust their opponents. Other teams, like the Army, Navy, and Air Force teams unable to field players with the wide-bodied bulk of their peers, like to confuse opponents by running archaic option configurations that befuddle defenses unsure of who can run the ball. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">At Iowa, though, whatever system they had was not working. In 2022, Iowa ranked dead last out of 130 total teams in yards per game, averaging nearly 30 yards fewer than the next-worst team Eastern Michigan. They averaged only 117 passing yards per game; the only teams that threw for fewer yards were Navy and Air Force, which intentionally eschew the forward pass as part of their offensive strategy. Despite the pitiful and ineffectual play of its offense, Iowa's defense still managed to carry the team to eight wins, including a victory in the Music City Bowl. But Brian Ferentz was sick of hearing about how crappy his offense was. With his offense already at rock bottom, Ferentz was prepared to unleash his new concept and forever change how college football was played.<br /><br />I first came to know Brian Ferentz after publishing “Boylenball”, an article for the <i>New Yorker</i> that featured a coach who revolutionized the concept of the timeout in the NBA using innovative mathematical models to time them while philistines dismissed him as a bald asshole taking pointless timeouts while already hopelessly behind because he was mad. Ferentz reached out to me to ask about a photo that ran in the article where Boylen wore a pork pie hat because, as a man with an equally enormous head, he had trouble finding a one that could accommodate his bulbous cranium. I told him that Boylen was no longer talking to me because he thought the article made him seem like a “boob” but the photographer tipped me off to a place called Fred Gazoo’s Huge Haberdaschery that specialized in hats for the large-headed gentleman. We started corresponding after that and finally met for a drink when he was scouting a player not far from where I was embedded with the founders of WebTV. This is when I learned about Undetermined Football.<br /><br />The easy way to talk about Brian Ferentz is with the cliched story of a son desperate to escape the enormous shadow of his own father. After all, that is how things appear. He played for Kirk and then, after a brief foray coaching in the NFL, returned to coach for him, steadily rising through the ranks, rankled by charges of nepotism while never being able to satisfy the old man. The book practically writes itself. But, at least as Ferentz tells it, that has nothing to do with his entry into football. He instead sees it not as some sort of complicated King Lear-style family drama but as an intellectual puzzle. He’d be happy to run his experiments anywhere. But Iowa provided an opportunity and a head coach who would at least have to listen to his ideas because his mom would yell “Kirk! Listen to Brian’s ideas.”<br /><br />Ferentz had been nurturing the idea for undetermined football for some time. He tells me that the idea is rooted predictably in rebellion. He had grown up with the idea of staid Iowa football and as a teenager became obsessed with offense, with elaborate ways of marching down the field and scoring points. He studied the then-novel spread offense, the air raid, the old run & shoot. As a boy, he hid play sheets showing the run/pass option under his mattress. But as he got older, Ferentz grew tired of exotic offensive looks. He had in mind something better.<br /><br />“Do you know about Napoleon in Russia?” he said. I told him I did but he kept going as if I said I did not. Ferentz, a history major and the owner of several books about horse-based warfare, began to explain how, as the Grande Armée penetrated deeper into Russia, the Russian forces defeated them by retreating further, stretching the French supply lines as winter encroached upon it. “I thought to myself, well in the Big Ten we have a hell of a winter. What if we also have retreat?” <br /><br />Ferentz told me that his new offensive gameplan was not just based on mathematics and the impossible “divide by zero” principle but also had elements of psychology. He showed me papers on the concept of “mirroring” where humans as social animals had an unconscious need to emulate other humans in a similar setting. Therefore, instead of having his team model brilliant offensive behavior such as by completing multiple forward passes or earning first downs, his team would instead foster an environment hostile to offense. His running backs would run pointlessly into defensive tackles. His quarterbacks would throw the ball mainly to the turf. The other team, unaware of basic human psychology, would find themselves also playing like dogshit subconsciously out of a fear of ostracization that resided in the vestigial lobes of our primate brains. Pretty soon both quarterbacks would be hurling themselves into linebackers or letting snaps fly over their head but only one would be doing so by design. “Everyone's trying to run plays that work. But we don't. That’s the advantage right there,” he said to me as he drilled his running backs on letting a ball hit them in the face.<br /><br />The idea was as counterintuitive as it was brilliant. An offense that functionally refused to act, that performed the minimum amount of offense allowed in a football game, would act as a fulcrum where the defense and special teams would have more and more opportunities to score points. This process would become so efficient, at least according to Ferentz’s calculations, that Iowa would become one of the highest-scoring teams in the country. And this year he was going to find out.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was unclear around the program whether Kirk Ferentz was on board with his son’s program or simply didn’t notice. I tried speaking to him about this, but during our brief allotted interview time he simply squinted at me and ate an entire white onion like an apple. <br /><br />I had found a new innovation. My publisher told me to go ahead and embed myself with the Iowa offense during training camp for the 2023 season. To make things even more interesting, Ferentz had Iowa’s athletic director add in clauses to his own contract about how many points the team would score. I was nervous about fitting in, so I started wearing hats and coach-style sunglasses and constantly spitting and calling things “horseshit” until I seamlessly blended into the sideline. That summer, I observed Iowa secretly installing new drills that no one had ever seen: fumbling, taking idiotic penalties at the exact wrong time, and summoning the punt team. My publisher sold the film rights for $12 million. <br /><br />It was obvious that Ferentz had stumbled onto a revolution in football strategy. No one in the Big Ten knew what as coming. No one in the football press knew this would happen, except for one person: me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Please enjoy my next project </i>Planet of The Apes: How NFTs Reshaped the Global Economy.<br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-8123244329775577692023-10-28T10:42:00.000-05:002023-10-28T10:42:26.550-05:00Lock In Success The Mike Locksley Way<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">All week long the football pundits were screeching about the twisted hideousness of an Iowa-Minnesota matchup. Look at this disgusting freak football, they all said about a Peak Big Ten West game where everyone expected the teams to spit and blow their noses on the football for three downs before forcing the other team to handle it. And they were right. The 12-10 affair won by Minnesota on a controversial Illegal Punt Gestures penalty was a gruesome mess that no one but the most deranged midwesterners huffing pork intestine fumes could watch for extended periods without intense vomiting. But that was a game with actual stakes and intrigue with Iowa vying to lock down the division. Further down the dial on Big Ten Network Regional Action and, presumably, the only game available for inmates in the Face/Off Magnet Shoe prison for psychological reasons, was the deranged anti-football available between perpetual football ruiners Northwestern and Nebraska. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNGr-PwhjNWlvFg1GFBD-MRUCjk1PugeUTNBkPAp2agaoZEFh7YoXlPNGaPD9xO20aSrAsSt5l5f3QHmY0Yrw41_hy2dySnVlW2QUuRo56pYw512oCyOQGPelrm2grRBmYY7qmUuQ09cTd7qLb19oYiHb3r-1rL0rch7t2_N0UIgicyJcimxDLuOa2N6s/s2106/nic%20cage%20bees.jpeg"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNGr-PwhjNWlvFg1GFBD-MRUCjk1PugeUTNBkPAp2agaoZEFh7YoXlPNGaPD9xO20aSrAsSt5l5f3QHmY0Yrw41_hy2dySnVlW2QUuRo56pYw512oCyOQGPelrm2grRBmYY7qmUuQ09cTd7qLb19oYiHb3r-1rL0rch7t2_N0UIgicyJcimxDLuOa2N6s/w400-h171/nic%20cage%20bees.jpeg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A football fan settles in with to watch the afternoon slate with his beloved pet bees but has just learned the only games available on TV feature Big Ten West teams<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I assume anyone who is deep enough down the Northwestern rabbit hole that they are not just reading normal internet football stuff but have found themselves on a blogspot web page that is now mainly a repository for experimental coach-related fan-fictions is also a person sick enough to have watched an entire Northwestern-Nebraska game, but I am going to recap the first few drives anyway because only by explaining them to other people can I convince myself that what I saw actually happened and was not some sort of AI rendering of the prompt "Northwestern and Nebraska play a game that gets football banned in the United States." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nebraska's quarterback, on the very first play of the game, throws a ridiculous interception directly to a Northwestern defender. Northwestern gets the ball and moves backwards then punts. Nebraska gains three yard and punts. Northwestern gains five yards and punts. Nebraska's quarterback then throws another interception in the Huskers' own ten yard line. Northwestern loses 14 yards and kicks a field goal. Emergency medical teams in the stadium report dozens of people are succumbing to Punt Madness. The Big Ten attempts to intervene to force the teams to move the ball, but the sadistic Nebraska governor mobilizes the national guard to stop them. A Nebraska fan is arrested outside the stadium for completing a pass during a tailgate. Only a Nebraska touchdown late in the first half prevents a wide-scale riot as anxious Nebraska fans prepared to leave the stadium en masse and run the option all over Lincoln. "These are the eventualities that you have to prepare for and execute at," Northwestern coach David Braun said at the half. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2IQkCHU0aLHaAT2c14Yg52ytw10bNNB_IMWx2MeSb9GCcOvccftihiwG2mZVf-JZc-AybpZEXnua57fQsdkAnZVWmAULYwwZg7e_EZGCtt_7SqJ5Ls-G3Uq6MWCs1T_NIzaXRrm7gHhiOCjlJ_k3vFTaAo5X8GB-XEQUC7x6Q_XU2B6oMrlV-Qv8upiE/s473/Screenshot%202023-10-28%20083812.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2IQkCHU0aLHaAT2c14Yg52ytw10bNNB_IMWx2MeSb9GCcOvccftihiwG2mZVf-JZc-AybpZEXnua57fQsdkAnZVWmAULYwwZg7e_EZGCtt_7SqJ5Ls-G3Uq6MWCs1T_NIzaXRrm7gHhiOCjlJ_k3vFTaAo5X8GB-XEQUC7x6Q_XU2B6oMrlV-Qv8upiE/s320/Screenshot%202023-10-28%20083812.png" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you look at this you will get a call that says Seven Days and then a spooky woman will crawl out of your television and run for a -2 yards.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern was unable to regain the lead and eventually scored another touchdown to ice the lead. The Wildcats never managed to find the endzone. The loss probably ends the team's unlikely quest for bowl eligibility because it is very difficult to imagine them playing a Big Ten team worse than Nebraska that spent the entire first half sending strongly worded telegrams to the Northwestern sideline all but demanding that the 'Cats take an enormous lead. But it is still possible. The team is slowly regaining its identity as a pain-in-the-ass defense that can make it very difficult to score without an effective passing game, and they play in the Big Ten West: Home of the Oaf Quarterback. They no longer look like the worst major-conference team in college football but merely a recent-vintage Northwestern team enjoying its final year rolling around in the garbage with its lumbering midwestern peers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Unfortunately, they do not face a lummoxing punt factory team this week. Maryland is 5-2 this season, and averages about 33 points per game. They are, however, coming off two losses-- one to Ohio State and one to fellow Big Ten West slopsmen Illinois, but are also coming off a bye. Maryland, like all Big Ten teams is heavily favored against the Wildcats. Autumn has finally descended upon Chicagoland, and a nasty, blustery, and gray day will match the general vibes of Ryan Field. I received an email from Northwestern offering a "flash sale" on tickets earlier this week, so I assume there will be approximately seventeen people in the stands forcing Northwestern on crucial downs to rally its army of tarps. This might be the least-anticipated football game played today.</span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">MICHIGAN SKULDUGGERY UPDATE</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Last week, the college football world met Michigan Intelligence Asset Connor Stalions, who allegedly masterminded an elaborate sign-stealing operation by sending his network of agents out to various Big Ten stadiums to record opponents' sideline signals. We have learned more this week. Stalions is, according to reporting, the author of a strange Manifesto about Michigan football, which is something I cannot really make fun of because what you are reading on this blog is equally embarrassing. The NCAA, ridiculed and stripped of almost all meaningful power, is rallying around its ability to investigate an actual Football Crime and as we speak Stalions' network of Joes and Lamplighters is getting rolled up while the association takes aim at its nemesis Jim Harbaugh. This, at last, is a perfect NCAA football scandal where everyone involved seems to be a nincompoop and the results only affect football games and undermines Michigan's self-described Football Paladin reputation while its fans begin going rogue by making right turns on red lights or ringing up organic produce as normal produce in the self-checkout aisle. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQgfkkfnWJ3s2vMszyeCscm49J11d4VCmhnOomjnU805SQiEyh2Sg8qESNjnBunB4VLx4deDWe16G_fUAwPlszB6L_srJV4ITdG5N7-89VhFZu2WE6fl7PYrF8ay2_34TLKbvLd9reEiLMxH_M_E36V9luQIa-1c2t0l2NMxB3JvRFPNaHvwp1BPGhWxg/s1200/football%20field%20cloak.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQgfkkfnWJ3s2vMszyeCscm49J11d4VCmhnOomjnU805SQiEyh2Sg8qESNjnBunB4VLx4deDWe16G_fUAwPlszB6L_srJV4ITdG5N7-89VhFZu2WE6fl7PYrF8ay2_34TLKbvLd9reEiLMxH_M_E36V9luQIa-1c2t0l2NMxB3JvRFPNaHvwp1BPGhWxg/s320/football%20field%20cloak.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">Stalions and his agents, adorned in this cloak, were able to roam the sidelines undetected at eleven Big Ten stadiums.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Last week, I asked readers to submit their own Airport Thriller paragraphs about Connor Stalions. I'd like to thank everyone who wrote in, and here are their contributions, each of which I have titled.<br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Codes Blue, by noahcoffman22:</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ask anybody in Ann Arbor about Connor Stalions, and one of the first
things they'll tell you is that he's a man with a code. Right now, he
has several of them, actually, burning up the inside pocket of his
vintage leather jacket as he hightails it out of Piscataway. His Harley
squeals into a sharp left toward the New Jersey Turnpike, discarded milk
bottle (a present from "Big Jim" himself) clinking away behind him.
Slowly, he allows a smile to creep across his grizzled visage. Cupping
his custom earpiece, he mutters the only two words he needs for the man
on the other end to know the job has been done: "signs.....stolen." </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ooooo RAWR RAWR RAWR by Kermit Van Jensen</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">A naked bootleg is not unlike an amphibious landing. An operation drunk
with stupid courage, yet critically reliant on tactical deftness. Any
Marine, no matter how hard-headed, knows no feat of bravery can save a
botched landing. A forewarned defensive battalion will massacre an
amphibious force left with nowhere to run. <br /><br />This thought repulsed
Stalions, who now envisaged himself holed up in a pillbox, directing
perfectly sighted fire on his hapless brothers in arms. <br /><br />He shut his eyes, hard, and briefly pulled the binoculars away from his face. <br /><br />What he did see was a grad assistant in neon green wildly flailing both of his arms from a proud kneel.<br /><br />“This
shit makes me sick,” he muttered to himself, referring not only to
Northwestern’s offense, but also his own betrayal of the Corps’ values. <br /><br />“Semper Fi … Go Blue,” he sneered with sardonic cadence. <br /><br />“Doesn’t mean nothing to a grunt like me” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Spider Weaves Its Own Web: A Connor Stalions Novel by Joshua L.</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;">“You’re a long way from the Big 10,” Kiffin chuckled softly, almost wryly.<br /></span> <span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Under
other circumstances it might not have been an unfriendly sound, but
here—with a sixth consecutive Jaxson Dart bubble screen throw headed
directly toward Connor Stalions’s already bruised eight pack abs—it was
the very chorus of evil. “You wanted a look at our playbook, Mr.
Stalions,” the Ole Miss coach whispered from underneath his signature
white visor before leaning close to look directly into the flint-gray
eyes of Stalions, who remained bound firmly to the tackle dummy. <br /><br />“Well, you got it. Jaxson! bubble screen, strong side, hut!” <br /><br />Stalions
had trained for this. Bracing his abdominals for impact, he began
working the razor edge of Kiffin’s laminated play sheet, which he’d
lifted from the coach’s windbreaker just moments before, against his
bonds. Harbaugh had to know what Stalions had seen in Oxford. The world
had to know.</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Day of the Jackal 2: Different Day, Different Jackal by Anonymous</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ryan Day laughed.<br /><br />Operation Cheeseburger failed to turn public
support against the Enemy, but this would achieve that aim. Deep Punt
had come through with the needed intel. Now he just needed to get to the
drop site undetected and RonEnglishFanJS09 would finish the mission.<br /><br />He
knew that Stallions had cracked his publicly exposed signaling network
like the Allies had deciphered the Enigma Machine. That must be the only
reason they experienced setbacks; not their inability to block Aidan
Hutchinson. Now he would rectify this.<br /><br />Day knew that when Mike
Leach’s network was compromised, he arranged an elaborate ruse to
exploit his enemy’s assumed faulty intel. But the rogue pirate’s
tradecraft was flawed. Don’t plant false information to use against the
opposition. Complain to the teacher instead!<br /><br />He reached the spot.
Glancing around nonchalantly, Day reached into the back of his pants
and pulled out the laminated A0 play-card and finished the dead drop.
“Who is born on third base now?” he muttered as he walked into the cold
night. </span></blockquote><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">LOCK IN SUCCESS THE MIKE LOCKSLEY WAY<br /></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And when it ended, all Mike Locksley wanted from me was an explanation. I told him I was desperate and that I needed money. More than that, I wanted a shot-- I spent all day answering calls and turning people down on my boss's behalf as they tried to throw money and plaudits at him, but no one ever called and asked for me. He told me this was not a road to success the Mike Locksley way. I know, I said. I had read all about it in his papers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I had been working as the assistant for legendary sports personality ghostwriter Roddy Pfampfor about eight months. My novel, an experimental work about hypotheticals and the objectivity of "truth" that I explored by writing about something happening and then writing "or did it?" right after or sometimes in a footnote, had been rejected by 71 small presses, journals, quarterlies, websites and even some 'zines, and I had just been fired from a job proofreading manifestos. I got the job with Pfamp after seeing a bizarre ad for a "Literary Fetchman" in the print shop where I was picking up another copy of my manuscript that I was going to send to a publisher that specialized in vintage microwave owner's manuals. I learned that I was the only one who answered that ad, and soon I found myself at the right hand of Roddy Pfamp.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pfamp was not a household name, but most people encountered him at some point by picking up one of his ghostwritten memoirs. He written hundreds, including <i>The Hat Had It Coming</i> by Lou Piniella, <i>Bill Laimbeer's Combat Literature</i>, and <i>Climbing to the Majors: A Matt Stairs Story. </i>Pfamp was a ghostwriter's ghostwriter, always refusing credit and press. On any occasion where he had to be credited as an "as told to" or even a "with," he always used a different pen name; no one knew that <i>Losing to Win</i> by Matt Millen with Herb Nadacky was by the same author as <i>Winning to Lose</i> by Marv Levy as told to Larry "Gred" Gredsonof. Pfamp also refused to be photographed and wore elaborate disguises every time he met with an author in order to maintain his air of mystery.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pfamp needed an assistant because he had been seriously injured on his last assignment. No one knew that Pfamp had another secret career as the ghostwriter for the entire literary output of famed sportswriter Warren "Plaid" Blanton. Blanton had been a fixture in the sports press for decades, known for his outrageous participation stunts, his love for an exotic form of Flemish badminton, and his ever-present pipe. What no one knew was that everything under Blanton's byline was actually written by Roddy Pfamp. Blanton never wrote a word of his book <i>Fly Me To The Ground </i>chronicling his attempt to win a home-made flying contraption contest nor did he write the famous prank article where he invented a legendary baseball player named "Mickey Mantle," which bamboozled an entire generation of Baby Boomers. Blanton was a handsome man who sounded vaguely European despite having grown up entirely in the United States and who divided his time between the literary <span><span data-dobid="hdw">fête circuit </span></span>and by expounding from his book-lined study in documentaries about boxing, squash, joust injuries. The two had met when the they were covering a varsity squinting competition. Blanton was a young stringer for <i>Cudgel</i>, and the two of them essentially invented the Plaid Blanton persona over a drunken, weeks-long bacchanal that resulted in Pfamp ghostwriting Blanton's first "I Say" column and Blanton purchasing his first ascot. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pfamp's injury occurred when he was writing a book about Blanton secretly joining the new Slamball revival. What people didn't realize is that Pfamp also silently joined in these stunts, working alongside Blanton as a lion-tamer, monster jam driver, and competitor in the New England Maritime Salty Sea Dog competition. Pfamp felt he needed to join the Slamball league disguised as someone named Titus Slamballicus despite being 77 years old, and he instantly severed 70% of his leg ligaments on his first attempted slam.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was not particularly fun to work for Roddy Pfamp. I thought he would be full of interesting and colorful stories about the famous sports-men he met, but he was gruff and quick to anger. I'm not sure he ever learned my name. Instead he just called me "egghead" because of the remarkably round and admittedly somewhat bulbous shape of my skull. "You, Egghead, get me the 1959 Almanack of Yachting Winds," is something he might say. Or "How can I get it into your head to get no pulp orange juice? I'm speaking literally, how does anything penetrate that cranium?" I brought up my writing often and even left copies of my manuscript around in areas where he would normally read it but he became so agitated even seeing it that a doctor told me that I had to burn it in front of him or he might suffer from a rare condition common in old, mean writers called Literary Agita.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">My main job, aside from helping with the basic household tasks, was dealing with Pfamp's voluminous correspondence. Even in his ailing state, publishers bombarded him with requests. Sports personalities needed memoirs, magazine profiles, and apologies written on the notes app on their phones and posted to social media. I was told to turn them all down. I learned that this was Pfamp's preferred technique. He had not accepted a pitch for decades. Instead, the publishers and editors he preferred to work with and those who knew how to handle him all understood how to find him. Others who didn't know him thought they could win him over with elaborate gestures. One publisher, desperate to sign him onto an untitled Rony Seikaly project, sent over fourteen singing telegrams. Another disguised himself as a meter reader from the city in order to get an audience with Pfamp, who then chased him from his apartment with a game-used Mickey Morandini bat. Others sent elaborate meals, expensive liquor, blank checks. Every day, I sifted through a pile of proposals and sent pointed letters to them on Pfamp's letterhead telling them to buzz off.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I was tired, frustrated, and broke when I found a small packet buried under some papers. While Pfamp rejected all proposals on sight, he still read all of them in the off-chance something special caught his eye and also so he could ridicule the book when it was inevitably published by one of his many ghostwriter rivals. But he had not seen this one. It had gotten lost among his notes for an abandoned project called <i>A Life In Fifteen Shoves</i> by Charles Oakley that ended in a shoving match. The packet held a proposal for a book to be titled <i>Lock In Success</i>, a life advice manual from a fellow named Mike Locksley. The offer was a truly astronomical sum. I began to get an idea.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Because of his elaborate disguise regimen and reclusive personal life, almost no one knew what Roddy Pfamp actually looked like. I could easily present myself to this Locksley, write down his Business Secrets from sports, and produce a book very quickly. The money would allow me to quit this job and tell Pfamp where to cram it while knowing that my giant head had outwitted him and then self-publish my masterpiece and even market it to the discerning literary public at various high society functions. It was a scheme so devious and simple that I chuckled to myself when I first game up with it. I wrote the publisher and told them that Roddy Pfamp accepted and then detailed instructions for payment to his assistant who handles those sorts of things for him as he was too busy to get bogged down in the details of business (unlike Mike Locksley, I presumed).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I figured that Locksley would appreciate a punctual man, but I my planned subterfuge to get several hours away from Pfamp had not worked. He had a difficult time getting his VCR to work and he wanted to watch an old Olympic fencing match from 1984 to heckle the participants, but the tape was old and worn and Pfamp kept telling me I was causing "cranial interference" so by the time I was able to pry myself from him and get to Locksley's hotel room, I was nearly an hour late. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike Locksley, I learned, is not a man you want to keep waiting. He is detailed and precise and busy. I knew from previous research that he was a football coach, and that implied to me a certain type of disciplinary fetish. I told him I had been detained by car problems and began inventing an elaborate story about a zoo truck that had unleashed two or three irate rhinoceros on the main highway. "Let me tell you what Nick Saban used to say about excuses," he said. I took it that Nick Saban was some sort of football personality that I should know about. "The minute you give me an excuse, you excuse yourself from consideration." He stared at me and then smiled, so I let out a nervous chuckle as if to say yes that is something Nick Saban would say. "Well you made it here, let's see if we can work together."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He handed me a a sheaf of papers. It was an outline based on some motivational seminars he had been given, some anecdotes, life lessons, etc. that would form the basis of the book. <i>Lock in Success,</i> they were called. There were a lot of football metaphors. This was a problem. Though I worked for a major sportswriter, I had no interest or knowledge of any sort of sport or sporting pursuit. I despised them and saw them as grunting circuses for troglodytes. I had no working knowledge of football whatsoever. I suppose, in my excitement for the scheme, I had not ever considered that ghostwriting for a football coach might at some point require learning about football. Locksley told me to look over the materials and come back in a week with a few samples so we could see if we were on the same page. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">On the way home, I started to read. "When life gives you fourth and inches, don't punt." I was lost. I tried to subtly get Pfamp to explain football to me, every time I brought it up he said "You, Egghead. You're blocking the afternoon sun. Move that melon of yours before I freeze." I even tried to research football at the local library, but a quick glance at some books made everything seem even more complicated. The deadline loomed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was four AM and I had consumed several bags of coffee at the time (I had lost my coffee pot in an ill-fated night of gambling with my old peers at an experimental writing workshop that I eventually left after exposing them all as charlatans and at this time I was simply chewing the beans). I was set to meet Locksley in only two days. It was impossible to ask for an extension because that would be a dreaded excuse. I began looking at the pages again, my eyes barely able to focus, when I had a brilliant idea, one so simple yet ingenious that I could not believe it did not strike me earlier. I would simply make up football. A parallel system that had its own equally confounding jargon and terminology. Because Locksley was a master coach and technician, the lay reader would only assume he was talking about stratagems so complex and diabolical that he or she could not grasp it and would simply skim through it to get to the valuable life lessons.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I began writing. Now, instead of facing something called fourth and short, which I imagined to be some sort of adverse position, the quartered-back would be cowering in Strife Position (as a writer, I could not simply holster my literary weapons altogether). I assumed one of the appeals of football was its violence and mayhem so I wrote many anecdotes about football players fighting out of dire circumstances by kicking and biting the opposition. In fact, I enjoyed the concept of sports-biting so much that I invented a designated chomper-back, a strong-jawed specialist who would be lowered onto the field in a cage and then left to set upon anyone in his path with savage abandon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I became so taken with my own version of football that I quickly abandoned Locksley's materials to elaborate on the astonishing game that flowed from my pen. Once every thirteen minutes, the visiting team may legally perform a Reverse Oxen. During the fourteenth period, players may craft artificial limbs to attach to themselves including tails, claws, mandibles, and fins. In certain conditions, the coach can call for the game to take place entirely within a body of water where both teams must attack each other on skiffs. There are times when the ball was illegal but it was only possible to figure it out by deciphering an elaborate riddle. Points are awarded in lengthy arbitration hearings. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I was very excited to present my new vision of football to Locksley. As a discerning sportsman, I figured he would easily see the superior qualities of my version of the sport and become an ardent promoter. This is not what happened. Locksley was perplexed. "This was a very simple assignment. I did almost all of the work. I know people respond to these life lessons packaged with football because I did these presentation to literally thousands of people. It's as if you have no idea what you're doing whatsoever." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I decided to switch tactics. I told him that I ghostwrote for a lot of people in a lot of sports. It would be too easy to get mixed up. For example, what if I was writing a memoir about a tennis player and then a swimmer and pretty soon I had the tennis player doing laps at Roland Garros? He frowned. I explained that in order to clear my head in between projects I practiced a mental technique called "shamanic forgetting" where I would attempt to completely rid myself of all information about one sport. I had just done a baseball book, and had completely cleared it out of my head. "I could not tell you a batsman from a quickjobber," I said. He continued to frown and stare. He said "I'm sorry but you seem like you are really full of shit."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I apologized and confessed to the ruse, telling him of my desperation for money and literary fame. This did not move him. Another excuse. This time he didn't laugh. I was ruined and humiliated. Locksley would get word back to the publisher and, though I controlled most communications with Pfamp from the outside world, the ghostwriting community was a small world, and someone would quickly tell him what I had done. I could not face the browbeating. I simply stopped going to Pfamp's house with no explanation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Several months later, I was walking past the bookstore when something caught my eye. <i>Lock In Success</i>. Dozens of copies of it in the window. The sign said "best-seller" and "top book for 45 weeks in the Life Advice With Football Metaphors genre. I ran in and grabbed it. In small print, it said "with Reginald Ox." I knew it immediately. It was a Pfamp. <br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-85086432168537231062023-10-21T11:55:00.001-05:002023-10-21T11:56:22.646-05:00The Matt Rhules: A Guide to Success on the Football Field and in Life<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern emerges from its bye week looking like something nearly impossible to imagine at the beginning of the season: a normal sort of crummy Big Ten West team. The last two games were about sweat. They managed to possibly hospitalize several Penn State fans by taking a 10-10 tie to halftime before the Nittany Lions decided they actually needed to play football in the second half and easily finish the game. Then they made their own fans sweat a fourth quarter comeback in a game against Howard that they controlled for most of the proceedings before managing to hold on to a 23-20 victory. <br /><br />The Wildcats are 3-3 and the Big Ten West is putrid. In its final year, the greatest division in the history of college football is going out in a blaze of glory with its teams all playing disgusting toilet football distilling a decade of Big Ten West play to its appalling essence. The division's standard-bearer is Iowa, a team whose unwillingness to score points or even move the ball has gone from mere circumstance to a program-wide contempt. Kirk Ferentz has ascended to his obsidian throne over Iowa City throwing out anyone who even dares to suggest they attempt flashy plays like running up the middle or falling forward. Anyone who suggests throwing a ball is immediately thrown in his pit where they can only hold off ravenous jackals by throwing loose stones at them. "If they love passing so much, let them pass," Ferentz says as another graduate assistant is dragged away into the Passing Pit when the Ferentz private guard discovers that he has secreted a play sheet containing a simple five yard out in his quarters.</span></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj677hRA6VOMT4PBXlDYLs50JymZDryzABFGr7b2Hce0GRTEkZ3OxUdVTaI89vN4Tm4bzUSn1LfNuSWlumkjjXwdOro0Qax_V8W-i10cDzRefw7Rxxu8GzGAjfwviZ3BWtrdI-EyaKsFV_mPJopCJODv02ERYuhbsCuZnNw9rw4lvKQHYcOHriVbX1gZXI/s1200/kirk%20ferentz.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj677hRA6VOMT4PBXlDYLs50JymZDryzABFGr7b2Hce0GRTEkZ3OxUdVTaI89vN4Tm4bzUSn1LfNuSWlumkjjXwdOro0Qax_V8W-i10cDzRefw7Rxxu8GzGAjfwviZ3BWtrdI-EyaKsFV_mPJopCJODv02ERYuhbsCuZnNw9rw4lvKQHYcOHriVbX1gZXI/s320/kirk%20ferentz.jpg" /></a><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Someone has called a play that gains more than four yards</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />It has taken the fall of the Big Ten West from mild joke to national disgrace to open up a possibility I had thought impossible. In a division this bad, Northwestern could possibly make a bowl game. It will not be easy-- as gnarly as the Big Ten West is, the Wildcats will remain heavy underdogs in every game they play this season. But, while it might be at the fanciful end of things, it is no longer impossible to imagine them somehow beating teams like Nebraska, Illinois, and Purdue because those teams are also shitty. It is equally likely that they end the season stuck on three wins. But at the very least they are likely to scare one of these other crappy, flawed outfits and terrify their fans into at least temporary belief that they can lose to this disgraced wreck of a program.<br /><br />This week, Northwestern travels to Lincoln <a href="http://bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com/2023/09/on-american-soil.html">on American Soil</a> to take on a mediocre Nebraska team. Nebraska seeks revenge after Northwestern defeated them in Ireland to tally the team's sole win in 2022 in a bacchanal of touchdowns and free beer. Things are different now. The Huskers are no longer under Scott Vomit and his disastrous puke-forward regime. Instead, they hired recent NFL washout Matt Rhule to try to once again salvage a Nebraska program that has been fatally infected with Big Ten West and will never rise to its once-great heights. On paper, the Huskers are a much better team and are heavily favored. But somehow, this game tends to sink to its own level; the Northwestern-Nebraska game usually turns into a weirdly close game designed to infuriate Nebraska fans. <br /><br />One thing the Wildcats bring into the game is quarterback uncertainty. Ben Bryant, who engineered Northwestern's brilliant comeback against Minnesota, got injured in the Penn State game and will not play today. The 'Cats will turn to Brendan Sullivan, who started the Howard game, but also have Ryan Hilinksy, who threw for 314 yards against the Huskers last year and Jack Lausch, a quarterback that Mike Bajakian likes to put in for obvious running situations and Bajakian's beloved gadget plays that instantly fail like when the defense calls the right play in Tecmo Bowl. Perhaps they can confuse the Huskers by putting them all on the field at the same time in a beguiling intrigue.<br /><br /><b>BEGUILING INTRIGUE</b><br /><br />This week in football tradecraft news, it appears that the NCAA is after Jim Harbaugh again. Harbaugh, who already served a suspension this season for Hamburger Crimes is now being accused by the NCAA of running an "elaborate" sign stealing operation where one of his assistants allegedly deciphered all of those dumb looking dorm room posters of Tyler Durden or whatever and walk-on quarterbacks on the sidelines making the Mr. Burns Baseball Signs in order to figure out opponents' plays. </span><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7LM8NakCHUw0gsSTa-GLDjrlBLLtx_a_yZngtKd5DBPXyxLwPy19akK1kD2l8RASQbDOO_aubhe3HiOEHK6iFhFmHIF5tH9LBCFHrEJiwSTOwQbuyyovJRUUSx1cZB1ZPxZjiJg9P7wPQJvbe1DaXyQ8hEZbapl1DFumLELIl8FLi5kpT8DXYWlAV9kc/s400/mr%20burns%20softball.gif"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7LM8NakCHUw0gsSTa-GLDjrlBLLtx_a_yZngtKd5DBPXyxLwPy19akK1kD2l8RASQbDOO_aubhe3HiOEHK6iFhFmHIF5tH9LBCFHrEJiwSTOwQbuyyovJRUUSx1cZB1ZPxZjiJg9P7wPQJvbe1DaXyQ8hEZbapl1DFumLELIl8FLi5kpT8DXYWlAV9kc/s320/mr%20burns%20softball.gif" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">The current state of the art NCAA play relay system <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like all NCAA crimes, this is an obviously stupid thing to investigate and seems like death throes of an organization that no longer has any power now that it is legal for car dealers to give burlap sacks full of cash to football players in the light of day, but it is also true that it is funny that it is happening to Jim Harbaugh because I find him personally very annoying.</span></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrm02ooJhyphenhyphen6oGkkLS8K3SXgIJEEFyQJue1ZlacfPQ1yExwTbVMkWxUsr2tNEFQHooCwbxHePRxVEei6WVnJB1T-MixqwP2D60YlxJngn9sm3FXnX6tmlNTKaZdo6NJ2XRRC2q6XvdUGtSYET-3ecBBnWGjxkzSCjtRqGH9_BaX-vf2052daXYOR8byTow/s1280/harbaugh%20tantrum.jpg"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrm02ooJhyphenhyphen6oGkkLS8K3SXgIJEEFyQJue1ZlacfPQ1yExwTbVMkWxUsr2tNEFQHooCwbxHePRxVEei6WVnJB1T-MixqwP2D60YlxJngn9sm3FXnX6tmlNTKaZdo6NJ2XRRC2q6XvdUGtSYET-3ecBBnWGjxkzSCjtRqGH9_BaX-vf2052daXYOR8byTow/w400-h225/harbaugh%20tantrum.jpg" width="400" /></a><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Now that I know that Jim Harbaugh was doing Illegal Cheating, I have a satisfying explanation on how he was able to defeat the 2021 Northwestern Wildcats.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />The most relevant fact for readers of this blog is that the alleged sign-stealing perpetrator is a Military Man named Connor Stalions. As this blog devolves into an outlet for forcing readers interested in Northwestern football to indulge in my obsession with writing terrible airport thrillers, I should note that the only thing I have been thinking about in college football all day has been the concept of "A Connor Stalions Novel."<br /><br /><i>Connor Stalions was a man of few words. He only let two things do his talking-- his satellite images of Rutgers's third down packages, and his fists.<br /><br />The Rutgers secret play vault was big, several feet thick containing big plans and big ideas. But Michigan had something bigger: Connor Stalions. </i><br /><br />I can only think of one thing to do with this: <b>The Connor Stalions Airport Thriller Paragraph Challenge.</b> Please drop your paragraph of <i>Operation Disguised Coverage: A Connor Stalions Novel</i> in the comments below or email it to me (no more than 150 words) with your name or handle or however you want to be identified, and I'll put my favorites in a future post. Now here's a 2,500 story about Matt Rhule.<br /><br /><b>THE MATT RHULES: A GUIDE TO SUCCESS ON THE FOOTBALL FIELD AND IN LIFE</b><br /><br />Nobody who leaves wants to return to sportswriting, but the profession has a way of grabbing you and never letting you escape. I had never been particularly interested in the genre, but after one of my freelance pieces entitled “John Daly Has Gout” gained traction, I found myself on the sports interview circuit. “Rod Beck picks baked beans out of his mustache,” I wrote in my lede about sitting with the reliever in his trailer outside the Iowa Cubs ballpark. “Jeff George slices up a steak the same way he slices a defense.” That sort of thing. I signed up for the pro bocce ball circuit. I tried to stop a Greg Ostertag slap shot. In one terrifying evening, I gambled on demolition derby at the Grenlee County Fair with Phil Mickelson and we ended up fleeing for our lives from a father and son team driving a half-totaled Chrysler Imperial that attempted to ram us because Michelson owed them forty grand that he didn’t have because he lost it all on the horse game. And then I stopped.<br /><br />After a few decades, I lost my interest in sports personalities. Sure, every once in awhile I would get kicked in the genitals by a UFC fighter or get bitten by a professional biting coach that in order to critique Mike Tyson’s technique, but for the most part it was boring dinners with boring people. “Troy Aikman orders the Chicken Kiev.” “Bill Wennington buys his own McDonald's sandwich.” Etc. So I left the magazine and transitioned to novels. Here, I was not bound to what athletes said and did but could finally play in the greatest and most exhilarating literary space imaginable– my own imagination. <br /><br />It took months of research and exploring my own psyche– I abandoned my family for six months to take a bevy of mind-expanding psychedelics derived from wildflowers and cacti– and fits and starts of experimentation before finally releasing my masterpiece called <i>Charlatan-In-Chief: Operation Hole In One: A Clark Craggler Novel.</i> The book was a mixture of roman á clef, autofiction, magical realism, and thriller about how distinguished sportswriter Clark Craggler, who is also secretly an operative with an élite government intelligence unit where its members are deployed as civilians until “activated” by their mysterious boss known only as “Magma” in dire national emergency situations. Craggler goes from writing a tiresome feature on a star quarterback’s dreadful diet regimen to stop a catastrophe: catching the sitting president repeatedly cheating at golf. His job is to write an exposé of the president taking too many mulligans and generously giving himself lays and even altering the scorecard, which would be designed to trigger a congressional investigation, but while investigating him, he gets tied up in a sinister presidential plot to destroy the country’s golf courses with a piece of secret military technology that instantly divots acres of pristine greens from low-earth orbit.<br /><br />Unfortunately, <i>Charlatan-In-Chief: Operation Hole In One: A Clark Craggler Novel</i> was not the critical and commercial darling I hoped it would be. Reviewers savaged it. One called it a “masturbatory doofus fantasia.” Another had the headline “Hole In One” but the art on the article was a picture of a toilet. The New York Times didn’t even review it, not even a capsule. It was my first book not to make it onto the bestseller list after I had easily done it with S<i>peaking Franch: Dennis Franchione In His Own Words</i> and even <i>Of Weis and Men: Charlie Weis on Leadership on the Gridiron and the Boardroom.</i> My publishers told me in no uncertain terms that Clark Craggler would not return for the sequel<i> Charlatan-in-Jail.</i> If I ever wanted to make money writing again, I’d have to start interviewing sports people again.<br /><br />It was a soggy, muggy summer day in Lincoln, Nebraska. I pulled up to the elaborate practice facility and a public relations person took me over to Matt Rhule’s office. When I walked in, there was no one in his chair, so I said “Coach Rhule?” He popped up from behind a massive desk and whipped a little foam football-shaped stress ball at my face.<br /><br />“Think fast!” Rhule yelled as it knocked my glasses askew and nearly made me drop my pen. I looked up, confused and vaguely dazed.<br /><br />“That’s a Matt Rule,” the coach said. “Number thirteen. If you can’t think fast, you’ll be slow, in life.” He sat down and put his hands behind his head. “That’s the book right there. Matt Rhules. Branding. Writes itself. Have a seat.” </span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The PR assistant pulled down a screen and started fussing with a computer and then I saw the presentation come up: The Matt Rhules: A Guide to Success on the Football Field and in Life. <br /><br />“The Matt Rhules System. We provide these rules and then some examples from my life or from Nebraska football and how they apply to people’s lives. For example, Matt Rhule: Protect Your Quarterback.” The presentation showed a picture of an offensive tackle pancaking a blitzing linebacker. “In football terms, it’s the most important part of the passing game. But people have people in their lives around them that are important. Their 'quarterbacks' if you will. And you need to stop them from getting blitzed by Issues.”<br /><br />The next slide clicked over to a black and white picture of Coach Rhule pointing aggressively. “Matt Rhule: Don’t let your mouth cash checks your body can’t cash.”<br /><br />“You get it, right? We’re going to do a whole book with these Matt Rhules. It’s branded content. That's where the money is.” He handed me a tote bag that has “Matt Rhules” spelled out in training tape stuck to it. “These are just a prototype. Once we get published and up and running, we’ll have it all: shirts, bags, fuck even diapers. Matt Rhule: Don’t shit on me.” He looked at me as I stared at him, bewildered. “That’s a joke. That’s a fake Matt Rhule.”<br /><br />“Well, that's the pitch,” he said. “I’ve got some rules. You’ve got to tie them together. Get them from football to apply to people’s lives or whatever. Publisher said you do this stuff all the time.”<br /><br />I tried hard to hide how aghast I was at this comparison. Sure there were some superficial similarities to this and <i>James Dolan: Six Chords to Success</i> but those ignored the obvious literary merit of that project where I explored the craft of songwriting and owning one's one fleet of helicopters. But then I remembered that I had a time share payment and a lease on a Sea-Doo that I purchased from David Cone, so I swallowed my pride. “Yes. I work with famous sports personalities and help put their vision on the page.”<br /><br />“Perfect,” he said, clapping his hands. “We all have our talents. Here’s a Matt Rhule: From Each According to His Ability, To Each According To His Means.” <br /><br />“Isn’t that Karl Marx?” I said.<br /><br />“Then fix it up and make it a Matt Rhule. It's not that hard.” He handed me a thumb drive. "Get started and I’ll see you in a week.”<br /><br />I drove off into the rain to my Lincoln hotel. It looked like I would be here for awhile.<br /><br />The thumb drive contained the presentation I just saw (Rhule referred to it as a “deck” for some reason) and a nearly inscrutable word document containing various Matt Rhules or at least jumbles of phrases that I was supposed to shape into coherent Matt Rhules. The rest of the files were various samples of logos and an MP3 of a Matt Rhule theme song that he had made himself, affecting a sort of James Dolanish growl-croon. <br /><br />Several of the files contained short videos of Rhule whipping his head around to stare at the camera. “Matt Rhule,” he says in one of them. “Give it your all or give it up.” Then there is a short guitar riff as he nods at the camera. That one was not included in the text list. I start to divide them between Canonical Matt Rhules and Supplemental Matt Rhules.<br /><br />Day two. I woke up in my Lincoln hotel and for several brief seconds I had no idea what I was doing there (I had dreamed that was giving a talk about my new novel to a large panel except in the dream it was called <i>Air Fraud One: A Harold Chuck Novel</i> and it was about how the president was somehow concealing being a bear from the public and was going to eat too many salmon. I was laying into a person who I immediately understood as being my sworn literary nemesis by I think also accusing him of being secretly a bear when the nature of my trip to Lincoln came into depressing focus. <br /><br />For hours I stared at the Matt Rhules until the bleakness of my job overwhelmed me. I could not for the life of me come up with new Matt Rules, and it was nearly impossible to write stories based on the ones he had. “Matt Rhule: Always try to win, in football and in business.” Instead, I started daydreaming where instead of Matt Rhule winning on the football field, it was Clark Craggler defiantly laying out the president’s Golf Crimes to a congressional subcommittee. That was what winning looked like in life and in literature. But Craggler had been crushed, much like how the Carolina Panthers were crushed by the San Francisco 49ers resulting in Rhule’s ouster from the NFL.<br /><br />I could not sleep at night and I decided to find something to eat. I got in my car and began aimlessly driving around. Soon, I had left Lincoln altogether. Something compelled me to keep moving. I drove for hours and hours. There was no radio, no music, nothing but the sound of the car and the road and the sight of my haunted eyes in the reflection of the windows,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The sun rose. I found myself at the outskirts of a park, a federal wilderness area. I left my car and hiked for hours, deeper and deeper into an unmarked wilderness. Finally, exhausted, I stopped and opened my backpack. There it was. Wrapped in some foil, the last of my iboga root that I had bought on a retreat from what I was told would be a shaman but turned out to be a man named Daryl who I later learned was on the run from the FBI for a crime described to me as “dojo fraud.” I prepared the powder and ate a few starburst that were in there as well.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The forest floor dropped from under me and I began to float through a miasma of consciousness, not just mine but the very concept of human consciousness. It is very difficult for me to describe in words what happened to me on this journey but I entered a mental plane beyond sanity and beyond the bonds of this physical world and, just as I thought I would never return and be forced to float forever in a cosmic goo, I remembered the Matt Rhules. Matt Rhule: I am bound by the laws of the corporeal. I awoke days later from my psychadelic odyssey. My legs ached as if I had walked for miles, but I had not moved from that spot. I gingerly made my way back to the car and drove back toward Lincoln, stopping only to record any thoughts on the Matt Rhules that materialized in the shimmers of empty highway. It had come to me out there in the wilderness– the Matt Rhules were not a simple marketing gimmick for a football coach, but this goateed oaf had somehow stumbled onto the central organizing principle of life itself. <br /><br />I arrived back at the hotel. It was no longer enough to think of myself as a literary superstar, but I was now a sort of holy man, a person put on earth to explain the precepts of the Matt Rhules. For the rest of the week, I fell into a feverish trance as I made elaborate notes, wrote hundreds of pages, and added compendia and appendices to the original Matt Rhules. Matt Rhule: Do not try to “fold” space time into a single locus, instead try to “layer” it. Matt Rhule: My brain is merely a vessel for cosmic static. Matt Rhule: Organization and preparation will score a “touchdown” for the football team or for your small business.<br /><br />At last, I felt I had something to present to the Coach. I piled up my manuscript, which I had moved from the computer to a series of coffee filters loosely stapled to together in pleasing geometric patterns and put on my “Rhunic,” a tunic fashioned from hotel bedsheets and left for the practice facility. No one wanted to let me in when I told them I had urgent business to disseminate the teachings of Coach Rhule to the wider cosmos but then when I reminded them I was the book guy they finally let me in.<br /><br />“Coach,” I said. “I have sat in the forest. I have opened my forehead. I have let the Rhules seep into my primary consciousness and beyond-thought. I am ready to accept them. I am ready to adopt them. I am ready to show people how to apply them on the football field and in the boardroom.” I dropped my coffee filter manifesto on his desk. <br /><br />“What the heck are you talking about?” Rhule said as he turned to me (he was looking at emails during most of my speech). “Oh that Matt Rhules thing. Yeah, I thought about it and it seems kind of cheesy. Kind of obvious, you know?”<br /><br />“Hey, you know what I was thinking now would be really cool? Instead of a book telling people what to do, what if it was a novel where I caught the commissioner of the NFL cheating at golf? <i>The Commissioner of Lies</i>, how about that? A Mack Racker novel. You ever think about writing something like that?”<br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-83006803433604535742023-09-30T10:20:00.000-05:002023-09-30T10:20:05.209-05:00Northwestern Won a Second Game<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It sure did not look like Northwestern would win a Big Ten game this season, and the Wildcats did little to dispel that notion as they headed into the fourth quarter down 31-10 in a bleak and abandoned Ryan Field. But college football is a sport with a healthy respect for the absurd, for college students doing the unexpected, and for control freak coaches who spend seventeen hours a day planning every phase of the game to be left sputtering into their special Coach Walkie Talkies as the game slips away. The win was so improbable that the Chicago Tribune was unable to get it into print the next day.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">If <a href="https://twitter.com/NUFBFamily?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NUFBFamily</a> doesn't photograph David Braun holding this aloft at Union Station by the end of the day, then what are we even doing here, <a href="https://twitter.com/BYCTOM?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BYCTOM</a> <a href="https://t.co/P8zJIqDQth">pic.twitter.com/P8zJIqDQth</a></p>— Off Tackle Empire (@offtackleempire) <a href="https://twitter.com/offtackleempire/status/1705978923815764308?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 24, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern's fourth-quarter comeback is one of the craziest in recent memory. The Gophers had no answer for Ben Bryant and Bryce Kirtz, who reminded me of Austin Carr, constantly open. For such a big comeback, Northwestern did force a significant turnover or have a big special teams touchdown or anything like that. Instead, it was P.J. Fleck standing on the sidelines reciting incantations from the Acronymicon in order to get his defense to actually get a stop. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWz94_oKcvXd84l90ZjuMQXAyTYbKxUJKd-mS_hokPxRHU6h0UBftfAviD3P7g9OOW-Eu57EBG8My4Vzv48VhMKXKeE9oDLL43BIbgBindXIEw3Cm3z5QwMUWvujBzizaVgxfEQOE0phDxSpKVh-qMBfdHJ1ZWV3WlmliehehTCLr8kVC1xVyT2n7FpQE/s900/pj%20fleck.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWz94_oKcvXd84l90ZjuMQXAyTYbKxUJKd-mS_hokPxRHU6h0UBftfAviD3P7g9OOW-Eu57EBG8My4Vzv48VhMKXKeE9oDLL43BIbgBindXIEw3Cm3z5QwMUWvujBzizaVgxfEQOE0phDxSpKVh-qMBfdHJ1ZWV3WlmliehehTCLr8kVC1xVyT2n7FpQE/s320/pj%20fleck.jpg" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fleck screams F.O.C.U.S. at his players and then what each letter stands for but accidentally says Smart instead of Steady and the confused players allowed Northwestern to score 21 consecutive points in 15 minutes.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The major play of note involved a Minnesota player in perfect position to down a punt on the one-yard line losing track of his position on the field and downing it in the endzone, giving the 'Cats a shorter field on their minute-long final drive to tie the game. Some Minnesota fans complained that Ryan Field does not have a painted endzone, but simply a line and some grass, and because of that, it was extremely unfair and should be illegal and I think we can all agree that that is the funniest possible reaction to that play. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7z4VPCV5U1BPxK8ldx47fBa4h9JpxRx-IHAfLKIU-GKE3N6UMRdkemxOPRe5Fv4NTE1wNQNiPyJtJPRLTNrM-jqHzfnni7DcXfbEOS3b1UWwYtPDd_tRd2uD6CFWRFb6PtvCeceiFNk1C06h_6gsdaVt6-i8U3j6JnX9lbSUlIKTg8HGLkCyFgUfPpUM/s600/northwestern%20endzone.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7z4VPCV5U1BPxK8ldx47fBa4h9JpxRx-IHAfLKIU-GKE3N6UMRdkemxOPRe5Fv4NTE1wNQNiPyJtJPRLTNrM-jqHzfnni7DcXfbEOS3b1UWwYtPDd_tRd2uD6CFWRFb6PtvCeceiFNk1C06h_6gsdaVt6-i8U3j6JnX9lbSUlIKTg8HGLkCyFgUfPpUM/s320/northwestern%20endzone.jpg" /></a> <br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Northwestern's nefarious endzone is just one of the diabolical traps designed to bamboozle opposing players who have to deal with Roar Ear and Tarp Blindness </span> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The win certainly seemed to matter a lot for players, a few of whom appeared to be in tears after the winning touchdown. David Braun appeared choked up in his postgame interview. For players, it seems that the win provided catharsis after an ugly, turbulent offseason. Yet, it is difficult to forget the reason why there was so much chaos in the program. The few students who stayed through what looked for most of the night like a humdrum asskicking rushed the field. For others, I imagine it is difficult for them to find anything worth celebrating on the football field this year.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now, the Wildcats will host juggernaut Penn State. The Nittany Lions are ranked sixth in the country and are one of the very few Big Ten teams that hopes to have a shot at breaking the Michigan/Ohio State duopoly. Coach James Franklin is taking no chances, apparently having his team practice in silence in order to simulate the effect of playing in whisper-quiet Ryan Field. Once again, the Wildcats are heavy underdogs. They've proved they are at least as good as the bottom of the Big Ten West this season, which is frankly a surprise for me, but Penn State is an entirely different animal.</span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">ROAR FROM THE VALLEY: HOW LEADERS WIN THE WINNING WAY: A FRANK JACKMAN NOVEL</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I did not set out to become a ghostwriter for sports personalities, but when the publisher has you in purgatory, there’s almost nothing you won’t write in order to get out. You would be surprised to see which towering literary figures of the twentieth century produced worked in the ghostwriting mines; consider <i>You Are Not Loyal, Or A Man</i> by Pat Riley with Marv Grobott (long rumored to be a pseudonym for Don DeLillo) or <i>I Pity the Drool: The Dog Training Secrets of Mr. T</i> (an open secret that it was written and tested by Joyce Carol Oates, who was bitten dozens of times during research). I found myself in the crosshairs of the publisher after my novel <i>I Bet You Philistines Won’t Even Read This</i> and its followup <i>I Guess You Didn’t</i> were both released to deafening silence in the book press. I was crushed and fell into a months-long drugs-bender where I repeatedly claimed that I had written the book <i>Dubliners </i>and spent weeks affixing my name to every copy I could find with stickers. They banned me from 24 New York book stores and thirteen branches of the library. I genuinely thought I had produced the 1914 Irish masterpiece. “Jaysus,” I screamed as the city’s burliest galoots from Library Security worked me over in an alley.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I was told I would have to pay back my advance on my newest essay collection War Crimes and Cigarettes, but I had already spent it on a really cool jacket that had a picture of my face on the back, so I was in no position to fight my editor when he demanded that I write <i>Roar From the Valley: How Leaders Win the Winner’s Way</i>, for James Franklin, the coach of the Penn State football team. “Wait, isn’t that the…” I said, and my publisher said “Don’t bring it up.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I met Franklin at his spacious office in State College after a long and frustrating interpretative study of various parking restrictions.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Three minutes late,” Franklin said to me before I could even introduce myself. “We don’t lollygag here at Penn State. We run. You owe me three laps.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I laughed. I thought he was joking. He was not. “Three laps!” he said. “Of the office?” I replied. That’s when the whistle came out. He tooted at me as I took three halfhearted laps around his spacious office, coughing and sputtering since I had just finished about four cigarettes on the ride over and make it a point to refuse to exercise because of Art.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Franklin told me now that I’ve earned his time, and it was time to talk about his book. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“You know, I don’t want to just crap out another coach book about lessons for leadership and winning,” he said. Well, I did. I figured that I’d write a few thousand words about being in shorts and yelling at people and how it applied to The Boardroom and I’d be free to finish my essay about how I was sick of seeing this Pynchon guy everywhere, so when Franklin told me he wanted to get away from that idea, I started to get a little worried.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I think it would be better not to focus on me at all. Or at least not James Franklin, the man, the visionary, the leader, etc. Have you ever heard of myths and legends?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I told him I had.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I want to create something beyond myself. James Franklin is a bag of bones, blood, and flesh. But what if I could forge something larger than myself? What if I, if we, made something that could transcend time and space and would be a way to impart the things I have learned as a Coach, as a Leader and as a Man in a way that would go beyond football and live for eternity?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He got up from the desk and flipped over a whiteboard. On it, he had written the words “Frank Jackman.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Frank Jackman. FBI. CIA. An elite unit that no one has ever heard of. A man of action, thought, philosophy. A fighter. A lover.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He flipped over another whiteboard. It said <i>Roar From the Valley: How Leaders Win the Winner’s Way: A Frank Jackman Novel.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I need to know right now if you can do this or if you’re wasting my time.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Ok,” I said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Franklin was a busy man, so I fit into his schedule. I spent late nights in his office listening to him tell me Frank Jackman stories or in the film room as he shadowboxed against his imaginary antagonists, uually organized rings of thieves or street gangs that talked like they were in the 1950s. In the end, after several months, the book fell by the wayside. The publisher wanted the standard football coach book that could move units. He was not in the eternal myths business. I was almost relieved. I was already planning to work under the pseudonym Tad Craddler, which I had used previously to send abusive letters to the <i>Paris Review</i>, but I could tell Franklin was disappointed. So, with his permission, here are some selections from <i>Roar from the Valley: How Leaders Win The Winners Way: A Frank Jackman Novel.</i></span> </p><p><b style="font-family: georgia;">I.</b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Frank Jackman was not usually the biggest man in the fight, but he was always the last man. Jackman had studied every martial art you have ever heard of and several that you haven’t, but he didn’t often need them. First he would talk to the suspect. “There are 27 bones in the hand and wrist,” Jackman would say in a menacing growl-whisper, and then he would patiently explain how he would break each and every one of them. That was enough for all but the most determined henchman to lay down their wrenches and bo staffs and give themselves up. For the most obstinate, Jackman had to give a demonstration, a little presentation that he put together made up of punches and sometimes kicks.</span></p><p><b style="font-family: georgia;">II.</b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Frank Jackman was the greatest quarterback in the history of Pennsylvania high school football. He was also had three masters degrees in physics, forensics, and classics, and was the first person to own a street-legal ATV. By age 29, he headed up the FBI’s Motorcycle and Ninja Heists Division. His division head, Agent Lou Ryers, wanted to promote him to a desk job, but he refused. He had offers to join the CIA, where they would let him create his own elite unit and also the NSA, DIA, and ZIA, an organization so secret that no one knew it even existed. But Jackman stayed put. He had his team here, in the FBI, and he had a really cool apartment that was also a dojo and it would be an enormous hassle to move all of his swords.</span></p><p><b style="font-family: georgia;">III.</b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Only seven, Jackman? Must be getting old and slow,” Moose said after throwing a masked jewel thief into a trash compactor. Moose Pfuncher blocked for Jackman in high school and college and had joined the FBI with Jackman after graduation. That was a challenge. Moose was not built for books, and it took Jackman months of preparation to get him through his entrance exams. In the end, they rigged up an elaborate mirror and semafor system to get him through his final multiple choice test, but no one in the FBI would complain at the results. No one other than Jackman had ever beaten him in a fight, and Moose was also great at intimidating suspects into confession by biting things that absolutely should not be bitten into. Jackman also knew that Moose would take a bullet for him– in fact, he had, three times. Once in the leg, once the elbow, and once in the buttocks. Moose loved to guilt Jackman into doing things by wistfully pointing at his damaged butt, which is how the two of them briefly owned a karate-themed bar and grill until they got shut down by the city because troublemakers kept getting thrown through a jukebox.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A thief popped out behind Moose and prepared to hit him with a priceless antique hat rack, but Jackman threw an enormous diamond and hit him in the forehead, knocking him into a pile of subdued criminals. “That’s eight,” Jackman said.</span></p><p><b style="font-family: georgia;">IV.</b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Frank Jackman arrived at the scene. Everything was neat and clean. The glass cases were intact and undisturbed, yet he immediately ascertained that they were empty. The prize Jewels of Happy Valley seemed to have vanished. “Eddie what have you got?” he said. Eddie was straight from the academy, constantly writing in his notebook. You have to look up from that book and take a look with your eyes, is what Jackman always told him, but the kid was all right. “Clean as a whistle, Agent J,” Eddie said. The thieves had left not as much as a hair or clothing fiber at the scene. Jackman assessed the room, looking for marks. Anything subtle could be a tell. Once, he determined that a gang of thieves had used fake tracks to make it look like they had driven through the Louvre on motorcycles when they had simply descended from the ceiling, but Jackman had utilized his extensive knowledge of motocross to instantly tell they were not the type of tires that a real thief would use for a museum. The French government had wanted to hire him to to lead their entire art heist department at a time when thieves were hauling off Monets and Manets at a rate of dozens per week. “Non,” Jackman said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jackman analyzed the surroundings. “It doesn’t make sense, Agent J,” Eddie said. “It’s like they were never here.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Funny you say that, Eddie,” Jackman said, staring at an empty jewel case with a loup. “What I’m thinking is that it’s the jewels that were never here.” He took out his phone and called Walleye Baxton back at HQ. “Get me a list of every train carrying a jewel shipment to the Happy Valley Jewel Museum in the last six months,” he said. These weren’t art thieves, he determined. These were train robbers.</span></p><p><b style="font-family: georgia;">V.</b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jackman clung to the side of the train as it careened around a mountain curve going far too fast. He had managed to detach dozens of cars containing shale gas and now only the car with a crate carrying the Lion’s Fang jewel was attached to the engine. He steadied himself and climbed the ladder to the roof. And there they were: the perpetrators. One of the thieves one the roof was crawling toward the engine hoping to slow it down but kept getting knocked back by the wind. Jackman laughed as he got into a tactical crouch. This gang may have been made up of courageous and brilliant master thieves not afraid of committing cold-blooded murders, but they clearly were not versed in Train Combat. But Frank Jackman was. He was certified to fight on thirteen different types of train and one of those carts that you push up and down. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He quickly advanced on the fleeing thief and grabbed him. “Time to complete your training,” he said. That’s when the throwing star flew up and knocked the tiny sunglasses off of Jackman’s face. He immediately ascertained that there was another hostile on the train, directly in front of him, based on the trajectory and motion of the throwing star. He let the thief he was holding go and he yelped as he rolled across the roof of the train desperately looking for something to grab onto. Then he heard the throwing star thief yell over the roar of the wind and train engine. “It’s a pity you came all this way to die, Agent Frank Jackman.”<br /></span> </p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-29094440629438619272023-09-23T11:42:00.001-05:002023-09-23T11:47:01.835-05:00The P.J. Fleck Fiction Issue<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern came off the high of its commanding victory over UTEP, an important win that indicated that the Wildcats would be closer to normal bad this season rather than apocalyptically bad. The dozens of fans who were not put off by the program's futility <a href="https://bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com/2023/09/on-american-soil.html">"on American soil"</a> and the scandal that engulfed the program and several of the people who were all in charge when it happened and are still there defiantly standing tall against themselves got to finally celebrate a win at Ryan Field for the first time since 2021. But despite the excitement of vanquishing the UTEP Miners as a home underdog, most people understood they probably would not fare as well against a surging nationally-ranked Duke team, and they didn't.<br /><br /> I am not going to lie, I did not really watch any of this game. I could not because my home does not get the ACC Network, so I to reverted to my pre-cable days and enjoyed the sonorous voice of Mr. Cat Dave Eanet on WGN for a chunk of the first quarter listening to the sound of someone describing a festival of shanked punts. Here I feel the need to make a correction: while last week's post implied that the nobody in the Greater Chicagoland Metropolitan Area got ACC Network, people with certain ubiquitous TV streaming services apparently got it, and I spoke to numerous people with different services who were able to easily watch Northwestern shank punts in real time. Bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com apologizes for the error.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgliRWANjDfYtfaV09xEcLijb4u2j8sNudVll4q38Shblmkcl3usKYjCj4qsIiQKR7ujMM4U_14qCHguGD3A4lVcipVpcxhV6resRZqINv2JG1uiu6xox0PZOaTx34fo5TriJ6LP8hYG7qHgOw6EEQzUjAnnpEL4ThKOZLld04hrrUkQIGzcBhqQZoLkUQ/s1486/jim%20phillips.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgliRWANjDfYtfaV09xEcLijb4u2j8sNudVll4q38Shblmkcl3usKYjCj4qsIiQKR7ujMM4U_14qCHguGD3A4lVcipVpcxhV6resRZqINv2JG1uiu6xox0PZOaTx34fo5TriJ6LP8hYG7qHgOw6EEQzUjAnnpEL4ThKOZLld04hrrUkQIGzcBhqQZoLkUQ/s320/jim%20phillips.jpg" /></a></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hopefully this correction will prevent Jim Phillips from siccing his personal retinue of ACC goons to attack me for implying that the ACC Network is not available on multiple carriers in the Chicago area market if you want to watch Duke throw Northwestern into a port-a-potty in high definition</span><br /><br />This Saturday, Northwestern returns home to an inexplicable night game against Minnesota. I understand that Northwestern must play night games under the terms of its contract with the Big Ten Network and have been playing them more or less at random for years, but they used to almost never play them, so night games to me still feel like Big Games under the trucked-in lights. This one is not. Minnesota looks to be right in the Big Ten West Zone this season, squeaking by over Matt Rhule's Cornhuskers, bludgeoning Eastern Michigan, and then getting wiped out by a ranked UNC squad. But a middling West team should likely not be threatened by this year's Northwestern team. The Gophers are heavily favored, even if stalwarts Mohamed Ibrahim and Tanner Morgan have graduated after several decades of excellent play.<br /><br />The collapse of Northwestern's football program has conveniently lumped it in with the rest of this city's dilapidated sports scene. The Cubs, who looked poised to earn a wild card berth and get triumphantly swept out of the playoffs, instead suffered a series of embarrassing losses to some bad teams that put them squarely in the crosshairs of the Marlins, a team that has haunted them-- it remains one of the most underrated embarrassments for the Chicago Cubs, a team that is fueled by a history of failure and foundering, that they are continually bested by the Florida Marlins. The White Sox were numerically eliminated from the playoffs and Tony LaRussa has returned in some sort of consulting capacity as Reinsdorf's personal Baseball Rasputin. The Sky were sweatlessly escorted out of the WNBA playoffs by former Sky hero Candace Parker and the Las Vegas Aces.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">No Chicago team, however, managed to embarrass themselves more this week than the Chicago Bears. After an unsurprising but embarrassing defeat at the hands of the miserable Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Bears spent the week having football pundits making 45 minute videos of themselves talking where the thumbnail is them making the youtube googly-eyed open mouth face at Justin Fields about how the Bears' offense is the worst thing that has ever happened to the National Football League. On Wednesday, the day began with what appeared like a standard Bears day of press with Justin Fields upbraiding his incompetent coaching staff for being incompetent before claiming that he was taken out of context and actually both he and the coaching staff are incompetent. Then, defensive coordinator Alan Williams, who had missed the game for vaguely defined "personal reasons" abruptly resigned under mysterious circumstances that the Bears coaching staff, which already operates at a level of ridiculous Fake Military Secrecy that Pat Fitzgerald used to use when refusing to say who would be playing quarterback in the home opener against Northeastern Illinois Stage Beard and Mustache Institute, refused to elaborate on. </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdh0CE_S86m_M8VQPKov6L1ZaOriR_rBkJ7n9XLCU11FDBowM2QrSLwAM3Hw9Tf9NT3BkJ2vOTvhDS7BvNJ4XPwjtWkgynCBDGEUsPSyzbehp7UMONizMymL_yvtNmQGa1rS8FDJUvWd8bFx5yeX7CXo-4ffVX2zN7uWS6IVIpgTSi1IegprmhY4zBqyc/s937/Screenshot%202023-09-23%20110735.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdh0CE_S86m_M8VQPKov6L1ZaOriR_rBkJ7n9XLCU11FDBowM2QrSLwAM3Hw9Tf9NT3BkJ2vOTvhDS7BvNJ4XPwjtWkgynCBDGEUsPSyzbehp7UMONizMymL_yvtNmQGa1rS8FDJUvWd8bFx5yeX7CXo-4ffVX2zN7uWS6IVIpgTSi1IegprmhY4zBqyc/s320/Screenshot%202023-09-23%20110735.png" /></a></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Looking to see if maybe I could find a picture of a football player with an elaborately funny fake beard, I stumbled across this artifact from March 2020 where the <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/sport/football/premier-league/571349/how-cristiano-ronaldo-messi-and-co-will-look-with-bushy-beards-and-hair-after-months-of-coronavirus-quarantine/">entire article</a> was someone horrendously photoshopping beards on soccer players because of Covid lockdown, each one with a profoundly stupid caption, I cannot believe this still exists online.</span><br /><br />While this was going on, wild rumors began to circulate online about Williams. The rumors escalated to the point that random Bears youtube guys were somberly saying that Halas Hall had been raided by all of the hut hut hut guys from the end of the Blues Brothers and that Charles Tillman who is actually in real life an FBI agent was running barefoot through broken glass and shimmying through vents in order to catch Williams. Then the Bears circulated an odd resignation letter from Williams, and an attorney representing him called into a sports radio show to quash the wildest of rumors but also not say anything else. On the one hand, this information frenzy is the result of the insatiable demand for information now now now now on something that is not consequential-- Williams is a person almost no one who does not follow the Bears closely had ever heard of and his resignation from coordinating a bad defense for an awful football team is not a matter of national importance. If there is some terrible scandal here, it will certainly come out. On the other hand it is hard to imagine the Bears handling this situation in a weirder way.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0rdKapyBafoi0W-5PlkD7o4aH7_Z1PwgHdf3_yaenGZI5rQTIH_H6v8qBY0FY2RmwD-3lSKm23OlKcjDkTAU0T5nQA1ibheVz_GGLeoMfjOhBqHRTjGCz6cD2iF-hXVoDyx-3mq941q9otH7QlGhZ-PMACnDDvSCCZ4NTEmZr8fkMMIvWMBgG73XtM4/s972/Screenshot%202023-09-23%20105713.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0rdKapyBafoi0W-5PlkD7o4aH7_Z1PwgHdf3_yaenGZI5rQTIH_H6v8qBY0FY2RmwD-3lSKm23OlKcjDkTAU0T5nQA1ibheVz_GGLeoMfjOhBqHRTjGCz6cD2iF-hXVoDyx-3mq941q9otH7QlGhZ-PMACnDDvSCCZ4NTEmZr8fkMMIvWMBgG73XtM4/w400-h228/Screenshot%202023-09-23%20105713.png" /></a></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This clip might contain the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atks5rRqQkg">greatest set of captions</a> I've ever seen on a youtube video</span><br /><br />Sports fans in this city are looking down the barrel of a pretty bleak winter. Boo Buie will have to do some heavy lifting.<br /><br /><b> AN ACCOUNTING OF THE LITERARY EXPLOITS OF P.J. FLECK</b><br /><br />I first encountered P.J. Fleck through my publisher. I had gotten stuck after three years working on my novel, an autofictional account of the time I tried to return an ill-fitting sweater and how I felt it reflected on me in terms of masculinity, the self, the time I let out a massive fart during freshman English and even the teacher laughed at me and everyone called me Professor Rips Von Ass until I had to change school districts, and also Late Capitalism. The publisher was about to demand that I pay back my advance when they decided I could keep it if I took on a job ghostwriting <i>Boats and the Rowers That Row Them: A Guide to Winning, Life, and Staying Afloat</i> by P.J. Fleck, the head football coach at the University of Minnesota. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I do not follow sports at all, least of all football (an interesting fact about me is that I don’t own a television) and had no idea who this Fleck was or why he was writing a book about boats. Nevertheless, I was determined to try. I was in the midst of another divorce (one thing that kept derailing my autofictional memoir was that I had to keep adding ex-wives, although I combined the second and third into a single composite ex-wife), and was very close to losing my modest apartment and moving in with my other thrice-divorced writer friends onto Dirk’s houseboat. Besides, the agreement did not say anything about actually completing the book. I figured I would show up, let this Fleck character vomit off some incomprehensible hut-hut-hutsmanship gibberish, and then get dismissed by him as a hopeless football ignoramus. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I arrived at Fleck’s estate just outside Minneapolis. There was a nautical-looking gate and instead of a bell, you pulled a rope and blasted a ship’s horn across the subdivision (later, I was told that the battle between Fleck and the HOA lasted years with Fleck’s attorneys citing his first-amendment rights as well as several sections of maritime law). Fleck answered the door himself. His eyes were ringed and hooded, like he had not slept in weeks. I greeted him as “P.J.” and he told to please call him either “Coach” or “The Admiral.” I smiled and asked him if admirals regularly were concerned with row boats. “Don’t question me about boats in my own home,” he said. We were not off to a good start.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We went into an office. There were legal pads everywhere, and crumpled yellow sheets covered the floor like autumn leaves. One of the walls was covered in letters and numbers. In the middle, he had written the word “W.R.I.T.E.” I asked him about it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“That’s my writing process,” Fleck said. “WRITE. Waiting for ideas. Ruminating. Imagination. Torment. Editing. Got it?” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“That’s a pretty good summary,” I told him. I had been stuck on Torment for about eight months after scrapping three chapters where I zinged my third grade bullies with a series of witticisms that my editor discovered that I had borrowed from a website called rejoinders.info. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I asked Coach Fleck how he envisioned the book. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “The first thing people have to have in order to succeed is vision.” What sort of vision?" I asked. “Vital. Integrity. Smart. Intelligent. Omnivorous. Now.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Oh, ok,” I said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It turns out that Fleck had a lot of these acronyms and motivational sayings that he believed were the key to succeeding at life the P.J. Fleck way. He was constantly throwing them out and then explaining them to me: T.O.T.A.L.; E.F.F.O.R.T.; V.A.S.T.N.E.S.S.; M.I.Z.Z.E.N.M.A.S.T. Eventually I said to him I think that those are great, but what can you tell me about yourself, about your life. “Oh, you’re one of those,” he said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He dug under the pile of notebooks and pulled out a manuscript held together by a binder clip and there it was: an outline of the highlights in the life of one Pteranodon J. Fleck (his actual name). It turns out I was not the first to try to ghostwrite <i>Boats and the Rowers That Row Them: A Guide to Winning, Life, and Staying Afloat.</i> Thirteen others had tried. Six left after two hours of acronyms. Two quit later. Fleck dismissed four more because he said they had no idea what he was trying to accomplish. One died.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The rest of the notebooks, though, had almost nothing to do with his book. They were filled with acronyms. Every time he got to a part he wanted to emphasize he ended up coming up with another acronym, stopping then and there to figure out each word. If it had something to do with the nautical life, he would highlight it and write it in a gigantic tome that he called his logbook for greater consideration. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I thought we should try an exercise by writing the hypothetical first sentence, which would let him set the tone. “Rowing the boat,” he said. “Rowing the boat is not a slogan. It’s a lifestyle.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“That’s two sentences,” I said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But he had already grabbed a fresh pad and started writing. “R.O.W.I.N.G: Reading Or I Will Never Grow. Now that’s about literature,” he said. “THE. T.H.E. Do you see it? Do you see it?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Coach Fleck got up and lifted his hands up in the air (I would later learn this was a Touchdown gesture) and sprinted out of the office, through the manse, and down the driveway to the gate where he began triumphantly tooting the ship horn as neighbors glared at him through their drapes. “This is it! Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I understood. He was going to write the boilerplate book the publishers wanted but every word, every single word including articles would be an acronym which he would explain in a separate volume, his Master Annex of Acronyms in <i>Boats and the Rowers That Row Them: A Guide to Winning, Life, and Staying Afloat.</i> I was stunned. I had not come to Minnesota to be confronted with a new literary form that would revolutionize non-fiction and finally get me on one of those panels where I can talk and chuckle at the same time. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Publishers ridiculed my first experimental novel, which I planned to write in a not diabolical but somewhat challenging cipher that readers would have to decode. The real innovation would be that not every copy would use the same cipher– readers who had managed to solve it would theoretically be useless assisting their friends, whose copies of the book would present not only an entirely different cipher, but require an entirely different mechanism. Some, for example, would be elaborate pictograms, whereas others would be complex word and number replacements. The reward would be reading a transcendent novel about a code-making novelist whose most mysterious cipher would be his own vulnerability. Every publisher passed. The rejection letters I received were actually venomous– in one case a letter was actually coated in a rare snake venom but it had gotten lost in the mail and lost all of its potency before it was delivered, and the editor who attempted to poison me had his snakes seized. But this was now the chance to make my literary mark.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The months went by in a blur. The coach and I came up with sentences while crafting acronyms together. It was an arduous task. He put his first through the wall after running into the third X for the day in the word “axiom,” which he insisted had to be in the book. We never left that office, and I began to sleep in child's sleeping bag in a guest room in the otherwise empty house. Fleck soon realized that his coaching duties were too demanding, and he requested a leave of absence, explaining that he and I were not just writing a book but developing a vital blueprint for life, the Acronymic Lifestyle. The university described it to the press as a leave of absence for mental health reasons, and Fleck agreed saying that he was so sane that it was blowing their minds.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It took about a year to finish the book and the original codex. I told the coach it was time to go to the publisher and release our masterpiece together (Fleck did not know this but I was going to try to get the “as told to” credit changed to the valedictory “with”). He looked at me in shock. We were not finished, he told me. No, we had just begun. You see, he had a vision and it was that the annex itself were all acronyms and they would be put into a third volume, The Appendix. Where was my V.I.S.I.O.N.?<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I did not see it. The entire project was beginning to look like it was an exercise in madness. At this point I understood that I had allowed myself to be consumed by an insane task, that the power of turning words into acronyms with vaguely positive messages had taken over my life and the promise of literary fame and glory through working with an innovator like P.J. Fleck had blinded me to the immensity of the task. But I was not yet prepared to abandon the project. <i>Boats and the Rowers That Row Them: A Guide to Winning, Life, and Staying Afloat</i> was mine as much as Fleck’s. I was the one who came up with the second Boat Chapter. I was the one who came up with R.H.I.N.O.C.E.R.O.S. I could not leave simply abandon it and Fleck.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But the project quickly spiraled out of control. You cannot simply just make acronyms into other acronyms. We had to begin revising the master text in order to fit the Appendix acronyms, which affected the Annex acronyms. Fleck had thrown the entire mechanism off. It was at this point I noticed he had stopped sleeping. I would wake up and the light would still be on in the office, with Fleck writing away (he hated typing on a computer. I was the one who digitized everything because it would be impossible to do this without building an elaborate network of interconnected spreadsheets).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was around this time that I began planning my escape. It was clear that if I did not leave then, it would consume the rest of my life. I had also begun to get tipped off from my third ex-wife that the second had hired the famed literary assassin Vancent Mant to murder me, and he had learned of my whereabouts at the Fleck estate. So one day, while Fleck was stuck pondering what Q.U.A.L.I.T.A.T.I.V.E.L.Y. could stand for, I slipped out and left the country for a decade or so until I had learned that Mant was himself killed by a literary assassin assassin, and I was free to return to the country and finish my own work.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I decided to stop in Minneapolis. The Fleck estate property was overgrown with vegetation. The horn at the gate had been disconnected and did not even let out a single AOOGAH. The front door was ajar and every room of the house was now covered in legal pads, the telltale periods dotting every line. The walls were all scrawled with notes saying “Annex 13” and “Endnotes and Arcana.” I saw the light on in the office but I whatever I had known of the coach would not be in there. P.J. Fleck was rowing his boat out to sea, alone.<br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-47778138633567980712023-09-16T13:10:00.005-05:002023-09-16T13:11:14.104-05:00On "On American Soil"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The times you see someone using the phrase “on American soil” in 2023 are in a Congressional hearing where a representative named something like Ladd Hacklin gets incredibly angry about children’s toys and after Northwestern’s big win over UTEP last Saturday. It is true that Northwestern had not recorded a win since last year’s opener against Nebraska in Dublin. It is also true that the Wildcats had not secured a victory within the de jure sovereign territory of the United States of America since October 16, 2021, a 21-7 victory of Rutgers. That distinction is meaningless in college football but it is important to point it out because winning a weird one-off Week 0 game overseas against Coach Scott Vomit and then getting absolutely roasted by every other team is very funny. It is also disingenuous to count the nearly 700 days between Northwestern wins “On American Soil” because they were only able to play games on 20 of those days, although to be honest I prefer not to think about what Northwestern Football is up to off the field.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM4P2VvvdPoRd7YI3Rbr2B8m6CT79EvI0ohGADfdF5JqFGz3hMEq1DlbyXSlFLtYxhh1zignSuiYfMu2V9kdRZrHPLpKYgUOH6eXkqnviNISEqpKYL9JcaujPR1XeKoSCDPtTIUfovgbaRM9f9xgXjeBYijagh-U7iaZfwl512EF-XJuX_-fU2BEw8BW8/s576/northwestern%20ireland%20beer.jpg"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM4P2VvvdPoRd7YI3Rbr2B8m6CT79EvI0ohGADfdF5JqFGz3hMEq1DlbyXSlFLtYxhh1zignSuiYfMu2V9kdRZrHPLpKYgUOH6eXkqnviNISEqpKYL9JcaujPR1XeKoSCDPtTIUfovgbaRM9f9xgXjeBYijagh-U7iaZfwl512EF-XJuX_-fU2BEw8BW8/w400-h225/northwestern%20ireland%20beer.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Another milestone from that game is that is the last time fans were able to watch Northwestern football with subsidized beer <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The notable thing about this game is that Northwestern looked so awful and discombobulated at Rutgers that UTEP, a team that managed five wins last year in Conference USA, emerged as a slight betting favorite on the road. And for the first half, it looked like that was the right call. The Miners’ opening drive looked like a pretty good facsimile of how Rutgers gradually ran over Northwestern in a way reminiscent of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4UFQWKjy_I">gag in Austin Powers</a> where a very slow-moving bulldozer runs over a guy who screams frozen in terror for several minutes. The game was tied at the half only because UTEP missed a field goal in the waning seconds. But then, in the second half, the defense starting getting stops and turnovers, the run game got going, and Mike Bajakian began feeling himself and rotating through quarterbacks. The result was a strangely dominating Northwestern win in front of 55 people.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It has been mildly fascinating to see how the Big Ten Network would deal with the ugliness surrounding Northwestern's football program. I have been watching the interviews with David Braun to see if he will ever say something interesting or even to identify anything about him beyond existing as NCAA Create-A-Coach Young 2. The interviewer alluded to the hazing scandal but never broached it, mastering the type of subtle courtly etiquette one would expect from the retainers surrounding the Sun King Louis XIV and the Big Ten Network. I do not expect a sideline reporter to ask Braun “how do you feel Northwestern can have success without organized dry humping rituals” but the interviewer never mentioned it other than referencing a difficult offseason. After the game, an elated Braun and the team celebrated. Braun got to frame it as the team triumphing over adversity. What was the adversity? Uh, gotta go.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsH4pRPi8sDLTvOSk7jTDQjIk_Wtm5agMeDD4i06tvvECVhG11UMeUHCT7b5LBNmykr9PcgmlYA96j4PEfj_PMB8cseFi0FeueUU3G1uErykPPA7-mnl0rhaWm7dZOreWrPP3RQgiIToOs33UtvbY4StXLQnBeRcfUudDUtEzh3FMBR5DFWBQyiwtGaWk/s1200/david%20braun%20yelling.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsH4pRPi8sDLTvOSk7jTDQjIk_Wtm5agMeDD4i06tvvECVhG11UMeUHCT7b5LBNmykr9PcgmlYA96j4PEfj_PMB8cseFi0FeueUU3G1uErykPPA7-mnl0rhaWm7dZOreWrPP3RQgiIToOs33UtvbY4StXLQnBeRcfUudDUtEzh3FMBR5DFWBQyiwtGaWk/s320/david%20braun%20yelling.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Head Coach David Braun remains a mysterious Vest Cipher. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A convincing win over UTEP does not necessarily mean that Northwestern is now good. Even in 2021, the Wildcats managed a big win over Ohio as well as over FCS Indiana State and then went on to win the famous Victory Over Rutgers in the United States that Wildcat fans had clung to and cherished lo those 693 days. But the win managed to show that Northwestern was still up to the standards of a struggling Big Ten team, and had, at least for one season, managed to stave off a 1980s-style football apocalypse season where they would just get effortlessly clobbered by all comers until they lose 34 consecutive games and then throw the goal posts into Lake Michigan. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is not surprising that Northwestern football has faded from the news the second that the college football season began actually playing games and can now function as a team that essentially no one cares about and that television broadcasters will have to spend 30 seconds awkwardly discussing why Pat Fitzgerald is not in his normal Ozymandian position on the Wildcat sidelines in case there is an as-yet discovered human being who is watching a Northwestern football game but is not aware of the hazing scandal. That will likely change when the lawsuits begin and more ugly news leaks out, but for now Northwestern can remain tucked safely and anonymously into Big Ten Network regional action playing in front of the smallest Big Ten crowds imaginable. The announced attendance for Saturday’s game was less than 15,000 people, a miniscule crowd even for an early September non-conference game at Northwestern, and one that was padded by hundreds of local high school band members. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The rest of college football media has turned away from Northwestern and to topics that actually affect the football part of college football-- laughing at Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney eating shit in early-season games or breathlessly reporting on everything that Deion Sanders does and says. The Deion controversy du jour involves Colorado State coach Jay Norvell attacking him for wearing sunglasses indoors, which is a serious charge; the documentary film They Live taught me that the only answer to another person demanding you put on or remove sunglasses is to suplex them into a parking lot dumpster for seven minutes. Woe be to the program that levels the ultimate football insult at Sanders: calling his players “rece davises.” <br /></span></p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hcKFXg6Zflc?si=0nAIptketFZWJEOn" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">While Deion Sanders does not seem like a person I would personally want in charge of anything I cared about, the one thing I can't knock him for is being a flamboyant weirdo. Above, please take a look at the greatest sports manager in the world, the NPB's Tsuyoshi Shinjo who goes by the nickname BIGBOSS, designs his own team's weird uniforms, and is shown here entering the stadium on opening day on a hovercraft. Now try to imagine what would happen if a Major League manager tipped his hat too extravagantly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>DUKED ONCE AGAIN<br /></b></span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Saturday, Northwestern will take on apparently perennial non-conference bete-noir Duke. Unfortunately, the programs seem to be going in opposite directions. Duke won nine games last year and opened this season with a home win over ninth-ranked Clemson in what was by all accounts a ridiculous game where Dabo Swinney kept putting on the ACME bat suit and falling off of cliffs. Swinney is, even in the unhinged world of college football coaches who are all professional maniacs, a particularly ridiculous person who combines the berserk intensity of a football guy with the desperately oily flop sweat of a traveling nineteenth-century revival preacher. He looks he goes from city to city on one of those hand pump rail cars. It is always funny when his team, which is one of the very few to regularly travel in the juggernaut echelons of college football, gets completely smoked, but Duke's victory augurs poorly for the Wildcats attempting to prove they can actually be competitive.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Duke comes into the game ranked #21 in the country. They have an NFL prospect quarterback and a stingy defense. The Wildcats have their work cut out for them. One of the most dangerous developments from last week was having a Mike Bajakian offensive adjustment actually work, when he went deep into his workshop and discovered that he could use a running quarterback to run. Years of experience shows that it is nothing short of an emergency when Bajakian decides to get creative and decides to do a double jet sweep that leads to a 45 yard loss or some sort of wide receiver pass play that accidentally opens a portal to another dimension and looses an ancient, primordial evil upon the world that cannot be stopped by conventional weapons.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The defense, unable to get a stop against a Rutgers team slowly moving across the field like liquid spreading through a paper towel, fared better against UTEP. David Braun is still calling the defense while also functioning as head coach, which has raised some other questions about the coaching staff. Most pressing is where Assistant to the Head Coach Skip Holtz is during games. Is he there physically or is he calling in from Birmingham Stallions Headquarters with one eye on the game and the other devouring game tape against the Memphis Showboats while moving players around on a giant map of the football field while using those little tank-pushing sticks?</span></p><p></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicqWczYJPRqGLlz1PQRxaHSH1wAj2MtxcCFCFibMlBn2VULvRLg4oQ3wsJZQsLUQuymubtFdYw9C72nsER6uCUNEwzCsAfhqLBOkcnHL1Dd9-14vp2eTwQwOVDnC5a4uD34YW0O4PidN_9SFXfzAnZsOAcaIlm6klah2ukqxgAPzEuY-GoCmYXM9CPbak/s640/ask%20skip%20holtz.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicqWczYJPRqGLlz1PQRxaHSH1wAj2MtxcCFCFibMlBn2VULvRLg4oQ3wsJZQsLUQuymubtFdYw9C72nsER6uCUNEwzCsAfhqLBOkcnHL1Dd9-14vp2eTwQwOVDnC5a4uD34YW0O4PidN_9SFXfzAnZsOAcaIlm6klah2ukqxgAPzEuY-GoCmYXM9CPbak/s320/ask%20skip%20holtz.png" /></a></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">Northwestern may be using a heavily modded version of NCAA 2004 in order to get Skip's advice <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A Northwestern win under these circumstances seems unlikely. But who would know? The game has been taken off normal television and sequestered to the ACC Network, a mysterious channel that can only be accessed in this area by making a yellow mark in a certain park and then waiting to exchange precious metals with an underground cable operator who will come to your home and either install the ACC Network or perform some sort of devious bait-and-switch and leave you stuck with the PAC 12 Network, unable to watch Wake Forest or Louisville and left without redress to the authorities. Presumably there are some people in Chicagoland who will rig up giant antennas or call up a streaming service that instantly infects your computer with something even worse than a Northwetern-Duke game or people who are able to watch the game but only by constantly driving around the city in a van, and they will be rewarded with access to a game where the home team is favored by nearly twenty points.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Braun and Northwestern can be glad that they can retreat to the comfort of a win against a program from a smaller conference and getting televised on a network that no one has. But should they somehow manage to pull of an enormous upset on the road, they may once again run into an opponent that the entire university and its athletic program cannot ever handle which is increased attention.</span><br /></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-25052321801428737512023-09-09T11:31:00.003-05:002023-09-11T10:05:30.706-05:00Northwestern Self-Imposes Walking Death Penalty<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There was a time when watching/fast forwarding through Sunday’s game when it looked like Rutgers wouldn’t punt. Normally a person who has ascended to the level of derangement where they are watching a Northwestern/Rutgers game could expect punting– good punting, bad punting, exotic and perverse levels of punting heretofore unseen. The majority of the game could be spent watching Greg Schiano and Pat Fitzgerald standing on the sidelines performing some anime guy-style screaming and shaking as they order their punt teams onto the field for the fourteenth consecutive series because some fool has asked their quarterback to pass and they instead are grievously injuring the dial-a-down crew. But on Sunday, Northwestern’s defense allowed an unending series of backbreaking third- and fourth-down conversions over and over again and it looked like the Rutgers punter would stay safely ensconced in his Punting Chalet feasting on rare meat and listening to the growling type of metal music not needing to be unleashed and ready to don his cape and run onto the field under the roar of the punt-mad Rutgers crowd. Finally, with about two minutes to go in the second half, Northwestern got a stop and Schiano summoned his punter. The game was already functionally over. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXi4RJZ4N9o3f5evjsfkpefLni9ez0sdMYtpK61B4WD4fYuz4d8c6-ByMlkwf-eVZXKrmZsNjiGfh1JMCupRvVdcR6f4iUjrF5sFjhp7nVVin4RIsv9hwFthRZ2AR12QqJu_UAndiig-Q8HKBwP6sH_r6DYOSogD6CvrE9uMPqspHyeJKmtFHluZ9u6r0/s640/schinao%20punt.png"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXi4RJZ4N9o3f5evjsfkpefLni9ez0sdMYtpK61B4WD4fYuz4d8c6-ByMlkwf-eVZXKrmZsNjiGfh1JMCupRvVdcR6f4iUjrF5sFjhp7nVVin4RIsv9hwFthRZ2AR12QqJu_UAndiig-Q8HKBwP6sH_r6DYOSogD6CvrE9uMPqspHyeJKmtFHluZ9u6r0/w400-h225/schinao%20punt.png" width="400" /> </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Greg Schiano calls for a punt on 4th and 6 <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am uncertain of which vat of chemicals a television executive fell in before putting a Northwestern/Rutgers game on national television in a time slot with few other options. This decision must have expanded the game beyond its usual viewership of beleaguered Rutgers and Northwestern fans and several dozen degenerates and weirdos who would usually watch this unfold on a <a href="https://bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com/2021/10/northwestern-triumphs-in-perverse-game.html">juddering Big Ten Network feed</a> with Matt Millen oscillating in and out of the broadcast like he is the Fugitive Ben Richards revealing the stunning truth about Captain Freedom. I assume at least a few rubberneckers tuned in to see how Northwestern football would look after its time in The News. The Wildcats appeared to continue where they left off from the death throes of the Pat Fitzgerald era getting scraped off the field after being flattened by a not particularly good Big Ten team.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern played like anyone with a passing knowledge about college football could have guessed. I am no college football expert but if you asked me how well do you think a team that won four total games over the last two seasons and is coached by a guy who has never done it before because the forever head coach was fired in the middle of a grotesque hazing scandal leaving players to deal with the national media paying attention to the program for the first time since Darnell Autry was getting Heisman votes I would guess they would not look particularly sharp out there, on the ol’ ballfield. The future of Northwestern football looks bleak. They are betting underdogs to UTEP at home.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The last few awful seasons and the program’s grim-looking future have seemed to instantaneously erase the fact that Northwestern was actually pretty ok at football for about 25 years. Few people seemed aware that the Wildcats were not the same team that lost 34 consecutive games in the early 1980s even as the team started regularly going to and even sometimes winning bowl games, though that was helped by the addition of approximately 98 bowl games sponsored by military contractors, corn thresher companies, and those mobile games that advertise on television by paying Arnold Schwarzenegger an obscene amount of money to run around for ten seconds screaming “YOU’BVE GODT TO FIUH DA LASUH NOOOOOWWWWW” and then they cut to the game footage and it’s like a blurry circle shooting dots at various ASCII symbols. It took about three years of losing to make it seem like Northwestern has gone 4-1,274 since 1983.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6HAwhIJymoFIObYwWqX8qTu3kn4VNehqaAUX_oBjZwIRfdBaInkUmT4QIATmA39mRu16G0Uoqqz-uloynzzceWRTbaMLQYsmVmDr_OHWm0HvNh56d4-c6fxATrgIXiTSu15dCywj9LQW70g5A4uGK-3w1-gQLEupTOV766pLNj5qsxRZegjMtCP3zefo/s1433/lakeometer.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6HAwhIJymoFIObYwWqX8qTu3kn4VNehqaAUX_oBjZwIRfdBaInkUmT4QIATmA39mRu16G0Uoqqz-uloynzzceWRTbaMLQYsmVmDr_OHWm0HvNh56d4-c6fxATrgIXiTSu15dCywj9LQW70g5A4uGK-3w1-gQLEupTOV766pLNj5qsxRZegjMtCP3zefo/s320/lakeometer.png" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">With 12 consecutive losses dating back to last season, we're about 35% away from The Record, which I'm keeping track of with the Lake-O-Meter.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The fallout from the scandal and the administration’s bumbling response to it and the increasing number of odious reports repeatedly surfacing from other athletic programs do not signal a particularly encouraging future for Northwestern football. The team is coached by group of hapless lame ducks some of whom already have other jobs in football, and it seems likely that the offseason will see an exodus of players through the transfer portal and difficulty convincing recruits to play football at Shrek Torment University. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But the largest threat to Northwestern football as a going concern comes from the summer’s ridiculous realignment bonanza that has moved conferences into a frenzy of backstabbing, greed, and ruthlessness that somehow seems rapacious even for a sport based entirely on the idea of shameless grasping. Right now, the conferences seem content to gobble each other in an orgy of additions that make no sense except as shiny trophies to display to a television executive. At some point, though, I have to imagine that the schools will start to wonder why they earn the same amount (or, in the case of the new erstwhile PAC 12 members, less) as Northwestern, a team that has no fans, no television audience, no outside interest beyond the very small pool of alumni that care about football, and a stadium that boasts the Big Ten's dirtiest tarp. Northwestern, along with its AV Club peers at the ass end of power conferences, would always be faced with this reality, but the fact that the program has completely immolated itself at this very moment is not likely to help Northwestern remain within the top echelons of college football as throttling fodder for the Big Ten.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maybe I am wrong and the team will upset a Big Ten team or two this season. Maybe the administration will suddenly become capable of managing an athletic department and will hire an incredible coach or maybe David Braun is somehow that person and Northwestern can go from psychologically scarring its football players to merely ravaging them with vague “lower-body injuries” like a normal football team. Maybe the Big Ten in its maximalist imperial phase just sort of likes having the Wildcats around. Maybe Northwestern doesn’t really need to be in a superconference or in top division football at all. But now that the conferences have gleefully ripped of the very thin fig leaf of tradition that they pretended to care about when it was more lucrative to sell to fans than a spot on a streaming service called something like ESPN EDGE that is available only at the Antarctic McMurdo research station, it seems to me that all of this realignment is not working with Northwestern football in mind.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKxfREfKPpPB4UMmTVrRc0rXptPGtwrQVneTtmt7qMhW3-jfYfpEYe4dkPiw5IXZqUV19a0llX5KMAY6fwz72vsytgeDgZrsFsztWigdq3MIMK_f766FUeHnH8UdauW0Q3QS-QQO34asQC7owtLZ-cXOQ39Ozv77x9BB5JjIquiP8tCwzYZNUUoz9eego/s600/steiner%20math.jpeg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKxfREfKPpPB4UMmTVrRc0rXptPGtwrQVneTtmt7qMhW3-jfYfpEYe4dkPiw5IXZqUV19a0llX5KMAY6fwz72vsytgeDgZrsFsztWigdq3MIMK_f766FUeHnH8UdauW0Q3QS-QQO34asQC7owtLZ-cXOQ39Ozv77x9BB5JjIquiP8tCwzYZNUUoz9eego/s320/steiner%20math.jpeg" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The numbers don't lie and they spell disaster for Northwestern in one of the Superconferences<br /></span></span></p><p><b style="font-family: georgia;">GO FOR IT AND DIE</b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Chicago Cubs spent most of the first half of the season looking like the Cubs of the last couple years: a flailing, mediocre outfit that would fall out of contention at the all-star break and then immediately trade any player vaguely worth anything so they can spend the rest of the season filling the team with a bunch of minor league oafs to waste everyone’s time for a couple of months while I checked minor league box scores. To complicate things further, the Cubs did not only have their usual assortment of bargain-basement relief pitchers that had managed to pitch competently enough to exchange for another team’s fourteenth-best pitching prospect, they had Cody Bellinger, a baseball superstar who had spent the past couple years hitting like a post trade deadline Cub and then inexplicably resurrected his career in Chicago to become the most valuable trade chip on the market. And then the Cubs won a few games in a row and the front office decided they were sick of watching a parade of Ildemaros Vargas and Johneshwies Fargas and wanted to try to make one of the now 55 available playoff spots and they’ve saved the summer.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Cubs’ decision to hold onto Bellinger, trade for Jeimer Candelario, and try to cling to a Wild Card spot are in the long run likely bad decisions. The Cubs will not win the World Series this year. Assuming they actually manage to secure a playoff berth, they will likely get immediately escorted from the tournament like pajama-clad children found sneaking downstairs into their parents’ dinner party. On the other hand, the baseball playoffs are the stupidest system in pro sports where some mediocre horse shit team like the 2023 Cubs can inexplicably win multiple playoff rounds. And, more importantly, the Cubs have decided to actually play games that count into September; even if maybe the small chance of stumbling into a superprospect from yet another teardown would probably be worth sacrificing a doomed wild card campaign, it is far more fun in the short term to stare at Milwaukee's box scores every night and white knuckle through Jameon Taillon starts than to go to the ballpark hoping to see the next Frank Schwindel.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Cubs are not a juggernaut this year. Their rotation outside of Justin Steele consists of Kyle Hendricks, who looks like Eddie Harris from <i>Major League’s</i> accountant, a bespectacled rookie lefty who resembles a Stanley Kubrick character who is seconds away from staring into the camera from an unsettling angle, and a variety of untested young players and washed-up veterans. Every day, David Ross keeps trotting out delightfully miniature slap hitter Nick Madrigal at third base who has to take these delicate little steps like a friction car revving up in order to successfully throw a baseball to first. The team is relying on Mike Tauchman, a 32-year-old fifth outfielder who last played KBO, as its leadoff hitter. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbsw7caViBq25B1Pcqo12ykJwzc5y1PJXzSwyLREtTcrKqwJVnitI7EVxIsmzDxKFAwWei52gcoSDLodOn1FF4YkEnOT9_OtsaT90HVJc02T8grnDFvMg_bWq5DO4fAhEv1-U4O7mhAZrq0hjQHhUCtgPSvGgIHzHFRBLy8eTq0kF4DZk8_BEGlprIPBc/s3072/jordan%20wicks.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbsw7caViBq25B1Pcqo12ykJwzc5y1PJXzSwyLREtTcrKqwJVnitI7EVxIsmzDxKFAwWei52gcoSDLodOn1FF4YkEnOT9_OtsaT90HVJc02T8grnDFvMg_bWq5DO4fAhEv1-U4O7mhAZrq0hjQHhUCtgPSvGgIHzHFRBLy8eTq0kF4DZk8_BEGlprIPBc/s320/jordan%20wicks.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Cubs somehow unearthed a Third Reushcel Brother<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But somehow, the Cubs keep winning. The ballpark is humming. The former players from good teams are showing up. I was at a game this week where the Cubs came back multiple times for a delightful, thrilling win, including a rally that happened right after Carlos Zambrano commanded them to get some runs after singing the seventh-inning stretch; I assume the Cubs immediately started mashing dingers because they were terrified that Zambrano would otherwise pummel all of them with bats.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The pro sports scene in Chicago is otherwise a bleak wasteland. The White Sox have gone from a promising contender filled with exciting young players to a dysfunctional junk yard fire where the season highlights involve Tim Anderson falling down like Von Kaiser from <i>Mike Tyson's Punch Out!</i> after getting smacked in the face and somehow losing a game on a walk-off balk. The Chicago Sky, which had saved the previous two summers, lost all but one of their key championship players and saw head coach/GM James Wade leave the team for an NBA assistant coaching job in the middle of the season and now the team is, like all other Chicago teams, flailing to make the last playoff spot. The Bulls remain a calcified mediocrity that I am deluded enough to think will actually be pretty decent next season but that probably means maybe getting the last playoff spot if enough Eastern conference starters get hurt. I am not emotionally prepared to talk about the Chicago Bears, which are due for a psychologically devastating loss to Jordan Love tomorrow after finally seeing Aaron Rodgers use the powers of his mind to telekinetically teleport out of the NFC North. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The bitterly divisive Chicago baseball scene means that the Cubs' mini-resurgence cannot be embraced by the whole city. Instead, the baseball rivalry means that city's drunkest doofuses can only understand the sport by getting into embarrassing asscrack fights in the bleachers of both parks. But for those of us who do enjoy the Cubs, it's at least a salve from our floundering pro sports scene-- until they are somehow once again knocked out of playoff contention by the Florida Marlins. <br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-90400019279292068582023-09-03T09:13:00.001-05:002023-09-03T09:27:13.007-05:00Somehow A Northwestern-Rutgers Game Is Even More Of A Catastrophe<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The college football calendar is harsh and unyielding so when Northwestern football spends the past two months mired in an escalating series of shocking, grotesque, and embarrassing scandals that resulted in the most entrenched 1-11 college football coach in the country getting fired, the program has no choice but to limp into Piscataway on Sunday and somehow attempt to play football in order to collect its Big Ten television check. I have no idea what that is going to look like. I don't know how the announcers are going to try to talk around the scandal or somehow elide the putrid details of the hazing incidents or, if they bring it up, then explain why Northwestern is taking the field. I am pretty sure that the entire thing could potentially be such a debacle that it will somehow make television producers yearn for the excitement of a normal Northwestern-Rutgers game.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's a brief overview of some things that have happened since Northwestern fired Pat Fitzgerald on July 10: Fitzgerald retained a law firm presumably to sue Northwestern; several former players filed lawsuits against Northwestern, each of which has corroborated previous allegations or brought about new ones about sexual harassment or racism; a reporter decided to read athletic director Derrick Gragg's Leading Leaders The Leadership Way: A Story of Leaders and the Leaders Who Lead Them book and found some vaguely embarrassing Steve Harveyous passages about women being distractions; new coach David Braun talked for fifteen minutes about how he's not talking about anything at Big Ten media days; several coaches and players showed up to the first open practice wearing "Cats Against The World" pro-Fitzgerald t-shirts; Gragg blasted the t-shirts in the media; Northwestern hired Skip "Skip" Holtz as a sort of consigliere for the football program while he insists that he will continue to coach the Birmingham Stallions USFL team. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAXXj_h3BBCoRwuT2UVYX7Ysl-ue1_qUf0GR6hj5S_o49ebK8-wxYb9zeOx_lnMfadMv1WDRI4VIT3h9USunQprSwuGEnKewu-nqPLPbzc-8zCzSAPxVTTaN1AnOxiLHNOmcrBKaYVL6oiRj7YB1h7frAQdFOS7GAyyTU1eZ8v6YSckGOaILJIt61bILA/s1200/skip%20holtz.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAXXj_h3BBCoRwuT2UVYX7Ysl-ue1_qUf0GR6hj5S_o49ebK8-wxYb9zeOx_lnMfadMv1WDRI4VIT3h9USunQprSwuGEnKewu-nqPLPbzc-8zCzSAPxVTTaN1AnOxiLHNOmcrBKaYVL6oiRj7YB1h7frAQdFOS7GAyyTU1eZ8v6YSckGOaILJIt61bILA/s320/skip%20holtz.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Holtz coming up with a Two Hat System where he alternates head gear if he is answering questions as a Northwestern assistant or as a Birmingham Stallion <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The very stupid t-shirt incident proved that years of apathy has left the university athletic department completely unable to deal with any sort of scrutiny. But more importantly, it highlighted that even though Fitzgerald is gone, the program remains in his image. The ostensible reason that the university fired Fitzgerald was because he was ultimately responsible for the puerile hazing even if its investigation (according to university president Michael Schill-- the university will not publish it and it remains under lock and key) did not uncover a damning piece of hard evidence that proves he knew about it or orchestrated it. But the university stopped there. All of the coaches who had the same responsibility to the players remain in place and, presumably, there are players currently on the roster who participated in the hazing. It was apparently impossible with two months until the season to find someone other than Mike Bajakian to design the most doomed trick plays humanly possible; that is why it was crucial to retain him so that he could show up looking like an out of focus thumb wearing a t-shirt about how the sick media was very unfair to Pat Fitzgerald about Shrek.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbTcxdP5W-A3f7hEO5OXimzTHv9VwIz6-s1tndCYQg7YHFuJwUxERnjuoCUL85A7RBPO8Pdt2Xqe8bnkgWVQvbFBjI0w_MhrniKJuTd4sCUrCxuAtQ9urmIMsMcckaXP-ynd_dnaWGr9RGI2gbLCbS1Doa_1xTpLicYmb_E50oJ_4tXt5YDSCohyq67rg/s2048/bajakian%20reclines.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbTcxdP5W-A3f7hEO5OXimzTHv9VwIz6-s1tndCYQg7YHFuJwUxERnjuoCUL85A7RBPO8Pdt2Xqe8bnkgWVQvbFBjI0w_MhrniKJuTd4sCUrCxuAtQ9urmIMsMcckaXP-ynd_dnaWGr9RGI2gbLCbS1Doa_1xTpLicYmb_E50oJ_4tXt5YDSCohyq67rg/s320/bajakian%20reclines.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike Bajakian pictured after the result of 87% of his playcalls<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Does anyone else feel completely insane that after reading what seemed for a time like daily updates about fucked up things happening in Northwestern's football program that they're just going to show up and play Rutgers, with uniforms and everything? How does it make sense that after all of the lawsuits and allegations that David Braun is just standing up at the podium and saying he's here to talk about football and then when someone asks him a football question like who will be the starting quarterback he just says that's classified, for football reasons? And how are we supposed to know if Skip Holtz is acting in his capacity as Assistant to the Head Coach of the Northwestern Wildcats and not Head Coach of the Birmingham Stallions?</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCyv8KOodysGLVIo-_4aD_L5aGWKWty1_DVxAAITCrM2ihVuKUBd82yEdpUIfNkTy1QnANnryRkLDdYZSMZJj8WPXJKoinaOYN_fZJrfuAlJbePTduGmAx57Fgai8uWuVenqDMvSPF3-GG-sQpIgU_MluE-bGNpXleQX6vfCbwCLCMzGH8sL_a9jDyGdk/s900/peyton%20ramzy.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCyv8KOodysGLVIo-_4aD_L5aGWKWty1_DVxAAITCrM2ihVuKUBd82yEdpUIfNkTy1QnANnryRkLDdYZSMZJj8WPXJKoinaOYN_fZJrfuAlJbePTduGmAx57Fgai8uWuVenqDMvSPF3-GG-sQpIgU_MluE-bGNpXleQX6vfCbwCLCMzGH8sL_a9jDyGdk/s320/peyton%20ramzy.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Northwestern was excited when Skip Holtz said he had experience giving the offense a "Peyton Ramsey" flavor without asking enough questions<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For years, I have joked about Northwestern football as a grim proposition mainly because of the gruesome and disgusting brand of football that Pat Fitzgerald preferred to play. In a normal year, the idea of opening the season with Northwestern playing Rutgers would seem decadent or even debased. But it is impossible to even think about what Wildcat football will even look like on the field. The roster is cobbled together from the remains of a one-win season, thinned further by transfers. The fact that the scandal broke in early July is probably the only thing that prevented a mass exodus; Pat Fitzgerald's son is still on the team. It is difficult to believe that a team that is led by a first-time head coach at any level who was unexpectedly thrust into leadership solely because he was slightly less tainted by scandal than his colleagues in a program that has spent the past two months marinating in dysfunction and who apparently requires the counsel of Skip Holtz could possibly be better than last year's team that was merely bad, but it is almost impossible for the team to play worse than they did a year ago. And what is the best case scenario here: a team rallies together and inexplicably wins several upsets with the players proclaiming that they have triumphed over adversity without mentioning that the adversity was the humiliation of their own teammates with rituals that seem to have been imported from 1920s British aristocrat schools?<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">----------</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Anyone who writes about a college football team as a fan knows that they are on borrowed time until the Bad Thing happens. The rottenness and corruption at the heart of the sport means that it is only a matter of time. The same pervasive lawlessness in college football is on the one hand one of the things that give the sport its energy when boosters are gleefully handing out sacks of cash in front of the NCAA's legion of Bufords T. Justice but when something actually bad happens and it is a result of systemic institutional failure, you would hope there would be someone in charge other than hapless university bureaucrats whose main job is telling rich people they'll put their name on a building and the sports' theoretical governing body that is so oafish and incompetent that it is stunning that actual NCAA officials are allowed to run around in society in suits pretending they are important instead of being outfitted like colorful Swiss Guards that tourists in Indianapolis can gawp at and try to bother by making weird faces at them.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3l0LEOE8uOKi47eruX-Ytz8Nn0W8zh22-jIE4x1Wl7OLs40ZL4Bzt-FZf7AWXXKv-aqf9Ie7R-p2rlRmE-uCtEA_dr0m7sGYlySFZjPWV0afAtaumNw8yw91-brySsjqyD2HEKuBFROjzqcMGW3hL_jvSRuLHZqyp1_OV69YAnwf4mAqWZ6IFgDH9M74/s1920/charlie%20baker%20noid.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3l0LEOE8uOKi47eruX-Ytz8Nn0W8zh22-jIE4x1Wl7OLs40ZL4Bzt-FZf7AWXXKv-aqf9Ie7R-p2rlRmE-uCtEA_dr0m7sGYlySFZjPWV0afAtaumNw8yw91-brySsjqyD2HEKuBFROjzqcMGW3hL_jvSRuLHZqyp1_OV69YAnwf4mAqWZ6IFgDH9M74/s320/charlie%20baker%20noid.png" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">I believe this simple change in NCAA President Charlie Baker's wardrobe best expresses the dignity of his position. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This Northwestern football season is a disaster before ball has even been snapped. It seems unlikely to me that we've seen the worst of the revelations that will come from the numerous lawsuits, and the university's response seems to me to show that its priorities are not with the safety and dignity of athletes but instead the department is laser focused on making sure the football team finds a way to lose to Iowa 8-5 but this time in a billion-dollar facility called Pat Ryan's Northwestern Football Stadium and Robot World.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is no amount of football that they can play that will make Northwestern's season about anything other than the hazing scandal and the firing of Pat Fitzgerald. And I admit that I am somewhat at a loss on how to write about it, even if my way of "covering the team" traditionally involves writing three run-on sentences about football, making a few sophomoric jokes about the opposing coaches and then throwing in a 3,000 word review about books on eighteenth-century shipwrecks or whatever. It makes no sense to ignore what has happened in favor of trying to pretend that I am going to break down some All 22 linebacker coverage. At the same time, I cannot imagine it will be fun to write or for the 35 people who consume this blog to read ten to eleven posts that are about Northwestern football but feature several throat-clearing paragraphs about how it's bad. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This will certainly and unfortunately be an extremely interesting football season, and I will try to write about it in a way where I feel like I have something to say about it without feeling disgusting. For example, I have not yet determined the specific ways that David Braun is deranged. I will also be monitoring Skip Holtz's allegiance to the Birmingham Stallions. But perhaps most importantly, it will be fascinating to see how this season plays out while continuing to learn about the various ways that Northwestern's athletic department appears to be deeply fucked up. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is one thing I can tell you about a season-opening Northwestern-Rutgers game though and that as a pure football spectacle it will absolutely suck shit.</span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-88110600602927781042023-08-28T11:18:00.002-05:002023-08-28T11:30:59.278-05:00College Football's Spite Season<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The big story in college football this offseason has been the rapid rearrangement of conferences. It looks like a small child has shaken out a bin with action figures and all of a sudden there is an unexpected summit that appears to be happening between go-bots and a few ninja turtle villains. Ask any random bystander what conference a middling and unexceptional Power Five program is in currently and they will not be able to tell you. But that would be a fiendish trick! Because the funniest part of the realignment, one marked by rapacious raids by other conferences for plum programs, erstwhile conference-mates stabbing each other in back, hasty midnight meetings involving provosts, and apparently zero consideration whatsoever for non-football athletes who now will spend a large portion of their college experience in various regional airports is that none of that realignment has happened yet. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibiiool7MdDrAxIhSM1upwe80_jR-1Bzsy82WvnQk6ud1exZ82FEFpSd9GeJMxyOMVFztp9E-oXdvmK2PwoyDGcZYPTgvCUYKIDOVN90K8LkdX0Cb8PGwKzOW0CvNgTTy4BipUu9klDGHcyYJH8TJBir0CgSlzjNYKAQVNxC2travv0tvQeQhmdXsOo-w/s1280/saban%20brutus.png"><img border="0" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibiiool7MdDrAxIhSM1upwe80_jR-1Bzsy82WvnQk6ud1exZ82FEFpSd9GeJMxyOMVFztp9E-oXdvmK2PwoyDGcZYPTgvCUYKIDOVN90K8LkdX0Cb8PGwKzOW0CvNgTTy4BipUu9klDGHcyYJH8TJBir0CgSlzjNYKAQVNxC2travv0tvQeQhmdXsOo-w/w400-h286/saban%20brutus.png" width="400" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Big Ten and SEC carve up the college football landscape<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For one glorious year, the programs that have just spent the past several months in a Hobbesian battle over television revenue are all stuck with the other programs they have fucked over, been fucked over by, or attempted to fuck over and failed in the same conferences they have been in more or less for one football season of grinning through gritted teeth and handing over championship trophies to teams that are already on their way out while boosters either jump up and down firing guns in celebration or jump and down firing guns in gutted agony.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">College football anger is usually based on normal and understandable things such as the results of a game that was played 45 years before 99% of the undergraduates in either school were born or the way that people from a certain part of the state park like this while people from the other side of the state park like that. But there is possibility for real animus at a conference game for the first time among high-level university and conference bureaucrats who will have to look each other in the eye after their colleagues had just secretly conspired to cost their athletic departments millions of dollars and even cost some of them their phony-baloney jobs. Imagine George Kliavkoff, the (extremely) current president of the still for this year extant PAC 12 conference, having to hand over a trophy to USC or Washington or one of the other programs that will leave the conference a smoldering nub. I am not saying it is likely, but there has to be a small possibility that Kliavkoff shakes Lincoln Riley's hand and then hits him with a folding chair while the president of Oregon State's music hits before she puts a UCLA dean through a table. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Conference realignment is not anything new in college football. As long as the sport has existed, conferences and schools have contorted themselves into whatever configuration could make them an extra buck or two. The only reason why this summer's feeding frenzy feels more grotesque and perverse than college football's business as usual is the matter of scale. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Conference alignments at least before the 2010s seemed to at least attempt to gesture at regionalism, rivalry, and, at least in the case of the Big Ten, some sort of academic credential, which was important to the conference for reasons I have never been able to fathom. But then the big money started rolling in from proprietary networks and the Big Ten and its constituent university presidents all immediately turned into the first half hour of Requiem for a Dream and before long they added Nebraska, invented something called "Legends and Leaders" and then the second half of Requiem for a Dream kicked in and Rutgers and Maryland were now in the conference. These Big Ten moves caused the entire college football ecosystem to go insane. Texas attempted to strongarm its own conference and then ended up creating its own college football cable network, a 24 hour network dedicated to one 12-13 football games and then 20 hours of Mack Brown's Slacks Wardrobe and Do You Remember Vince Young programming. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOKKREvIDrY7OVGwUllh-GAj-s_HAOSlJsiLnlfaEKrmN8gdq3FpI34Jl5bNuYtyduXkV-MWLENxRe59VmsBFYZeNgn9ETcDO9EP4BUBUE7_8dtkt9UDq0dbLvGItheIUVx2jscnR8J8fNRjkXCMklk8Wp5xbUOrWNq56wEArqPWWWbfJ22Uw9GNcPpJ0/s958/Bevo%20Home%20for%20the%20Holidays.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOKKREvIDrY7OVGwUllh-GAj-s_HAOSlJsiLnlfaEKrmN8gdq3FpI34Jl5bNuYtyduXkV-MWLENxRe59VmsBFYZeNgn9ETcDO9EP4BUBUE7_8dtkt9UDq0dbLvGItheIUVx2jscnR8J8fNRjkXCMklk8Wp5xbUOrWNq56wEArqPWWWbfJ22Uw9GNcPpJ0/s320/Bevo%20Home%20for%20the%20Holidays.png" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Classic Longhorn Network programming. Unfortunately, the Longhorn Network is another casualty of realignment, and Texas fans will have to get their Bevo content on the internet. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Great Realignment of 2023 is an extraordinary accomplishment in our Age of Disruption: it is a massive change that no one wants, done for reasons that no one cares about, and is being celebrated by bureaucrats who made it possible like they have split the atom for the first time by making it harder to know what channel a football game is on. Fans do not care about whether a game is on the Fox or ESPN suite of networks and increasingly arcane streaming services-- they do care about playing the same teams they have been playing for more than a century. The concept of "conference identity" is admittedly a very stupid and nebulous idea to attach to an arbitrary grouping of college football programs for purposes of revenue enhancement, but then again attaching empty signifiers to sports teams is pretty much the entire business model of big money college athletics.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I doubt enough many people will be so pissed off about conference realignment that they will stop watching the games. In the end, the games are what people care about, and next year they will just start happening in odd and unexpected configurations. By now, most people realize that "tradition" is something for the TV packages and the glossy mailers asking for donations, a phony marketing canard not unlike the infinite number of roadside hamburger stands offering "world famous chili" and not anything that anyone in charge considers real. Most people consider the Michigan-Ohio State game the most glittering prize in the Big Ten, but quietly take aside one of the conference's head honchos in their meat restaurant-adjacent Rosemont citadel and watch what happens when you tell them you could kill it in the name of an annual Ohio State-Alabama game that only airs on phones with special exclusive Big Ten data plans and they will build a warehouse to house the very strongly-worded "you, sir" letters from Michigan alumni.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And yet in 2023 none of this has happened yet. Everything is exactly where we left it last year as sour teams attempt to either play out the string in doomed conferences that they have themselves doomed or are on a team that's about to be shunted to some lesser run conference or left completely in limbo. And I'm not sure how much the players on each team care about it or what effect it will have on the games, but I can't imagine the amount of money that realignment is costing certain programs will not result in something incredibly funny happening.<br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-16577790081806042842023-07-11T14:15:00.000-05:002023-07-11T14:15:05.774-05:00The Pat Fitzgerald Era Ends In Tawdry Shrek Humping Scandal<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">On Thursday, Pat Fitzgerald was history's least-embattled 1-11 college football coach preparing for the final season in the recognizable Big Ten. Three days later, the university where he was so entrenched that it seemed like he would coach until he died and then get stuffed like Jeremy Bentham so that his ghoulish death mask could be trotted out to intimidate a referee after a particularly egregious pass interference call fired him amid a maelstrom of grotesque hazing allegations, secretive reports, and incompetent flailing from the highest reaches of the university bureaucracy; the result was a preening coach, program, and university that tediously sold itself as a model for doing things The Right Way imploding over tawdry, Shrek-related humping incidents.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Allegedly, According to Reports, Etc.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The trajectory of the scandal was bizarre. After the season, Northwestern announced an investigation into allegations of hazing in the football program. Last Friday, the university issued a press release saying that the investigation by an independent law firm found hazing in the program but could find no evidence that the coaching staff knew anything but also that they were suspending Pat Fitzgerald for two weeks. The entire thing raised more questions than it answered: if there was no evidence that Fitzgerald knew anything why suspend him? And if the administration felt he was implicated enough in the hazing to be suspended, why would a token two weeks during a completely dead period in the college football calendar suffice? It seems clear that the administrators at the top reaches of the university had hoped the vague report summary, suspension, and the general shroud of national indifference over anything having to do with Northwestern football would be enough to make the allegations go away and allow Fitzgerald to return and pursue that elusive win on the continent of North America that had eluded him for nearly two years.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The plan immediately backfired. Student journalists at the <i>Daily Northwestern</i> <a href="https://dailynorthwestern.com/2023/07/08/top-stories/former-nu-football-player-details-hazing-allegations-after-coach-suspension/">published </a>the puerile details of the hazing rituals from former players along with new claims from those players that Fitzgerald and program staff knew about and tacitly encouraged them. The timing of the suspension during a completely dead period whether intentional or coincidental meant that the Northwestern hazing story filled a vacuum of college football news and brought attention to the scandal and more scrutiny than I have ever seen associated with Northwestern football to which the administration seemed to have no answer other than to occasionally release Official Comments dripping with flop sweat while more allegations about hazing and <a href="https://dailynorthwestern.com/2023/07/10/sports/former-nu-players-describe-racist-environment-in-football-program/">racism </a>in the program kept piling up through the <i>Daily</i>, a group of players describing themselves as the "entire team" <a href="https://www.insidenu.com/2023/7/8/23788450/northwestern-team-issues-statement-denying-severity-of-hazing-allegations-backs-pat-fitzgerald">released a statement</a> of support for Fitzgerald, and also at the same time unrelated reports surfaced about the baseball coach who has apparently been acting like the red-assed baseball version of a Mad Max warlord.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is hard to imagine a more flailing and incompetent response from the administration. University president Michael Schill still argues that the official investigation found no evidence that Fitzgerald knew anything about the hazing in the very press release where he fired him. Athletic Director Derrick Gragg, who was hired quickly because the guy they originally hired was accused of reacting rudely and indifferently to a lawsuit about sexual harassment in the cheerleading program, seems to be running a toxic department with a Lord of the Flies football team and a baseball coach who was too much of a belligerent hardass for the literal United States Army. Fitzgerald maintains that the official report backs up his claims that he did not know that the hazing was taking place and seems poised to sue Northwestern. It is hard to imagine the situation will not get uglier.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">-------------------------------------------------<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pat Fitzgerald had found a successful formula at Northwestern: under him and with defensive coach Mike Hankwitz, the Wildcats had mastered a brand of unwatchable, punt-based toilet football that allowed them to win enough games in a mediocre, gerrymandered division to regularly go to bowl games, defeat its downtrodden Hat Rival, and generally serve as a normal mid-tier Power Five team. This was all anyone wanted. Fitzgerald's job was to keep Northwestern football from the abyss, the logical place where a small private school that intentionally hamstrings itself in recruiting, has no fans, and plays very close to the capital of Big Ten post-graduate migration which ensures that it is overwhelmed by people cheering from the opponent in nearly every game in its tiny, rotting, tarp-adorned stadium should be. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fitzgerald took the Northwestern job suddenly and amidst tragedy at the age of 31, and cultivated a wholesome camp counselor image as he exhorted the team with elaborate fist pumps and posed in square-jawed coaching faces on the sidelines. He became more and more entwined with the program until Northwestern football had two mascots: the person in the fuzzy wildcat suit capering on the sidelines and the burly, rectangular-haired guy bellowing "go 'cats" and bloviating the same Our Young Men speech unceasingly for seventeen consecutive years. His emergence of the face of the program and of Northwestern athletics was lucrative for him and for the program as he, former athletic director Jim Phillips, and Northwestern mega-donor Pat Ryan led efforts to lavish the sports teams with fancy new facilities including an Ozymandian lakeside practice facility, a major renovation to the basketball and volleyball arena, and a proposed $800 million football stadium that has stalled in fights with the Evanston City Council and now has a tougher sell as the House that Fitz Built. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The longevity of Fitzgerald amid the constant churn of college coaches eventually made him one of the Big Ten's elder statesmen by his early 40s. Every year there would the attendant upheaval and rumors and message board flight tracking as goateed men named Chip and Buddy shuttled among college coaching gigs and then at Big Ten media days there would be Pat Fitzgerald and Kirk Ferentz dug in like Egyptian obelisks overseeing the entire thing and then annually playing the worst football game anyone has ever seen. Fitzgerald seemed to enjoy this status and began a new phase of Andy Rooney-style pontification against cell phones, the run-pass option ("the purest form of communism"), and an ESPN personality whose reference to Northwestern's team as a bunch of "Rece Davises" he took as an unutterable football insult.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fitzgerald sold himself and the program sold him as ambassadors of the NCAA student-athlete model. This attitude meant a lot of self-congratulatory back-patting about graduation rates and recruiting restrictions, but it also meant accepting NCAA rules designed solely to prevent players from earning any money for their considerable efforts as some sort of ideal instead of a racket. It is no surprise that when some members of the team led a drive to create a new sort of players' union, the university stepped in to stop it-- the school, because a university will attempt to stop a unionization effort by anyone in its ranks reflexively like a jellyfish lashing out with a tentacle at any external stimulus, and Fitzgerald because he is management. Fitzgerald's pitch to the players against the union was that the team was like a family and the players could go to him with any of their concerns. The allegations of the abusive culture within the program have made this argument in retrospect even more odious.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The total control that Fitzgerald sought created his downfall. It is very difficult for Fitzgerald to have spent nearly twenty years proclaiming that he is Northwestern football and Northwestern football is him and then claim that he had absolutely no idea that bizarre, organized nudity rituals were happening under his nose for a decade passed from class to class and written about on whiteboards in the facility. Either he is a maniac whose football culture comes from a fraternity house in the Hellraiser cinematic universe who should not be allowed to be in charge of anything or he is an oblivious fraud who should not be allowed to be in charge of anything.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It did not help his case that whatever strategies Fitzgerald used to keep the Wildcats comfortably competitive were beginning to falter. The team record plummeted to 1-11, a level of futility not seen since the 1980s. Fitzgerald failed to win more than three games in three of the last four years. The defense has fallen apart since Hankwitz retired and the offense, reliably putrid during the Fitzgerald years to the point where it seems like it is part of a perverse blasphemy against the passing game, has reached new levels of blight. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Beyond the games themselves, it appears as though Fitzgerald had not solved or even deigned to acknowledge the massive shifts in the landscape of college sports since he took over in 2006. It seemed to me that Pat Fitzgerald, a man who even by the stoneheaded standards of college football coaches came across as one of the most stubborn people to scream beet-red into an air traffic controller headset, both had no idea how to adapt his formula for winning into the rapidly-changing, increasingly professionalized world of college sports in the 2020s and no desire to try. Instead, he seemed content to perform his jut-jawed monologues about Student Athletics while the program retreated to its 1980s nadir.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The trajectory of the program made it seem like Northwestern was going to have to decide what football would look like after Fitzgerald within the next few years. In that scenario, the school would be firing a university legend and faced an unknown world of trying to lure someone to a program where they have to use a silent snap count during Big Ten home games.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now that reality has arrived except Fitzgerald is exiled in disgrace and vowing legal action, there are less than two months before the season, the entire athletic department is under a shroud of scandal to the point where I would not be surprised if there was a report that a fencing coach had forced team members into organized banditry against spice caravans traveling on the Green Bay Trail, many football players seem disgruntled and likely to leave at the nearest opportunity, and the entire university bureaucracy has been operating like an Armando Ianucci ensemble as they issue panicked press releases and zoom in from various vacation hotspots.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Meanwhile the football team is going to apparently try to have a season. New defensive coordinator David Braun, a December hire whose brief tenure is enough to give him plausible deniability, has been named interim coach. The administration will continue to scramble to cover its ass, likely by hiring more administrators and establishing various protocols, and likely firing a few more people like the asshole baseball coach and the athletic director, and they will hopefully put a sticky note somewhere that says that the next time they want to invest all of the power and resources of a major college football program in a single person because that person claims to do things the right way they should probably figure out what that person means by the right way because it might not be normal.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This might be a good time to ask once again whether Northwestern needs to have a semi-professional football team attached to it, but the enormous quantities of money that the television networks throw at the university has already answered the question. The university, it seems, will wait and hope enough people can watch this football team without thinking about what the former players have told the <i>Daily</i> about their experiences on the team and hope that Northwestern can comfortably retreat back into its bland anonymity in the college football landscape while the checks still clear.</span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-55881921020256198822023-03-18T13:22:00.011-05:002023-03-18T13:26:32.789-05:00Please dont put in the newspaper that i got march mad<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 2017, Northwestern went to the NCAA tournament and challenged Vanderbilt to a three-hour heart attack. After every play, the camera cut to Doug Collins, who appeared to be suffering the effects of a perilously consumed Wonka raspberry candy, as the score flipped back and forth. The Wildcats ultimately won when the Commodores' best player temporarily lost his mind and committed a foul so ill-advised that the best explanation for it was that he was hypnotized and activated by a rogue Northwestern basketball sabotage team. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">On Thursday, the Wildcats played a Boise State team that emerged through the week as a trendy upset pick, and they calmly dismantled them. The Broncos had no answer for Boo Buie, who was clearly the best player on the floor. They never, not even for a split second, took the lead. The game was close enough for Boise State to never really be out of striking range and to even tie it in the second half, but they mostly just sat at a comfortable cruising distance of about six points until it was time to start pointlessly fouling people for 45 minutes, which is the fate for all college basketball games within 15 points. This was an uncomfortable feeling as a Northwestern fan, where any big win usually feels like being hunted for sport or at the very least besieged.
</span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><span style="font-family: georgia;">More ball.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GoCats?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GoCats</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MarchMadness?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MarchMadness</a> <a href="https://t.co/T9QitwwxiZ">pic.twitter.com/T9QitwwxiZ</a></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">— Northwestern Basketball (@NUMensBball) <a href="https://twitter.com/NUMensBball/status/1636833198364831746?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2023</a></span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">One unique thing Northwestern is doing is attempting to steal Beam Valor. I hope an angry Kings fan runs up to a Northwestern fan screaming LIGHT THE BEAM and yells "Excuse me, how many rebounds did Chimezie Metu have last night? What capacity does Leandro Barbosa serve in the Organization????"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern's reward for their victory is a matchup against powerhouse UCLA on Saturday night. The Bruins have some key players injured but that did not matter in their game against UNC-Asheville that looked like a contest between the monster truck Grave Digger and several dozen 1980s sedans. There is no rogue Bracketologist favoring Northwestern over UCLA and no secret advanced metric that the numbers-mongers can point to that show a hidden Northwestern advantage somewhere. The only people who have the Wildcats penciled into the Sweet Sixteen in their bracket are me, a deranged person who has picked Northwestern to win the entire tournament because what is the point of living if you don't pick your team to win it all, and people filling out brackets based on late night network TV talk show hosts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But that's the magic of the tournament. No one had Northwestern worthy as playing in the same building as Gonzaga in 2017 and they very well might have won if Zach Collins had not been allowed to nail an old wooden board to the bottom of the basket which caused Chris Collins (no relation) to earn a crushing technical foul after illegally turning into an anthropomorphic bagpipe. Just before I started writing this, Purdue was eliminated by a school called Fairleigh Dickinson in New Jersey, which I learned was founded by and named after a guy who made his fortune manufacturing grisly early twentieth-century surgical implements. Every year, Matt Painter shows up with the largest person on the face of the Earth who is capable of dribbling and every year they get tripped up in the tournament as they reach the outer limits what humans can achieve by lumbering until they seemed to reach their apotheosis by playing through a player so immense and so skilled that they seemed nearly unstoppable outside of Evanston. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbn2ahpj666uGYGUMqsNZhf_w8ywa2dQeOYscG0-hDk0f18C1aaJwxqX9LN5OAHfyJ2rl5YxC7FQEJQhi8yrA9Q2kuPnt5XhIa8-LoTuMR6EqB4jpDi7qy4H6VmZJygzuNns9LAbP3RZPsopnVo62OrBJ4igBpzX4jqZdROsgG7FjId_Fm_auzRZwP/s287/Lill-01.webp" style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbn2ahpj666uGYGUMqsNZhf_w8ywa2dQeOYscG0-hDk0f18C1aaJwxqX9LN5OAHfyJ2rl5YxC7FQEJQhi8yrA9Q2kuPnt5XhIa8-LoTuMR6EqB4jpDi7qy4H6VmZJygzuNns9LAbP3RZPsopnVo62OrBJ4igBpzX4jqZdROsgG7FjId_Fm_auzRZwP/w400-h245/Lill-01.webp" /> </a></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Illustration of Purdue playing a double-digit seed in the NCAA Tournament <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It has not been a very good tournament for the Big Ten. On the one hand, I suppose I should be concerned because if the conference continues to perform in every tournament like the Indiana Jones Sword Man, it will result in fewer bids awarded to Big Ten teams and therefore a more difficult path for Northwestern to the Dance. But on the other hand, that's not my problem. It is much more fun to delight in watching conference foes and rivals eat shit on a national stage, especially if it involves the humiliation of an unhinged monster-coach like Iowa's Fran McCaffery or Illinois's Brad Underwood, both of whom reach flights of anger so impossible by the standards of normal human behavior that they can be only described as operatic, spending three and a half hours bellowing their arias about how that's a moving screen there, that's a goddamn moving screen, how did you not fuckin' see that, all goddamn day with these screens SHIT! MOVING SCREEN FUCK! There are few sights in college basketball more satisfying than watching Tom Izzo eliminated and sputtering like a malfunctioning lawnmower.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhelmQCcR3-0s4KduvqpsDXpvHHUW6urVNSO8NgLRi3ipQVjnphyU-48MFESBfhY5Ak6TF_nGiQOKpf6pMyD4HQRF4YFCc7Hxgra0IctHQ1UOW-qYZmkdDZ-uI2RHm3727eClUAbHo4lrOVVfw2qzyuloSzH7msUwog-LX28AL1i7et6OLxw7fKwzVL/s600/underwood%20opera.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhelmQCcR3-0s4KduvqpsDXpvHHUW6urVNSO8NgLRi3ipQVjnphyU-48MFESBfhY5Ak6TF_nGiQOKpf6pMyD4HQRF4YFCc7Hxgra0IctHQ1UOW-qYZmkdDZ-uI2RHm3727eClUAbHo4lrOVVfw2qzyuloSzH7msUwog-LX28AL1i7et6OLxw7fKwzVL/s320/underwood%20opera.png" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Underwood brings down the house in his showstopping number Jesus Christ Will You Fuckin Box Out <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am not going to pretend that I have any expertise on UCLA. I tried watching their tournament game to prepare some detailed scouting notes such as seeing the names of the players, but the game was so out of hand and boring that I quickly turned it off in favor of closer contests, so my knowledge of UCLA is that their head coach bears an eerie resemblance to the angry vice principal from the Back to the Future movies. But I do know that the Wildcats will not be fazed by the overwhelming odds. There's no reason to think Northwestern can win this other than every single thing that this team has done this entire season. </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">BASEBALLS OF THE WORLD<br /></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am disappointed that the World Baseball Classic, which has been a perfect late-night sports option for the past couple of weeks, has now run into the most chaotic parts of March Madness. Memphis was desperately attempting to fend off an upset from Florida Atlantic in the second half as Mexico tried to rally against Puerto Rico in front of a delightfully insane crowd in Miami. Tonight, the United States will try to solve unexpected tournament juggernaut Venezuela during the Northwestern-UCLA game. It's a shame that these two tournaments have crashed together this weekend in a ports conflagration; it is hard to focus on baseball, particularly the painstaking version of high-intensity elimination game baseball, while a college basketball team filled with guys with orthopedic accessories is nipping at the heels of a two-seed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The World Baseball Classic is a tremendous sporting event because of the enormous disparity of talent on display. On the one hand, several teams are awe-inspiring collections of <i>galacticos</i>; the Dominican team alone could function as a pretty good all-star squad, and the American team's lineup features multiple MVPs. At the same time, most of the other teams are collections of amateurs, minor-leaguers, marginal major league players, and, most enjoyably, former marginal major leaguers-- there are few things better than looking at a WBC roster and seeing a guy you vaguely remember from ten years ago is still pitching in Curacao.. The tournament's darlings were the Czech team made of up players who actually live in the Czech Republic and work day jobs except Eric Sogard and watching them in awe that they get to play in the same game as Shohei Ohtani.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">While the collisions of the heavyweights have been enjoyable (the pool elimination game between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico was a like a playoff Game 7 atmosphere that also seemed like a party), I've really been enjoying the games between teams with players I've never heard of. The feeling of turning on high-stakes baseball game at 10 pm contested by teams filled with players you don't see often in MLB-- squat, spherical outfielders, 45 year-old pitchers who look like they might need to take an urgent business call in the dugout, excited teenagers-- while an announcer desperately is searching for things to say like "Donovan Bluddle made it to Double A with the Brewers in 2013 and now plays for the Brisbane Gobblers" is powerful enough to require a prescription.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The World Baseball Classic is also an enjoyable tour of international baseball cultures. Watching always provides a depressing reminder that the dour American unwritten rules are perhaps the least fun way to watch and play baseball that exists on the planet. For a brief moment, Miami becomes the most joyful baseball venue imaginable before it once again becomes infected by the Marlins. The atmosphere at the games in Taiwan during home games looked incredible. I also appreciate the teams largely made up of North American players attempting to come up with stereotypical on-base celebrations. The British team decided to mime sipping tea with their pinkies extended when they got on base and let Trayce Thompson strut around the dugout with what appeared to be a Burger King-quality crown after hitting a home run off Adam Wainwright; the Italian team, made up almost exclusively of Americans, decided to celebrate with a suite of Vaguely Italian Gestures.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh44GyFZm8WQuDMyUwZBUyxXQY7glVc6qsKUE-Xv5bIVky36zFJ4So6XQ_2kbewr4KazUA_SL5vxso-cYEJKhthjFvh-QdxvkFDj6_QXPhc3uzZkdqj02kOi23tNr0GzqAPQY6N8pCWMpfk6sa-7D4qo4690vaI5S5kSWin_wMjxjNTR9T7VQtD-EJY/s987/italy%20wbc.gif"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh44GyFZm8WQuDMyUwZBUyxXQY7glVc6qsKUE-Xv5bIVky36zFJ4So6XQ_2kbewr4KazUA_SL5vxso-cYEJKhthjFvh-QdxvkFDj6_QXPhc3uzZkdqj02kOi23tNr0GzqAPQY6N8pCWMpfk6sa-7D4qo4690vaI5S5kSWin_wMjxjNTR9T7VQtD-EJY/w400-h224/italy%20wbc.gif" width="400" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The WBC's elimination phase is, like the latter stages of the NCAA Tournament, less compelling to me than pool play. By now, the teams filled with hopefuls, amateurs, and waddling sports geriatrics have all been eliminated and either dispersed back to the American minors or their own domestic leagues struggling to grab a foothold on dusty fields in places where people generally don't like baseball. The rest of the tournament is mainly filled with different configurations of players we generally will be watching the rest of the summer. The exception is Japan, which is largely made up of excellent players in NPB that I never see and several phenoms that will eventually make their way to the United States, and Shohei Ohtani, who is worth watching in any context. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The magic of the WBC and NCAA Tournament is not only the delight of upsets but the peek beyond the highest-profile teams that reveal the more distant horizons of a sport, that once you get past the teams and players you see on TV all the time there is a vast array of people still playing at a relatively high level but who also have been sifted out of the highest levels because they are too small or too rotund or a little too slow or they look ridiculous in rec specs, and the joy that they get from being in the spotlight for awhile even if its just to get shunted out of the tournament by a much better team. But sometimes they don't and they continue to win beyond all expectation, and I hope to see one more colossal upset Saturday night. <br /></span></p><p></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-28911643154378314782023-03-16T10:12:00.003-05:002023-03-16T10:14:23.573-05:00Holy Shit Northwestern Is In The Actual NCAA Tournament<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">At the beginning of this basketball season, Northwestern sent out an email with a video of a bearded Chris Collins in a windowless office imploring fans to come out and support the team that looked like a deposed head of state in exile calling for weapons and reinforcements. Northwestern's previous lackluster season finished with Iowa scoring 455 points on them in the Big Ten Tournament, and it seemed like more disappointment was on the way. For the second year in a row, its top players had left the program. Collins had found himself in the crosshairs of Northwestern's several dozen fans, and the new athletic director had ended last season with a cryptically worded statement that seemed to indicate that Collins would likely be fired at the end of another crummy campaign. The program seemed to be in a death spiral or what would be a death spiral at other schools and was just sort of the baseline state of Northwestern men’s basketball. Four months later, a wave of students enveloped the court in ecstasy as the Wildcats beat number-one Purdue and secured their second-ever berth in the NCAA Tournament, and I am still trying to process that this has actually happened and I am not trapped in some bizarre fever dream and am going to wake up in September after getting hit in the head by a foul ball hit by a Cubs callup named Trant Manstadan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwT7V2-XvfYbT6BvzV4uuOyin6jjcJCe3avGmd2BnmzXeK55b3FD1Fg3FDt9PDL47jQvIUT1X_njepskGjkkJ6fYjH022thiJ_sOSBVWt7AD6bGg1UOO2CVODWe7u0iIQQn1XxGAgl6uEjUV05aIyn-O7mb8_ezrIXNRBvbsayvvCv2pkoyqgRlOyi/s856/chris%20collins%20embattled.png"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwT7V2-XvfYbT6BvzV4uuOyin6jjcJCe3avGmd2BnmzXeK55b3FD1Fg3FDt9PDL47jQvIUT1X_njepskGjkkJ6fYjH022thiJ_sOSBVWt7AD6bGg1UOO2CVODWe7u0iIQQn1XxGAgl6uEjUV05aIyn-O7mb8_ezrIXNRBvbsayvvCv2pkoyqgRlOyi/w400-h225/chris%20collins%20embattled.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Collins reassures supporters that Northwestern basketball still holds key fortifications near a Walgreens at the Wilmette border </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">College sports have matched the pros in delivering a flurry of player movement, and it seems to me that fans have increasingly thought about their teams’ prospects in terms of getting players on or off the roster. This mindset makes it easy to forget that, especially in college sports, players can sometimes just get much better. Boo Buie, for example, spent three years as an exciting scorer whose outbursts could only reliably occur against Michigan State and then this season seemed to have had received a Promethean gift of basketball heroics and began playing as if every opponent had become a shrieking Tom Izzo whose head glistens red like a defrosting steak with every Buie dagger.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern's shocking improvement also comes from its transformation into a brutal, pain-in-the-ass defense. The turnaround is largely attributed to schematic changes overseen by new assistant coach Chris Lowery, but also from the players deciding to make every opponent half-court possession a nightmare. Chase Audige has emerged as a particular menace, cutting off passing lanes or suddenly materializing on the court to snag a pass he was nowhere near. The result of this makes Northwestern games delightfully miserable to watch. Their aesthetic is disgusting. Northwestern is not exactly a smooth offensive machine, so every Big Ten game they play is rife with endless scoring droughts. Their last game against Penn State in the Big Ten tournament appeared to take place in an arena testing out experimental rims smaller than the basketball as both teams ran intricate halfcourt shoving-based offenses that ended up with a ball bouncing dispiritingly off the hoop before they trudged to the other side and started doing it again. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The result of Northwestern's transformation into a defensive juggernaut and vehicle for Boo Buie theatrics is the greatest season in school history. They won the program's most conference games. They went undefeated against the state of Indiana. They beat Illinois wearing provocative Chicago-themed jerseys and Indiana with a last-second Buie floater that had Hoosiers whining about a push-off like a chorus of Bryons Rusell. The Wildcats crushed Iowa so badly that Fran McCaffrey, who already looks like the
villain in a Pixar movie except with less realistic hair, got insanely
mad and had to be thrown out of the game, in front of all of his sons. The Associated Press was still unable to locate a Northwestern logo when Northwestern briefly made the top 25. Chris Collins won the Big Ten coach of the year award in a year where he was supposed to be fired and I remain both unsure whether he is actually a good basketball coach and positive that he is the greatest coach in program history.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://on3static.com/uploads/dev/assets/cms/2023/02/19194209/fran-mccaffery-receives-double-technical-gets-ejected-after-arguing-with-officials-courtney-green.png" width="400" /></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">That's when the attack comes SWISH from the sides, from the other fran mccaffery you didn't even know was there<br /></span><br />In 2017, it took a series of terrifying, nervy games that climaxed with a last-second win on a full court heave of a pass in order to qualify for the tournament. This year, a team that everyone picked to be last or second-to-last in the conference just whupped so many teams that they were jockeying for seeding in February. It was a new experience for fans who are used to seeing the team clinging desperately to the bubble before waiting for a series of seemingly impossible misfortunes to catapult them into the NIT or the realm of other postseason tournaments that only make sense as vast money laundering operations. <br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It has been genuinely confusing to watch Northwestern's last few games without panicking about them running afoul of some arcane bracket math. The only thing at stake was the school's conference wins record and NCAA seeding, which as a Northwestern fan is a process I have never understood despite observing it for decades, much like how the family dog understands the rustle of the treat bag but is entirely ignorant about the concept of shopping. And now here they are in the NCAA Tournament, poised to go further than any Northwestern team before them. </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">BRONCO BUSTING</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern is once again shunted off to the most remote region possible, playing Boise State in Sacramento. It looks to me like Boise State is a popular upset pick against Northwestern, featuring three point shooters that may frustrate the Wildcat defense, which is designed to let teams bomb away from three and probably miss a lot because they are college students. But I am not going to pretend like I any insight into Boise State. I have not watched a single second of Boise State basketball this season or frankly any non-Northwestern college basketball. I watched Northwestern and Rutgers play a game where they appeared to be trying to shoot with weighted medicine balls and then take approximately 85 minutes to complete the final moments of a game that was not really that close. I do not have any spare time to watch Mountain West basketball even if I was spending that time searching out streaming services to see if I have to pay to watch the Arnold clone movie where the writers cruelly made him introduce himself as "Gordy Brewer." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A Boise State-Northwestern game is apparently not a major draw. They will play an evening game on TruTV, a forgotten Warner Brothers network that materializes annually for the NCAA tournament and exists at all other times to show endless reruns of shows like You Didn't Think I'd Shove You and Ryan Wears a Cape. Northwestern's best chance to win involves playing the worst 56-52 grindfest you've ever seen that involves multiple invocations of the dreaded Time Without a Field Goal Clock. Much like the apotheosis of Wildcat football under Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern's basketball team this season exists to frighten and disgust otherwise unsuspecting bracket-wavers who do not know what they signed up for when they idly flipped over to the game. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The rest of the region is brutal. Should Northwestern manage to survive Boise State, they can look forward to a likely matchup with powerhouse UCLA. If they were to somehow win that game, they would face what would probably be a rematch with that notorious goal-tending outfit Gonzaga, which knocked the Wildcats out of the 2017 tournament and caused Chris Collins to make the second most insane series of faces he has made in his career. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFu0S9trA1WMzObEWVXqDMEv5oQPaz9mCg6er4zQ1WZawtkHwE-qqNr2NbzwrtknpBV4nSsup4N0-wch0saaxxV0j-CEhP8ts-eVdsfqF1AJpHEWgWH_StjiJgdFAeVJhyBjQmwrpG0Po/s320/chris+collins+nod+wow+title.gif" /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">My official power ranking of Insane Chris Collins Faces from least to most deranged: Michigan uncalled travel in the 2016 Big Ten Tournament; Northwestern blows 27-point lead against Michigan State in 2018 and Collins bugs his eyes out like Judge Doom from Rodger Rabbit; The Rubber-Faced Wow Offensive; Getting down on all fours and pounding the four screaming like an action movie protagonist seeing his partner gunned down three days from retirement.</span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And if you were to stare at the bracket long enough while enjoying a hallucinogenic journey you might observe there is a possibility no matter how remote that Northwestern could play Illinois in the Elite Eight, a cataclysm that would require the NCAA to create a rule specifically banning impersonations of Abraham Lincoln after dozens of brawling spectators would be injured attempting nineteenth-century wrestling moves. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj6WPXQaVnk0KFJnBgJdbu9xIPP1as2-VlYbNPj5jZhSviVAYurpr5UmLDNsR6blxZS6JXLRKwISDlnG77khok5ouk2p-gj5d_uHUNkcyLzZ1WsVC-Y_t4M-VWeETwqB0SGja79vUmMCNmtzq-j8QxvkLrJKhxwf8be9AnalJfE8C-yeWGd7gzaCvb/s1404/lincoln%20wrestling.webp"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj6WPXQaVnk0KFJnBgJdbu9xIPP1as2-VlYbNPj5jZhSviVAYurpr5UmLDNsR6blxZS6JXLRKwISDlnG77khok5ouk2p-gj5d_uHUNkcyLzZ1WsVC-Y_t4M-VWeETwqB0SGja79vUmMCNmtzq-j8QxvkLrJKhxwf8be9AnalJfE8C-yeWGd7gzaCvb/w400-h333/lincoln%20wrestling.webp" width="400" /> </span></a></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I have no idea what the the rest of this comic is other than this panel was placed without context in a <a href="https://wgntv.com/news/cover-story/abraham-lincoln-hall-of-fame-wrestler-how-the-ancient-sport-shaped-the-16th-president/">WGN story</a> about Lincoln's wrestling exploits that relates a wrestling match between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong, the toughest member of the Clary Grove Boys in New Salem, Illinois and ends with a quote from Northwestern wrestling coach Matt Storniolo who said “I think you can see a lot of ways that wrestling could have influenced Abraham Lincoln.” <br /></span><br />Regardless of what happens in the tournament, it is impossible to not be thrilled for Northwestern's players. I will never hold any college player's decision to move on against him-- it is ludicrous to hold a grudge against any athlete choosing to exercise agency in this exploitative sport, and it is hardly ridiculous to want to go to a team that seemed more likely to make the tournament and play in bigger games and get more exposure. Nevertheless, Buie, Audige, and Robbie Beran stuck around and they managed to get to the Dance. It is incredibly gratifying to see them getting to play in big games in a packed Welsh-Ryan arena which actually seems like a home arena for the first time since the renovation. I am giddy that with maybe one victory and a massive upset Boo Buie may transcend the miserable history of this program and become not just a Northwestern basketball legend, which he already is, but the program's first genuine <a href="http://bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com/2022/03/an-incompleat-taxonomy-of-march-madess.html">March Madness Guy</a>. </span><br /></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-56628856720174914912022-11-26T12:23:00.002-06:002023-02-20T10:48:07.547-06:00A Hat? In This Economy?<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you can say one positive thing about the 2022 Northwestern football season is that it is mercifully over. The Wildcats are nursing a single win over Nebraska, they will have their worst season since 1989, and the program seems to have plummeted from the highs of a Big Ten West championship back to its miserable historical depths in only two years. On Saturday, they will have one more desperate attempt to salvage something from the season by prying the Hat from atop the bulbous, far side caricature skull of Bret Bielema and then retreat to whatever lair Pat Fitzgerald crawls into the offseason as he tries to figure out how much longer he can retain his imperial control over the football program while actively in the Rick Venturi Zone.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The last two losses summarized the season so far. The first turned into a miserable blowout in Minnesota, where they only interesting wrinkle was the Gophers tearing through every available quarterback; there was a point in the fourth quarter when it seemed like the Wildcats were one quarterback injury away from the impressment of anyone large and wearing a purple sweatshirt. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAInhgq3ZczdjWSfULKFEieyJu45xKcsKD725mddWxm9uQqfauP05iG3NDYOQk-DA1bXsFXMSYRJJpQ2Tz2bw3nPn7Eg_8rHcqBqIxXPMcY2mgmzeqzNJwCpYja0sTkjeyTO19U7HsY3Zp0pIvB3h-pe5PriCs3sZNvkj3ng8wne0-t-p6rvml10xI/s1024/beer.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAInhgq3ZczdjWSfULKFEieyJu45xKcsKD725mddWxm9uQqfauP05iG3NDYOQk-DA1bXsFXMSYRJJpQ2Tz2bw3nPn7Eg_8rHcqBqIxXPMcY2mgmzeqzNJwCpYja0sTkjeyTO19U7HsY3Zp0pIvB3h-pe5PriCs3sZNvkj3ng8wne0-t-p6rvml10xI/s320/beer.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Beer is served in clear, plastic cups at TCF Bank Stadium in case a fan finds Fitzgerald's Shilling and is forced to play quarterback for the Northwestern Wildcats </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The second game was close enough to imagine Northwestern winning. Then again, the game was only so close because of an incredible turn of events where a Purdue pick-six was called back because the officials found the cornerback guilty of Illegal Hurrahsman-ship for high stepping for 30 yards and made them take the ball back at the 30, which resulted in a three and out and a missed field goal. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-jkSyyQyt25qi272vfPa9D5cHasebKpZnXpMOxtJml3B08xp9B3_siT_uNBY4xktvt-TkFLrq2yhiBhwwvC33yk0U-HunhJbB91Hnjjx1D7U4M5e9d8wnSqeQtbhlSCj3GnjqJ8_a00qRmcY3j1u2BCccwOID8vUOioLenyLPtYKyhn8vOpkV1e35/s1000/purdue%20high%20step.webp"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-jkSyyQyt25qi272vfPa9D5cHasebKpZnXpMOxtJml3B08xp9B3_siT_uNBY4xktvt-TkFLrq2yhiBhwwvC33yk0U-HunhJbB91Hnjjx1D7U4M5e9d8wnSqeQtbhlSCj3GnjqJ8_a00qRmcY3j1u2BCccwOID8vUOioLenyLPtYKyhn8vOpkV1e35/s320/purdue%20high%20step.webp" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">I am sorry for even putting such offensive and disgusting content on this website. </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As a college football fan, the officiating on this play was a travesty, an insanely draconian outcome for overly festive running that serves as a reminder that the NCAA's ruling cabal of severe, frown-lined bureaucrats seem to have a bizarre vision of college football where the thousands of drunk people at games many of whom were dressed inexplicably in shark costumes would see a guy lifting his legs a few extra inches off the ground on a game-securing touchdown and say "that simply will not do." On the other hand, as a fan of a team who benefited from the call, I can say that, as a turn of events, it was extremely funny.</span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">(SIGH) HAT HAT HAT HAT</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern has an opportunity to salvage their season by doing the seemingly impossible and prising the Hat from the prodigious skull of Bret Bielema. That will be a difficult task. The Illini are finishing an excellent season; last week they nearly took out Michigan on the road. They have an impregnable defense and their running game will test a Wildcat defense that has struggled all season stopping opponents' ground games. Illinois will be heavily favored and the Ryan Field stands will be glowing orange. But in this game, North America's greatest sports rivalry, one can only hope that it is an indescribable and possibly deranged urged for the Hat can drive Northwestern to an inexplicable victory.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtHge-rLOQylg78fteB3RUAwTA6LviEPTn0-OfEQbaNShQAtnMtJn2dwoVaY3QHEkHRXGwp7D678BXC2KWkSbP7DE2h5UHmc0r2ZsqnKXNRoCor0XaBuRb6hmk45BYRtMcxvm8iGdQuEiBmJMj0--lAs3ePRp0qUkbpLtOtLNUtQdlqQiJgRAhXDgW/s680/bielema%20hat.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtHge-rLOQylg78fteB3RUAwTA6LviEPTn0-OfEQbaNShQAtnMtJn2dwoVaY3QHEkHRXGwp7D678BXC2KWkSbP7DE2h5UHmc0r2ZsqnKXNRoCor0XaBuRb6hmk45BYRtMcxvm8iGdQuEiBmJMj0--lAs3ePRp0qUkbpLtOtLNUtQdlqQiJgRAhXDgW/s320/bielema%20hat.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">If The Hat is not won during the game, I will assemble a Heist Crew to steal it from the Illinois Athletic Facility where we are call caught 35 seconds after entering the building. </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Illinois has more than just Hat Lust on the line; a win and Purdue loss against Indiana that could happen if for example they have multiple touchdowns called back for Too Many High Fives or Excessive Smiling would thrust the Illini into a potential Big Ten West championship clusterfuck. After Iowa's very funny loss to Nebraska, there is the possibility that four teams could finish 5-4 in Big Ten play, which would require cracking open the dusty books of Legends and Leaders to determine the ancient Tie-Breaking Scenarios with one team headed to certain slaughter in Indianapolis and the rest somehow all heading simultaneously to the Music City Bowl.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivQ-MSy3LnVbitWrRNvSyiha03VX0SS1iqD-bnT5rbK1Sl1RyYIT6fw5kj29ta-f7pQuPUE0WQVUWJSLiSvyXkIXO4hAHMzGmkQpQHTfRRMz1Mnpk3MoGXK9c98fg1kDTloEth_zmonyNtL8TJ30Pkr9A2kbyVbYUzaid60Ien6x4vgewWH1lDZb5R/s580/old%20computer.webp"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivQ-MSy3LnVbitWrRNvSyiha03VX0SS1iqD-bnT5rbK1Sl1RyYIT6fw5kj29ta-f7pQuPUE0WQVUWJSLiSvyXkIXO4hAHMzGmkQpQHTfRRMz1Mnpk3MoGXK9c98fg1kDTloEth_zmonyNtL8TJ30Pkr9A2kbyVbYUzaid60Ien6x4vgewWH1lDZb5R/s320/old%20computer.webp" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Breaking down the potential Big Ten West Tie-Breaking scenarios if Purdue chokes.</span><br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This season, I have been seeing a lot of discussion online about how the Big Ten West is a flaming garbage scow and the federal government should intervene specifically to stop the Big Ten West teams from playing unwatchable lummoxing football at each other every week and I'm incensed. Anytime there is grousing about how breathtakingly mediocre and hideous the division is, Northwestern should be contending in it. Northwestern football is like one of those single-celled organisms that live in volcanoes and hydrothermal vents that are viable in environments where no one wants to be, and when the Big Ten west is essentially a giant pile of toxic waste, the Wildcats should be thriving. Unfortunately they have one year to get their act together before the California teams force some sort of grand realignment and the conference is forced to create new divisions such as maybe "legends" or "leaders" that could destroy the magic of the Big Ten West. I hope that Kevin Warren and his henchmen think long and hard about the effect on Northwestern and all of the other grasping oaf programs in college football's greatest division before acting too quickly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">One innovation I think could help the Big Ten West become even more annoying would be to bring back ties. I was inspired by USA manager Gregg Berhalter's heroic decision to have Christian Pulisic simply kick a ball to nowhere in order to seal a tie at the end of the USA-England game when it occurred to me what Pat Fitzgerald would do offensively if the Wildcats were able to weaponize a draw to drive opponents completely insane. Imagine a scenario where it would benefit both Northwestern and Iowa to tie instead of trying risky forward passes and they just alternately kneeled for the entire game. Imagine a scenario where every Big Ten West team has like four ties during a season because no one is letting their extremely Big Ten West quarterbacks dare to throw the ball for the entire second half while fans throw garbage on the field. Imagine the Playoff Committee having to sort through the concept of a one-tie Conference Champion while sports radio callers besiege their headquarters with towers and sappers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Unfortunately there is no tie scenario today. The stakes are binary: you either have the Hat or you slink away from the stadium, crushed and bare-headed. This season has been such a disaster that no amount of Hats can salvage it, but it would sure feel better to go into an offseason with a heroic Hat victory than the same thing that's happened every other week. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>BUCK DUCKETT IN THE PANTS FROM BEYOND</b><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Why does he want to meet us in the middle of the woods?" Crodway asked, brushing back a branch in the dark. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Obviously, there are a lot of eyes around. Once we get the pants, we just bring them home. No one can prove where we got them. No one can say shit," Laslow said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Crodway was not assuaged. The forest was impenetrably dark save for the beams of their flashlights, and he suspected that Laslow didn't know where he was going. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"You'd better not get us lost in here. Coach has got Madford looking for us making sure we're not getting in trouble. This is definitely trouble."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Relax," Laslow said. "We're almost at the clearing."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Crodway didn't answer. This whole thing was Laslow's idea. Sure, he could use some new pants. Laslow said they were rare and had never been seen in the United States before. That's what Mr. Gludcrul had told him. But he was out here mainly because Laslow would otherwise be out in the woods alone, and he was already dangerously close to the bench after throwing three picks in last week's game. Crodway, who already spent his Saturdays desperately trying to prevent opponents from hitting his quarterback, figured that he might as well try to stop him from getting completely lost in the woods.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"I don't see his car yet," Laslow said. "Dude, you should see this car," Laslow said. "Rolls. Phantom. He said he'd maybe let me take it for a spin if we get the win." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But they were at the clearing and there was no one there. It was eerily still, like the trees themselves were trying desperately to avoid detection. There was silence. Then a rustling. The sound seemed to come from behind them then from the left. But when they aimed their flashlights into the forest surrounding them, they saw nothing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Five minutes, Laslow, then we have to go," Crodway said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There was nothing. And then there was something. Some formless shape seeming like it had materialized from the trees, something almost imperceptible but definitively there and something that was definitely moving towards them. They turned to run but no matter what direction they turned it was in front of them moving closer and closer.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">-----------</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Detective Carl Tratt was five minutes from the end of his shift when the call came in, five minutes from a warm house with a warm, brown bottle and instead he was squatting in the frost in a forest clearing looking at two bodies. A professor found them on what he told the officer was his "morning constitutional," which made Tratt dread having to the professor later on. He was told what he'd find when he'd come in but he was still not prepared for this. The bodies were desiccated, almost shriveled. Neither seemed to have much blood in them, but there was none at the scene. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Jesus Christ, what the hell happened to them?" he asked the Paul Quatch, the medical examiner.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"I've never seen anything like it. No blood. No wounds. No trauma. I have no idea what the hell could have done this."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tratt's phone rang. He listened for a few minutes and frowned, then hung up and paced around.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Quatch, that was the office. Coach called in this morning. They've got two football players missing. One of the roommates saw them grab some flashlights on the way out. Says they were on the way to get some pants."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Oh no," Quatch said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"That's right," Tratt said, sighing. "They've already called in Duckett. He's on the train from Indianapolis."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Well better get your cloak cleaned and your amulets shiny," Quatch said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tratt had never met the NCAA investigator Buck Duckett, but he heard about him. It was bound to happen when you worked in a college town. Most of the time, you would just hear about Duckett poking around in a trash can outside an athletic facility or harassing some big time booster at a country club. But Duckett was also an encyclopedia of college football's dark underbelly. He knew all of the secret deals, he knew the networks of people funneling money into the sport. It was rare that any of that dealing crossed from an NCAA infraction into the realm of an actual crime, but when it did he was a useful person to talk to. But no one on the force wanted to.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The fact is that any conversation with Buck Duckett could swerve in bizarre directions. The rumors were that Duckett believed in all sorts of strange, spooky stuff: monsters, spirits, demon cults, that sort of thing, and word spread among campus police that he could be found doing incantations or reading from scrolls. He creeped everyone out. Now, because some kid had mentioned pants to a detective, he was rolling up on Duckett's doorstep. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">------------</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Chief, this is ridiculous. The guy's not even law enforcement. He gets people suspended for eating a burrito that someone else paid for," Tratt said. They were in the office, and the blinds were drawn.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Tratt, my hands are tied. This is the only thread we have, and we're pulling on it," Chief Stunch said. "You know if these kids were looking for pants, he's the best shot at finding out who they were getting from and why they were in that clearing. If you have any better ideas, let me know."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tratt fumed. He had nothing else. "Fine, I'll talk to him. But I can't investigate a murder and keep an eye on this guy. You know what he does. He slinks around. He talks to people. He hides in dumpsters and he has false mustaches. I can't watch him constantly," Tratt said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Well you'll have to keep him close to you, then. He's here," the Chief said. He picked up his phone. "Bring him in."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Duckett glided through the door. He was not what Tratt was expecting. He thought that Duckett would be wearing a cloak or at least some sort of skull necklace. He was expecting him to have a sack of poultices or amulets. But the man who walked in was dressed in a crisp suit with a tie and an anachronistic men's hat and carried a briefcase. If anything, this was more disconcerting. He looked like an FBI agent from the 1950s.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Buck Duckett, NCAA," Duckett said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Carl Tratt," Tratt said. "We found two bodies in a clearing. Likely football players. Quarterback and a center. Seemed one of them might have had a line on some pants." <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Thanks for coming, Duckett," Chief Stunch said. "I'll leave you two to it. Tratt should have everything you need." He left the room.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"You know of anyone throwing money around who likes to do pants drops in the forest?" Tratt said. "Is that the MO of any operators?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Duckett opened his briefcase and picked up a file folder and slapped it on the table. "Errol 'Jimmy' Budesnon III." He grabbed another one. "Bud 'Poke' Hanragason. Tad Hadley. Hudd 'Scrote' Thomas." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"That's a lot of pants guys," Tratt said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"No, it's just one. I haven't figured out what his name is here yet."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"You're telling me there's a booster doling out pants and changing his name and no one has caught on yet?" </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Duckett just stared at him. He closed the briefcase and removed his hat. A deep scar ran down his head parallel to the his scalp on the left side leaving a trench in a square buzzcut.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"You know who I am and what I do," Duckett said. "I know you don't want me here. I know you all think I'm a kook. I understand that. But I also know that this is the first time he's ever left the bodies like deflated sacks in the woods."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tratt paused. He hadn't mentioned the state of the bodies or that the baffled medical
examiner's office was already on the phone with some out-of-state
experts.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"This booster is not just changing his name. When he leaves, it's as if he never existed. Just a disappeared athlete and what appears to be no memory. Holding galas for the coach and showering them with money and then he's gone. The locker room is renamed. You see that enough times and you start to believe there's something more sinister going on here than pants," Duckett said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He took a large dusty book out of his briefcase. It took me sixteen years to find this thing and it damn near cost me my skull. I've been tracking this thing since those fullbacks disappeared. I think I know what we're dealing with. But I'm going to need your help. He opened the book. <i>Lesser Pants Daemons.</i> <br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-50521430619614699132022-11-12T12:59:00.002-06:002023-02-20T10:24:10.967-06:00High Winds Actors<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpj1WgNknfRtvJe0Y7Vlw_DlO013--Jcu4DHtDAfv22c4Ll-U0y5Q8CmtI3SAW7GiKSr8K4axfiBGGoq4Z8ZZABYQpJlGF-lhHWrVPl1JtGVUFaf69xkrQnIm1Y9ZWAiYYCZ1YqIm6-EuQX-garrWsVrqkRjSoUI3GAolX4npo8CU-T4riuIbij_dg/s1732/maganavox%20guy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="737" data-original-width="1732" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpj1WgNknfRtvJe0Y7Vlw_DlO013--Jcu4DHtDAfv22c4Ll-U0y5Q8CmtI3SAW7GiKSr8K4axfiBGGoq4Z8ZZABYQpJlGF-lhHWrVPl1JtGVUFaf69xkrQnIm1Y9ZWAiYYCZ1YqIm6-EuQX-garrWsVrqkRjSoUI3GAolX4npo8CU-T4riuIbij_dg/s320/maganavox%20guy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is one way to characterize this Northwestern football season that is not miserable and depressing and that is to think of it as a prolonged experiment in how much of a minor natural disaster it takes for the 2022 Wildcats to compete in a Big Ten game.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Earlier this season, Northwestern played a very good Penn State team in a ceaseless downpour and the conditions got so mucked up and horrible that it caused the Nittany Lions running backs to have the ball constantly squirt out of their hands nearly every time they tried to do anything other than fall down. The conditions allowed Northwestern's Slopsmen to keep the game close enough to disgust the Penn State fans who had chosen to get soaked and voluntarily watch a football game involving Northwestern. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Last Saturday, big, bad Ohio State came into Ryan Field expecting the normal type of disastrous annihilation when the #2 team in the country plays a team that has not currently won a game in the United States in more than a calendar year. Instead, they were greeted with gale force winds and torrential rain that would sort of pop up every once in awhile like Christopher Walken in a late 1990s comedy. The result of this weather on Ohio State's deadly precision offense can be best described as hilarious. Every series, the Buckeyes would send their superstar Heisman finalist quarterback out there to try to throw the ball to a gigantic, blindingly fast receiver that had a step on the Northwestern secondary and every time a gust of wind would turn into a Monty Python foot and slam the ball back into the ground. Meanwhile, Pat Fitzgerald got to dust off the most perverted pre-electricity playbook he could find in some haunted football reliquary and refused to call a single pass. The backs ran it. The quarterback ran it. In fact, for a large amount of time, there was no quarterback on the field and the Northwestern team was somehow using leather helmets and calling each other names like "Sport," or "Walleye." </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdqz6bI98qPx6hx0m2tTG_kYSOs7YeXQ75ZoOWLlv52hEEMiUOxw6CHQrn2I-oEjRI42V5ec__s3mvTKQDwMT0VxsElTm_GPENSbRDnKJKcuXrxDU5X7roSgpBM1j6_dGc8sLnbVFviy2FoB5XFun2EriB-3QfwBJRFGjHgHzz9Pw8SbzI6Ff7-eHa/s961/toast%20high%20winds.gif"><img border="0" height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdqz6bI98qPx6hx0m2tTG_kYSOs7YeXQ75ZoOWLlv52hEEMiUOxw6CHQrn2I-oEjRI42V5ec__s3mvTKQDwMT0VxsElTm_GPENSbRDnKJKcuXrxDU5X7roSgpBM1j6_dGc8sLnbVFviy2FoB5XFun2EriB-3QfwBJRFGjHgHzz9Pw8SbzI6Ff7-eHa/w400-h129/toast%20high%20winds.gif" width="400" /></a><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some All-22 film of Ohio State's first-half offense<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This worked, briefly. The plan to use the miserable conditions as part of a concerted effort to avoid playing football meant that Northwestern held a lead and the Buckeyes to a tie for a large chunk of the game. The weather helped the Wildcats' secret home field advantage that, despite fans being greatly outnumbered by visitors at all Northwestern home games, absolutely no one wants to be at Ryan Field. For approximately two and a half hours, Ohio State fans were cold, wet, miserable, and forced to contemplate the impossible dignity of losing to Northwestern for the first time in 17 years, this time not to a decent team running a then-novel offense while the Buckeyes kept a future Heisman quarterback benched in favor of one of the most Big Ten quarterbacks to ever lumber out of an Ohio subdivision, but to a Northwestern team whose sole win is over a Nebraska squad whose entire strategy consisted of coordinated vomiting. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lEFx1qmW4ts" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Did Northwestern win this game? Of course not. But they largely succeeded in the Holy Mission of Northwestern Football, making Ohio State fans mad for a little bit. With every loss, Northwestern gains a more powerful weapon by making the record worse and more radioactive, and every minute they can hold a lead, a tie, or even a sub 10-point deficit against a better team (which is all of them except-- and I cannot emphasize this enough-- the Nebraska Cornhuskers) they are going to annoy, irritate, and horrify opposing fans. It was bad enough when these teams had to lose to Wildcat teams that were objectively good; the 45 real minutes or so when this Northwestern team was leading literally Ohio State because the game was being played in the Magnavox Guy's rumpus room had to be among the funniest 45 minutes of football played this season.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Unfortunately, it does not seem likely that Northwestern will be able to do more than briefly lead for the rest of the season. Saturday they face a very good Minnesota team led by tailback Mohamed Ibrahim who feels like he has been running over the Big Ten West for 25 years. He is joined by a new quarterback who is quickly-- oh wait, I have just been informed that Tanner Morgan is somehow still in Minneapolis and due to Covid-era Time Distortion, I cannot remember Minnesota having a quarterback who is not Tanner Morgan. The Gophers are 6-3 under that moldy acronym-monger P.J. Fleck and his fucking boat. After Minnesota, Northwestern in on the road against a Purdue team that currently has a winning record and then must play a home Hat Game against an Illinois team that has suddenly turned into an unstoppable juggernaut that has Bret Bielema bellowing over the corpses of Big Ten West teams dumb enough to challenge him. The dream of a two-win season feels bleak.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But it is November in the Midwest. Perhaps Northwestern will play one of these games in a blinding blizzard where Northwestern backs are able to slowly sneak past the line of scrimmage. Perhaps they will play in a small tornado where deafening sirens cause opponents to commit false start penalties. Perhaps a godzilla or other kaiju will rise from the lake and immediately attack Evanston's one sort of tall office building and while everyone is pointing at the monster and yelling Evan Hull can get past the Illini defense. Perhaps there will be a minor sharknado. The fact of the matter is, as long as it is so shitty out that it is impossible to actually play football, the 2022 Northwestern Wildcats will have a chance </span></p><p><b>INDIANA POETRY CORNER</b><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1963, the Indiana state legislature selected Arthur Franklin Mapes's "Indiana" as its official state poem. In 2016, I was selected to review the Mapes papers for a forthcoming collection of some of his Hoosier-inspired works, where I was able to view the original manuscript for his poems. I arrived at the State Historical Society of Indiana in Indianapolis, where I quickly fell under the watchful eye of a librarian, whom I immediately understood was reporting directly to my arch-rival in Mapes scholarship, G. Murdiel Klackwell. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For those of you who do not know Klackwell, he is a middling critic who has nevertheless used his powers of bureaucratic maneuvering and sleazy politicking in order to keep Mapes scholarship within his ever-tightening grasp like an academic python. Klackwell's own efforts have kept my own dynamic and boundary-pushing Mapes scholarship out of the main Mapes journals, and Klackwell has refused to let anyone confront him with pointed more-of-a-comment-than-questions in Mapes conferences by recruiting a cadre of unusually burly graduate students. And yet, Professor Klackwell provides nothing but the most wafer-thin bromides while bulldozing over the subtleties and lyricism of Mapes. Instead, my new annotated version of "Indiana" will rescue the poem from Klackwellism and provide what I believe is a fuller and more nuanced explanation of what is going on behind the poem in a crackling counterpoint to Mapes's gorgeous melodies.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">-L.R.M. Mandis-Mampis, 2001<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>INDIANA </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>by Arthur Franklin Mapes <br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">God crowned her hills with beauty,<br />Gave her lakes and winding streams,<br />Then He edged them all with woodlands<br />As the setting for our dreams.<br />Lovely are her moonlit rivers,<br />Shadowed by the sycamores,<br />Where the fragrant winds of Summer<br />Play along the willowed shores.<br />I must roam those wooded hillsides,<br />I must heed the native call,<br />For a pagan voice within me<br />Seems to answer to it all.<br />I must walk where squirrels scamper<br />Down a rustic old rail fence,<br />Where a choir of birds is singing<br />In the woodland . . . green and dense.<br />I must learn more of my homeland<br />For it's paradise to me,<br />There's no haven quite as peaceful,<br />There's no place I'd rather be.<br />Indiana . . . is a garden<br />Where the seeds of peace have grown,<br />Where each tree, and vine, and flower<br />Has a beauty . . . all its own.<br />Lovely are the fields and meadows,<br />That reach out to hills that rise<br />Where the dreamy Wabash River<br />Wanders on . . . through paradise.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Commentary</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"God crowned her hills with beauty...setting for our dreams"</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mapes is clearly describing Indiana as an ideal place. These physical features and the state's crowning natural beauty are integral to his central ideas of the Hoosier state as an Edenic paradise. By looking through the Mapes papers, although he never stated it directly, it seems obvious to me that the emphasis on bucolic nature is used as a contrast to urban areas, particularly other Midwestern cities which were dens of vice, crime, and the illegal pants trade. Describing Indiana as the "setting for our dreams" clearly implies that he has a larger goal in mind for the state beyond just talking about hills and rivers. Of course, if you were to ask the Klackwell set about it, this profound layer of meaning is utterly lost to them, possibly because Klackwell himself was spending his time building up his power in the Mapes Association of the Great Lakes in order to wield it like a cudgel and keep superior scholars out of his fancy black tie Mapes Dinners.<i> </i> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"Lovely are her moonlit rivers...shadowed by the sycamores"</i> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Notice the play of moonlight and shadow. This is a clear allusion to Operation: Sycamore, which would have been all over the news when Mapes was composing this poem. This famous operation involved the NCAA Investigator Buck Duckett disguising himself as "Mr. Pumpkin" in the Sycamore Pumpkin Festival in Sycamore, Illinois, a town close enough to De Kalb that allowed him to find nearly a dozen Northern Illinois football players accepting a cache of stylish pants and jackets that were cleverly conveyed to the school underneath a float for Kornazacki and Sons Hog Stranglers as an elder Kornazacki had lured several linemen to the school by offering free apparel and ham hocks to the twelve squarest-headed lads in the county. There is no doubt that Mapes had seen the plan to do the exchange at midnight, before Duckett intercepted them, as it was in the papers for weeks. Mapes's brilliant way of folding this event into a geographic depiction of Indiana indicates the subtle work of a master, the type of verses that led me to Mapes scholarship in the first place.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"I must roam these wooded hillsides...seems to answer to it all"</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Notice the contrast of the "pagan voice" calling with the invocation of God in the first word of the poem, setting up Indiana as a land so holy it answers to multiple sets of divine rulers. This, along with the specific use of "roam" clearly alludes to the impermanent headquarters of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It was, at the time, flitting between Kansas City, Missouri and Chicago, cities where Buck Duckett's investigations were interfered with and hampered by organized crime, most notoriously the Chicago Pants Outfit led by "Pockets" Mike Popstakl and his enforcers who had the entire Illinois defensive line in customized golf pants and Duckett's most reliable informants shut up or disappeared into various meat lockers and municipal stadiums. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"I must walk where squirrels scamper"</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">An obvious reference to the time Buck Duckett disguised himself as an enormous squirrel in order to foil the delivery of a crate of custom athletic shorts to the Ohio State wrestling team.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"I must learn more of my homeland...there's no place I'd rather be"</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here Mapes's invocation of Indiana as a paradise clearly mirrors Buck Duckett's calls to move the NCAA headquarters to Indianapolis. Mapes would have certainly been aware of this after the NCCA's well-publicized failed raid on an Ames dockyard on the Skunk River where Duckett and his team had surrounded a riverboat carrying dozens of crates of illegal socks for the Iowa State chess team. What they did not know is that someone at the NCAA had tipped off Eddie Belch, a longtime associate of Pockets Mike (who would later turn on him and erupt in the bloody Chicago Pants War or 1967 which would end in dozens of mobsters strangled with their own pants and kept turning up in haberdasheries and department stores for months). Eddie Belch's men opened fire on the raid, wounding Buck Duckett, and escaping with the socks. While recovering, Duckett began to give interviews to magazines like <i>Indiana Busybody</i> suggesting a new site for the NCAA headquarters where his operations would not moved further away from midwestern pants gangs, and Mapes's language about Indiana clearly mirrors Duckett's invocations of it as a place where he and his teams could more effectively target the proliferation of illicit pants and pants-related activity throughout the region.</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Indiana is a garden...where the seeds of peace have sown"</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Unfortunately, as Mapes knew, Buck Duckett was simply an investigator. While he had unparalleled skills tracking down clues and extracting information through pressure and the occasional slap to the head, he was not prepared for the type of bureaucratic infighting that he needed to convince the NCAA heads to move their headquarters. At this time, he was thwarted by his main rival Dreck Teckett, who Duckett suspected but was unable to conclusively prove was the key inside man for the Chicago and later Missouri Pants Outfits' operations within the NCAA. Teckett was only the deputy for the NCAA's physical facilities branch, but his superior Gave Ledbrent was a notorious drunkard, and Teckett ran the department like a warlord extracting tribute for parking passes and access to the facility's "good" cafeteria on brown meat Mondays. Duckett found his memos destroyed in garbage gondolas, his messages intercepted by Teckett's network of lackeys, and even his phone unable to dial internal lines which was a "maintenance problem" for months on end. Anyone who has ever been in a struggle with this sort of rat, like how Klackwell controls access to the unread Mapes papers by requiring you to grovel to him in his palatial office can attest how draining and impossible it is for men of more magisterial talents to waste time with these petty tyrants. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"Lovely are the fields and meadows...through paradise"</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is clear that Mapes has dedicated the final stanza of his poem to the future movement of the NCAA Headquarters to Indianapolis. This interpretation may flow over the head of lunkheads like Klackwell and his coterie of imbeciles but observe how Mapes ends the poem with the slant rhyme of "rise" with "paradise," a clear indication that the importance of conveying this subtle message took overruled his otherwise perfect rhyme scheme. Some scholars might reasonbly question that the invocation of the Wabash River since it does not flow through Indianapolis (that would be the White River), but this is a clear allusion to West Lafeyette, the city on the banks of the Wabash that was the site of Buck Duckett's largest operation. Operation: Wabash nearly shut down the entire Purdue basketball program when Duckett located and eventually destroyed a cache of the longest pants ever seized by the NCAA to accommodate Purdue's massive frontline of "Moose" Burton, "Moose" Jenkins, and "Big Moose" Kraboose, a 7'5" senior who dominated the Big Ten in the 1959 season despite being only able to briskly walk across the court.<i> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is in the interests of Klackwell and his academic henchmen to preserve the masterpiece "Indiana" as a sentimental poem about a state and cover up Mapes's intention to use the poem to pressure the NCAA to move its headquarters to Indianapolis and away from the influence of the notorious pants-gangs. That is why Klackwell personally intervened to prevent me from publishing a valedictory essay on this subject when the headquarters made its move in 1997 in <i>Mapes Shapes</i> the preeminent Mapes journal. Instead, I was forced to self-publish it and, while the essay itself is, I believe, a persuasive and perhaps even moving testimony to the power of Mapes's works and Buck Duckett's own tireless toil preventing athletes from receiving pants from miscreants, it largely went unread and unremarked upon by both Mapes scholars and the NCAA itself even after I handed it out at the 2000 Final Four held at the RCA Dome until I was bodily ushered off the premises by jackbooted police officers sent there, I presume, by Klackwell.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i> </i>As I have prepared for this new edition of my commentary on "Indiana," I have grown increasingly alarmed that Klackwell has entrenched himself completely into Mapes papers. In fact, though Klackwell has claimed that he believes the words of Mapes are sacrosanct to the point where he has extensively noted any variations from the manuscript to the published version of his poems, I have come to believe that Klackwell will do anything to suppress the "Indiana" poem's true meaning including altering the manuscript or even have one his graduate students forge an alternate version. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For that reason, I have been forced to, in the dead of night and using a series of keys I have stolen and duplicated, temporarily removed the Mapes papers from the Indiana archives and will keep them with me while I finish off my commentary. It is obvious to me that Klackwell is in the employ of the remnants of the Chicago Pants Outfit and will try to alter or destroy the papers and have me garroted with my own sock garters. Fortunately, I traveled to Indianapolis with my own trunk of wigs, train conductor uniforms, false mustaches, and a giant squirrel costume. I suppose it should be obvious now that I have been using L.R.M. Mandis-Mampis as an assumed name and am the NCAA investigator Buck Duckett whose deeds Mr. Mapes has, for whatever reason, decided to memorialize in his poem. Even as we speak, the agents of Professor Klackwell and whatever so-called "law enforcement" that is in his employ are trying to track me down to allow him access to the papers and block this commentary that will scandalize the entire government of Indiana. But I am not intimidated by him or by the various pants-assassins who have been seeking me out for decades for simply doing the work of keeping college athletics free from the decadent influence of commerce. But there it is, the tell-tale rustling outside the safehouse and I must get my old NCAA service revolver and prepare to defend these papers one last time.<br /></span></p><p></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-42311809900976772072022-11-05T10:20:00.001-05:002022-11-05T10:21:18.165-05:00Not Gross Enough<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Last week's game against Iowa was the most promising one on Northwestern's remaining schedule not because the 'Cats had any better chance to win than any of their other games but because of the hope that Iowa's offense, which had spent most of the season moving with the efficiency of a person drowning in quicksand, would combine with Northwestern's own struggling unit in a display of football so hideous and offputting that Pat Fitzgerald and all of the available Ferentz in North America would be hauled in front of a congressional panel so that they could be berated by bipartisan lawmakers showing blown up pictures of holding penalties while demanding that they answer to the American people. Alas, that did not happen. Northwestern just got smoked again in a normal bad game.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNkDfPbPJX4-cwwrIPDT7R0t1MLxXPxvZG6rlCrUh4vothJkRVZWZzYk1ePfoeaNPKFNr5NnLfTzWEtl7hMV0nu0oRcv5pf7jZI-OUuQClKU-nj7WJwXrlqbQD8Z1Z128N-e_8Xn0Se2rV2vfo2ibgZ9hFZnC-LetWunTSFJI_ZKaBVEFM71097yU/s736/fitz%20ferentz2.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNkDfPbPJX4-cwwrIPDT7R0t1MLxXPxvZG6rlCrUh4vothJkRVZWZzYk1ePfoeaNPKFNr5NnLfTzWEtl7hMV0nu0oRcv5pf7jZI-OUuQClKU-nj7WJwXrlqbQD8Z1Z128N-e_8Xn0Se2rV2vfo2ibgZ9hFZnC-LetWunTSFJI_ZKaBVEFM71097yU/s320/fitz%20ferentz2.jpg" /></a><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Wildcats, with a single win that happened what feels like twelve years ago and absolutely no reason to believe they'll add a second to the tally, are on their way to their worst season since 1989. That year they lost every single game they played. They lost to a then-independent Rutgers. Every game was a double-digit blowout, except the game to Minnesota, which they somehow lost 20-18, a score that to me does not seem possible in 1989. This is not the 1980s, though. Northwestern and its donors have inexplicably poured hundreds of millions of dollars into athletics including a fancy training center, a renovated basketball/volleyball arena, and a proposed new stadium that will cost nearly a billion dollars in its own right, they are paying Pat Fitzgerald a mysterious but presumably hefty salary, and they are getting the same results that they did when the facilities were a strip of grass and a port-a-potty. To be honest this is objectively funny.<br /><br />To be honest I have not seen a single second of the Iowa game. I was unable to watch the game live and when I saw that the score featured actual numbers and not the primal scream of an undead language, I had absolutely no incentive to watch the specific ways that they had gotten bludgeoned and pinioned all over Kinnick Stadium. Northwestern under Fitzgerald has rarely been a fun team to watch; the entire enterprise, even at its best, often involved grimly clinging to the lead in the second half in a way that resembled watching the second half of Uncut Gems every Saturday. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic6_4SugRv6n7M549Grm2EkoQUGNa1HrLs9UajkEY7P38B1pXyjzVFxNVdVLuRopD49p_621Ng6tTD_gAaRNNuqAlyg8eP4iddm7FDjvI60qBCT3HSGt3f9zpMFcexVJvcb3RXuZw8u6PdSJ4M3OINTTVaPjgPB-pdXxAOUOdN-2oIwpavyRFsIMMU/s1200/m00n_pic.0.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic6_4SugRv6n7M549Grm2EkoQUGNa1HrLs9UajkEY7P38B1pXyjzVFxNVdVLuRopD49p_621Ng6tTD_gAaRNNuqAlyg8eP4iddm7FDjvI60qBCT3HSGt3f9zpMFcexVJvcb3RXuZw8u6PdSJ4M3OINTTVaPjgPB-pdXxAOUOdN-2oIwpavyRFsIMMU/s320/m00n_pic.0.jpg" /></a><br />This is how I win <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now, Fitzgerald has the Wildcats play the same style of grimy, grinding football, and the results for the past two seasons have not been there. The faint hope of infuriating or at the very least annoying the various teams of the Big Ten has been evaporating.<br /><br />The Big Ten West this year is a shit show, a maddening collection of mediocrity. This is the type of year where Northwestern has in the past been able to wriggle through the abyss and end up in Indianapolis or at the very least the Eccentric Uncle Mustache Pincher Wax Bowl. Instead, they just keep getting bonked about the helmet. It is normally hard to make the case to anyone why they should watch Northwestern football or that Northwestern has a football team with uniforms and everything; it is impossible to do so now. Time to look at this week's opponent.<br /><br /><b>A TECHNICAL AND DETAILED ANALYSIS OF NORTHWESTERN'S UPCOMING GAME AGAINST THE OHIO STATE BUCKEYES</b><br /><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjIBSJ9R5p7C4dNAKGPcy565OoIxN1WdMzJjIpCOFLITn0O-DuquWNPA-MDUESt0lVRKdUt_roDMV46VFytfsqnLYr8VHcWorWZPsVhWQz-pXDHv0Ke77qo_k_2SzgRtecytKGPdQssqhR6eNcUA11SWguNQGxBvfsTLhzd2iQpiFW519sjqPvBQ8r/s650/heston%20laugh.gif"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjIBSJ9R5p7C4dNAKGPcy565OoIxN1WdMzJjIpCOFLITn0O-DuquWNPA-MDUESt0lVRKdUt_roDMV46VFytfsqnLYr8VHcWorWZPsVhWQz-pXDHv0Ke77qo_k_2SzgRtecytKGPdQssqhR6eNcUA11SWguNQGxBvfsTLhzd2iQpiFW519sjqPvBQ8r/w400-h170/heston%20laugh.gif" width="400" /></a></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>THE WORLD SERIES IS AN INSTRUMENT OF MADNESS</b><br /><br />Every baseball fan wants to see their team in the World Series, but it is no small comfort that when that doesn't happen the fan is rewarded with the immense luxury of not having to watch her team play in the World Series. Neutral fans get to enjoy the unbearable tension of each pitch, the crowd roaring and retreating like an ocean wave, the catharsis of a timely hit and the crushing misery of an error and the fans of the two teams playing experience the world series by thinking to themselves: aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh aaaaaahhhhh.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Every big game in a sport offers tension and drama, but baseball's pace is best suited to emotional torture. It's already a slow game, but in the playoffs become glacial. No other sport forces spectators to indulge the players in so much housekeeping. In between each pitch they kick the dirt around, they adjust their gloves and their crotch protecting equipment, they blink and make those weird open-mouthed guppy faces that Dustin Pedroia used to do. The pitchers stare off meaningfully into the middle distance. Every pitch for both teams could mean certain doom.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmh2D6VI_xRzW821vIB5yespVfWNk0KVL0rDi_cuz03nYTfhn7DvI2DbRnFZbME-bVVpY3oCc5iYovxMvMGKVUKMY4BlftY9KMldYZLD8oa0KpkRAwEZ6zFGb0iJJDYss3FW4Yu2CceeENocoxCXWWqjqUliJp6hs0X9YyT97vxScAxZrQ3WaLsA-_/s294/larry%20king.gif"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmh2D6VI_xRzW821vIB5yespVfWNk0KVL0rDi_cuz03nYTfhn7DvI2DbRnFZbME-bVVpY3oCc5iYovxMvMGKVUKMY4BlftY9KMldYZLD8oa0KpkRAwEZ6zFGb0iJJDYss3FW4Yu2CceeENocoxCXWWqjqUliJp6hs0X9YyT97vxScAxZrQ3WaLsA-_/s1600/larry%20king.gif" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Baseball excels at doing this to people for four entire hours</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Baseball's general slow and ambient nature-- the game is best enjoyed as a soothing background to something else going on during the summer-- gets weaponized into a terrifying dirge in the postseason as the stakes get higher. In its ideal summer form, Ron Coomer is talking about the time he got sandwich poisoning on a road trip in 1988 after eating fourteen chicken parms on a dare from Rick Wrona while you chop onions without a care in the world; October finds you watching Jake Arrieta stare at the catcher with pupils the size of pinpricks for 45 seconds while feeling like you are going to vomit. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But for those of us lucky enough to root for shitty teams, the playoffs offer a delightful voyeur's window into mass nervous breakdowns. Every cut to a fan shows a group of people on the verge of bursting into tears, every home team setback is met with an eerie, miserable silence. Baseball is the only major sport that allows fans space to perceverate and to stew, unbothered by anything happening other than players standing around. Everything about the postseason, from the way that its best teams are promised nothing from a short series to prolonged the way games unfold over a feeling of relentless dread, makes the fans of teams almost rooting for it to end. It is absolutely wonderful to enjoy without caring who wins and utterly unbearable to endure for fans of teams in it, and I desperately hope the Cubs make it back so I can be miserable again.<br /></span></p><p><b>THE INDIANAPOLIS EXPRESS</b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hugh Millhew was not sure why he stopped the bus for the stooped, bearded man or why he decided to change course and ferry him to Indianapolis. He figured he had a bus now, and when he stopped the man tried to get on, and, after thinking about it for a few minutes he could not come up with a good reason not to go to Indianapolis.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew hadn’t planned on driving a bus on this trip or at any point in his life. His problem was that he liked talking to people and, in this case specifically, people in a bar next to his motel. In this case that was M. Powell Straigthurt, the proprietor of Straithurt Motors on Route 19 who pulled up in a glistening Dodge and told Millhew he could have it for his old Buick plus $180. Millhew said he wasn’t a fool, he wanted to have a look at the thing first. He popped the hood right in the parking lot.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“This thing has a worn alternator, the tires are practically bald, and the radio only gets the bad religious station,” Millhew said, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. “Clutch is sticky too.” Millhew also did not have $180 on him either, but he kept that to himself.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Son, you drive a hard bargain, but I can tell you know your way around an automobile,” Straighthurt said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. How about a straight up swap? I could always use another Buick, even if it’s just for parts.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">That irked Millhew. Sure, the Buick needed some work, the fuel pump was nearly shot, and every four or five times it needed a kick in exactly the right place on the front fender in order to fully turn over, but he had kept it running all the way from Lubbock. But he couldn’t pass up a swap.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Straigthurt proposed doing the trade tonight. He said that did not want other customers seeing him give Millhew such a good deal and then demanding a nice Dodge for their own hunks of junk. Millhew was a little dubious, but he also noticed a flushed and swaying demeanor in the man and figured the rum cocktails he had seen Straighthurt downing one after the other could be playing a role here and it might be best to act before the man sobered up. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew could tell Straighurt Motors was a major operation based on the billboard he saw with the M. Powell’s grinning face looking like the face of the moon and the fact that roof had an enormous inflatable gorilla ("Get yourself a deal that's INSANE!!!" the sign said, making the gorilla's presence somewhat of an enigma). Straighhurt took him to the business office in a trailer in the back of the lot. Millhew sat filling out dozens of forms. It seemed like every for paper he filled out, Straighthurt produced two more and as he attacked them, Straighthurt pounded addenda and clauses out on his typewriter, squinting through half-glasses. Finally he finished. Straighthurts produced a bottle of something brown and offered it to Millhew, but Millhew did not feel like celebrating. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Straighthurt, I’d just like the Dodge and I’ll be on my way.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Well, I’ll be,” Straighthurt said. “We have a bit of a complication. You see, the Dodge, I just saw it is not available. Already sold to Mr. Lardner N. Wiltnoy. Taking delivery on the 24th. What a horrible oversight. My deepest apologies.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“OK then, I’ll just take the Buick back,” Millhew said</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Well, I'm afraid I can’t do that. You see, you’ve just signed it over to Straighthurt Motors. Here it is, in triplicate. Why, I just saw you fill out the forms yourself.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew was furious. He cursed. He whirled around to get the police. But then he saw it: a whole wall of photos of Straighthurt grinning that billboard grin of his with every badge in the county. There was one with him and the police department softball team he sponsored. There was one directly behind his head with the sheriff. He was smiling the same smile as in the picture now. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“You’re welcome to talk to Sheriff Maughton. I’m sure he would be happy to take a look at the paperwork we’ve established here,” Straighthurt said. “Of course, I would never just take a car from someone like you. That would be fraudulent and you don’t get to be the sponsor of the sheriff’s bowling team with those sorts of lax attitudes towards the law and the constitution. I can’t get you the Dodge, but I’ve got just the vehicle for a youngster who knows his way around an engine block.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew had no choice and he followed him to the back of the lot. That’s where it was: an ancient, rusted bus. It still had “Billy’s Big Billy Boy’s Band, Brownsville” stenciled on the back. It smelled like it was leaking oil like a gutshot gunfighter. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Look at this fine automobile. Been all over the country, all over the hemisphere. Still runs like a dream. Seems perfect for an itinerant man such as yourself in his journeys. Maybe meet a nice girl. Maybe meet a few nice girls. You’ve got the room in here.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew didn’t want the bus. But he also didn’t want to walk out of there and those were his only choices. He also noticed that Straighthurt had his hand grasping something in his pocket. He sighed and took the keys and the registration.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The plan had been to take the interstate out east and track down his friend Frad Croddle, but Frad had stopped answering the phone and the one time he tried to take the bus on the interstate it had moved so ponderously that multiple drivers threw hamburgers at him and he needed to stop and clean off the windshield. Millhew began meandering through backroads. That’s where he met Professor Huddry.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew had noticed him at the Tri Booth Inn. An old man bearded man in a rumpled suit with threadbare elbow patches was hunched over a table sniffing the fumes from what looked like a cup of tea or whatever spices they managed to dump in a mug full of hot water for him. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">The old man was surrounded by decrepit cardboard boxes</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. The man looked at Millhew and introduced himself as Professor Huddry of the Huddry-Mantis Institute, but Millhew simply nodded and went out to the parking lot. He was done with conversations with eccentrics after the Straighthurt fiasco. But when he went to leave, there was Professor Huddry standing in front of the bus’s door like he was getting on the crosstown express.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I noticed that were driving alone in this great big bus,” the man said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” said Millhew.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Well, if you’re heading east, I can use a ride to Indianapolis. My previous travel arrangements fell apart due to a small amount of treachery, leaving me to lug my books and articles and I can't find a single ride that does not appear to be a death trap. This must be the jalopy capital of the United States. I can contribute some gas money.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew thought about it. He was down to his last $25 or so, and while he had no intention of ever setting foot in Indianapolis, it was at least vaguely in the right direction. Besides, he figured he could kick this odd little man to the curb if he became too tedious. He told him he’d take him up on his offer and began loading the boxes into the bus. There were dozens of them and they had been water damaged by some rain or a puddle and barely held together. It seemed like they had books in them and it took some time to get everything loaded up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“You don’t know it now, but you’re taking a step to save amateur athletics in this country,” the Huddry said. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"How about we save that first tank of gas,” Millhew said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The first hours started in silence. Millhew blared the radio (it was the bad religious station, the one with a firebreathing preacher shrieking about his audience going to hell for embracing Satan’s radio) until it faded from the dial and that's when Huddry saw his opportunity to start talking.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Have you heard of NIL?” the professor said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“NIL? Is that some sort of chemical?” Millhew replied.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“No, it’s an acronym. That’s when you have letters that stand for words,” the professor said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I know that.” Millhew hissed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Name, image, likeness. Do you know that that means? Of course you don’t,” Hoddry said. “It means that crime is legal. It means that athletes are for sale. It means that a man’s integrity is on the open market like a hog’s carcass. Name, image, likeness. You’ve got college athletes getting paid now. And it’s all legal.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew was at a loss. “Why do you care if college athletes get paid?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“That is just what I expect to hear from a nincompoop. It’s classic nincompoopery. Page 14. Habeas nincompooperus. Do you hear yourself? Do you understand integrity? Amateurism? The ideal of the scholar-athlete? Listen to yourself.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“You better watch that nincompoop stuff or you can walk. Don’t forget this is my bus.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Of course. I apologize,” the professor said. “Not everyone has been exposed to the beauty of pure amateur athletics. You don’t strike me as a collegian.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In fact Millhew had done one semester at State before both he and the administration came to a mutual understanding that he would no longer burden the faculty with his presence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“This is exactly the type of situation that Duckett discusses in Chapter 15. I take it you have not heard of Buck Duckett?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“No,” said Millhew. He pawed at the radio dial.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Duckett is the foremost mind in amateur athletics. A guardian of sorts. An investigator for the NCAA. I assume you’ve never heard of the Tennessee Pants Bust of 1978. The author of <i>In Cold Pants</i>, a methodological guide to investigating illegal payments but, more than that, a metaphysical journey, a meditation on the soul of amateurism. The most profound sports text that has been written or will be written this century.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The bus shuddered.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I hope you don’t expect that I pay for repairs for this wretched wreck,” the professor said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“The bus is fine. Just needs a little transmission fluid in a few miles,” Millhew said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“The soul of amateurism,” Hoddry continued. “Do you know that Duckett once broke six ribs impersonating a scout team punter while discovering a ring of Tech players receiving free hoagies every single day from a devious sandwiches magnate?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I don’t know, those football players must get pretty hungry running around in the sun all day,” Millhew said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Of course they do,” said the professor. “But there are legal sandwiches and illegal– anyway the point seems to elude you. But what I hope is that it won’t elude the National Collegiate Athletics Association. As you can see I’ve prepared several proofs, mathematical proofs based on a numerological reading of <i>In Cold Pants</i> that I have written up so elegantly that it could get through to even the most thickheaded bureaucrat. I believe that once they are confronted with the texts from Duckett, Duckett scholars, and my own work showing that Chapter 13, the one where he details how he rigged up a crude funicular in order to sneak into a fraternity house and reconnoiter a set of golf clubs given to a point guard is actually, when run through a crude but effective cipher, a clear rebuke to the exact NIL code governing the NCAA rules, they will have no choice but to revoke the imbecilic law and stop this monstrous professionalization of football, darts, and croquet.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew finally managed to find a radio station. It was a small station and it was playing something called the Symphony of Discordant Accordions but he would listen to hours of snoring or shrieking babies to avoid having to endure to more speeches about Buck Duckett and the NCAA. Eventually they decided to stop and get something to eat at a roadside diner. Duckett had hoped to sit alone at the counter but Hoddry motioned him into a booth, and Millhew's manners wouldn't allow him to abandon him. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“The key to understanding Buck Duckett is in line and page numbers, which is why you need the third edition. You see, the key does not work in the first or second editions quite well with the roman numeral introduction and the beastly fourth edition, with an entirely superfluous chapter about the various swashbuckling incidents Duckett endured while investigating fencing teams that was probably ghostwritten by some dullard publisher's assistant.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A strange man sitting at the counter swiveled around his stool and stared at them. He was as tall as Hoddry was stooped, gangly, clean-shaven, with remarkable ears that drooped down across the length of his tiny face. Millhew was embarrassed because Hoddry was talking his nonsense loudly and occasionally gesturing with a fork. The man got up, seemingly unfolding himself from the stool and materialized next to them with impossibly long strides.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“What’s this Buck Duckett nonsense you’re raving about?” he said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Well, this is high-level theory and scholarship. I don’t have time to explain it to another thick-headed oaf. I’m a very busy man with business before the NCAA,” the professor replied.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Buck Duckett is nonsense. That was debunked years ago. All tall tales from a sad man writing stories about busting water polo players. If you had simply read Pack Bracket, you would have no issues defending amateurism,” the man said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Pack Bracket? Pack Bracket? I should have been able to tell I was dealing with a Bracket Man by looking at the ridges on your skull. Look at his head,” Hoddry said turning to Millhew. “The classic shape of a cretin. It is a miracle this man is able to feed himself. Pack Bracket.” Now he looked up at the tall man looming over him. “You realize that it was Bracketism that led right to NIL? The Bracket Men’s texts were so harebrained that the NCAA laughed them out of the room. Or did you not see the issue of ‘Amateur Sports Theorems’ about it? Maybe there weren’t enough pictures.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“That hearing was a damn stitch-up and you know it,” the tall man said. “The whole thing was already a joke when people started reading this fake detective talking about disguising himself as a waiter to catch Moose Caldwell accepting illegal fireworks when everyone knows Caldwell’s own uncle turned him in.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Please,” Hoddry said. “The Moose Caldwell Uncle theory is something I’ve easily debunked if you read chapters four and six of my manuscript. All of the evidence shows that Duckett not only intercepted the pants but also left a series of prophesies embedded by analyzing the sentence structure. But I wouldn’t expect a Bracketist to be able to follow such a basic line.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Then you haven’t read Nick Nacket. I have it right here.” The tall man ambled over to the corner of the diner where he had his own mess of cardboard boxes that seemed impossibly damp and began rooting through them. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Let’s go. We can leave this deluded maniac to his scribblings. We have no time to waste,” the professor said as he gobbled up the remains of his meatloaf and stood up. But he was not fast enough. By the time he finished and paid the bill (the only reason Millhew had not left him at that gas station hours earlier when he got into a thirty minute argument with the attendant about Charleston Chew), the tall man had loped over to the parking lot and was already loading his boxes onto the bus. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I ain’t letting you go to Indianapolis without at least reading Nick Nacket,” he said, waving a battered volume at the professor.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Do you think I haven’t read it? Or at least sampled enough of his incoherent nonsense to understand the futility of this enterprise?” By now both men were on the bus pointing their arms at each other and taking turns rifling through boxes to shove documents at each other while invoking the names of Beckett Heck and Truck Van Truk.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Millhew quietly slipped out of the parking lot and onto the road and stuck out his thumb. <br /></span> </p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-13458447865573707482022-10-28T08:26:00.003-05:002022-10-28T08:26:59.811-05:00Had 'Em In The First Half<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern was leading at the half. They were stopping Maryland and its backup quarterback from moving the ball and they were finding first downs and the endzone and all of this looked like a normal, hideous afternoon Big Ten game and maybe even the Wildcats' second victory of the season until it didn't. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is an old maxim in football that when you score to tie or take a lead late in the game you should not immediately give up a 75 yard run, but for the second game this season, Northwestern failed to heed it and it ended up costing them. But while the Wildcats did not technically win and remain stuck on one victory through this trying season, it was encouraging to see them in the game with an exciting change at quarterback and another heroic performance from St. Evan Hull who is doing everything he can to try to drag Northwestern out of the loss column. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As bad as the record is and as rough as those nonconference losses have been to endure, Northwestern has only been blown out once and have been infuriatingly close to winning every other game. For several years, Pat Fitzgerald has been taking Northwestern as close to 1-11 as he could like it was a Cronenbergian football fetish but still managing to win bowl games; whatever magic he had for a decade has reversed itself. The games are still close enough to talk yourself into them winning another one eventually. </span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzdwsKBUoLyAt27FYA4xjgMyK42fXgb1Yuz4wNUevM3L3TDwMJrXylcZ9cK570E_ClA7QHbuFZG3YwzYu635U36UA-Dmo1Q5hSuq_euHxxzdw8KDPJLJ5MlS3zCGgok3q5kpRkfh1L0BTvlYQM4cZEdzJ0UYBb7fQfVsjDhV7-aGdMnJ_IvCtSOzbA/s800/cronenberg.webp"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzdwsKBUoLyAt27FYA4xjgMyK42fXgb1Yuz4wNUevM3L3TDwMJrXylcZ9cK570E_ClA7QHbuFZG3YwzYu635U36UA-Dmo1Q5hSuq_euHxxzdw8KDPJLJ5MlS3zCGgok3q5kpRkfh1L0BTvlYQM4cZEdzJ0UYBb7fQfVsjDhV7-aGdMnJ_IvCtSOzbA/s320/cronenberg.webp" /></a></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Cronenberg ends collaboration with Pat Fitzgerald on futuristic football movie "pUntZ" citing Fitzgerald's aesthetic views of football as "too disgusting."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But all of that is beside the point because Northwestern plays Iowa this week in the most anticipated game by maniacs and weirdos. Northwestern may not have a particularly good offense, but Iowa, from what I can tell, is pioneering new obscenities against football every week under the direction of Kirk Ferentz's goober son. I have not personally watched a single Iowa game this year but every single Saturday I look to see what is going on in college football and it's just a nonstop stream of "Iowa drives -45 yards and then somehow digs a 'punting tunnel;'" "Iowa quarterback somehow manages to intercept himself before he is carted away to a classroom to discuss this with a philosophy professor;" "Iowa lineman eats football to destroy evidence after getting whistled for illegal procedure penalty." <br /></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLWhc431dVfw5JJh0OyHUlrRwgTbhn64RJO9AXQlInSxriKL82N7_L4M74XQ8Mpp1OCvJYApQXd-M7GgUf0KIfiUwJeFvpsChLMuqWO960lVQf02jtxOYwQ9JqQYol66Ir9uTHjptZb2eCuQz3du2gpsCY1sgcqhrTe_Fk7GYTJ1cBtmh3TlvxCmpS/s750/fitz%20ferentz.jpg"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLWhc431dVfw5JJh0OyHUlrRwgTbhn64RJO9AXQlInSxriKL82N7_L4M74XQ8Mpp1OCvJYApQXd-M7GgUf0KIfiUwJeFvpsChLMuqWO960lVQf02jtxOYwQ9JqQYol66Ir9uTHjptZb2eCuQz3du2gpsCY1sgcqhrTe_Fk7GYTJ1cBtmh3TlvxCmpS/w400-h225/fitz%20ferentz.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The last thing you see before a 7-4 football game happens</span><br /><br />What I am hoping for is a display of football between these two teams so hideous that it causes Congress to reconsider the legality of college football. I would like to see these two teams somehow fumble it back and forth to each other for a full quarter. I would like to see both teams send out their punting units at the same time while a member of the marching band plays a tuba that shoots flames out of it. I would like to see Kevin Warren appear at the game and instantaneously make a rule that both teams can lose points while Pat Fitzgerald gets so enraged that his neck is no longer able to fit into the tunnel. I would like the scoring for this game to involve imaginary numbers.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDDLr5z4-nNmz1WZcHum-mr2UwgYomj46VNwCBnr5JXTps-p86xVm0mQKffKZUL-9lNFTxTWDRL3weC98h8UanuVSOukiIEhpe5rP3d8hPeZB9NAmRo4TKheWuj6ErGULBgnGZUiEtXhCWZM2oD0Dx5goUa_D5fOZjHQd-7QUG-iEXnLYXjOj21RFF/s2560/kevin%20warren.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDDLr5z4-nNmz1WZcHum-mr2UwgYomj46VNwCBnr5JXTps-p86xVm0mQKffKZUL-9lNFTxTWDRL3weC98h8UanuVSOukiIEhpe5rP3d8hPeZB9NAmRo4TKheWuj6ErGULBgnGZUiEtXhCWZM2oD0Dx5goUa_D5fOZjHQd-7QUG-iEXnLYXjOj21RFF/s320/kevin%20warren.jpg" /></a></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kevin Warren after being informed that he can't simply ban a Northwestern-Iowa game on the grounds of grotesqueness</span><br /><br />Unfortunately, I do not think that this game will rise to my chaotic shit football aspirations. Iowa is still really good on defense while Northwestern has had trouble stopping the run, and, if both teams continue to play like they have been playing, it seems reasonable that Iowa will simply run the Wildcats over without having to go to their passing game and accidentally open a hole in a space-time continuum that allows Brian Ferentz to call for interceptions thrown to someone who last played in 2007. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRDQdk4mbY5BQ_CNLSM-pwQAaBRJE36JrMaiOYC09I4za3bKONXXRETR3kkuCOIAo0774is9hMXI_LDA0ANyrK2PfYFO5KRueLo68i1IW9LY4hVqmTWuWA4BDYRqa5_UE-LmncnV299EjFMdVAX2VamnFCR7PUCoZ6UL2tVfdS0TYbDJPMjKxezBhw/s1024/brian%20ferentz.webp"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRDQdk4mbY5BQ_CNLSM-pwQAaBRJE36JrMaiOYC09I4za3bKONXXRETR3kkuCOIAo0774is9hMXI_LDA0ANyrK2PfYFO5KRueLo68i1IW9LY4hVqmTWuWA4BDYRqa5_UE-LmncnV299EjFMdVAX2VamnFCR7PUCoZ6UL2tVfdS0TYbDJPMjKxezBhw/s320/brian%20ferentz.webp" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Iowa fans have been upset with Brian Ferentz this season, but he is building one element of success in Big Ten coaching by looking increasingly like a Far Side Guy </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">After last week's humiliating annihilation at the hands of Ohio State, the Hawkeyes are looking to bully someone. On the other hand, there is a chance that Pat Fitzgerald will go down into the subbasement of the athletic facility where he has built a $3.8 million Incantations Room and he will manage to summon the unholy demons of Punting and Uncalled Holding Penalties that have allowed him to beat Iowa by one point by demanding they go "1 and 0 this week."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b> BUCK DUCKETT'S LAST PANT </b><br /><br />“People have a misunderstanding about this work,” the venerable NCAA Investigator Buck Duckett says to me over black coffee at a diner in a southern college town. “Most of what I do is just making phone calls or looking at computer records. I’m not rooting around in trashcans. I’m not following people. I’m not doing stakeouts in a goddamn car.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Three hours later, we are staking out a fraternity house in a goddamn car, where Buck Duckett thinks a star tailback is about to take delivery of jewelry, video game systems, and expensive, stylish pants. We sit quietly. Every few minutes, Duckett releases a puff of vape smoke into the night air. Every time someone leaves the house or approaches it, we tense up and Duckett aims a long-lensed camera out of the driver’s side window. But after a few hours of waiting, nothing happens. “Maybe he was tipped off,” Duckett muses. “Or maybe he’s not hiding it at all. They'll show him picking up his stuff on the evening news.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The National Collegiate Athletic Association prohibits its amateur athletes from receiving compensation. Or, at least, it had. By now three states have passed laws allowing college athletes from receiving money from their name, license, and image. These so-called NIL laws will allow athletes to endorse products and appear in commercials; they should break open the dam and allow essentially the payment of athletes. For many people disgusted by universities raking in billions of dollars through media rights deals while athletes work for free, this is a welcome change. For Buck Duckett, who has made his living busting athletes, boosters, and bag men in the illicit world of under-the-table payments, it is an existential crisis. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Obviously, the question of how NIL payments will fall under NCAA sanctions is very fluid at the moment,” Brett Dreebin, author of “Dollars and Sacks: A Study of Under The Table Recruiting Payments” tells me. “It is unclear whether there will be a role for investigations and enforcement in the NCAA at all.” An NCAA investigator who asked to remain anonymous had a shorter assessment. “Well we’re fucked,” the investigator said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">***********</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are depictions on 10,000 year old cave paintings of sports: wrestling, footraces, archery. As early as 3,000 years ago, we have records of sports organized into formal competitions as they became increasingly abstracted from skills required in hunting and warfare. By 2,000 years ago, civilizations from Mesoamerica to Ancient Egypt to Ireland had begun captivating spectators with the games involving balls. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It would take several thousand more years for humans to come up with the idea of professional sports. Professional sports leagues began forming in the late nineteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players formed in 1871 with a league that could formally pay players after accusations that teams were secretly funneling money to so-called amateur players. By the 1880s, professionalism had been codified into soccer in England and Scotland.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Professional sports were the inevitable result of money and prestige in amateur competitions; once these stakes were established, it became virtually impossible for teams to resist luring the best competitors through underhanded payments. In England, for example, teams loaded up with Scottish players known as “Professors of Football” who moved to England and played for various payments designed to be called anything but wages. In cricket, “shamateur” players were not paid directly by clubs but were enticed to play there by other means. For example, W.G. Grace, the great nineteenth-century cricketer who won matches by intimidating opponents with the thickness and lustrousness of his beard, drew lavish reimbursements for travel and accommodation that dwarfed payments received by actual professionals. In virtually every case, sports leagues founded on an ideal of gentlemanly amateur play yielded to the temptations to recruit the best players, and the only way to do so was with cash. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is one major exception. The American college sports apparatus has clung violently to its ideal of amateurism. Even as college sports went from a collection of rowdy amateurs playing games that barely had rules as a cover for organized thrashing to a multi-billion dollar television product, the NCAA has rigorously done all it can to prevent that money from trickling down to “student-athletes,” whom the association likes to think of as ordinary students doing an extracurricular activity that in certain cases happens to be broadcast to millions of people and allows the schools to spend tens of millions of dollars on coaches and hundreds of millions of dollars on lavish athletic training facilities that bear the name of a billionaire donor who in turn gets to call the coach at four AM and scream that they ought to run the dang option. And it is these boosters whose underlings or sleazy brothers-in-law who have been driving around the country since time immemorial with sacks full of cash, deeds to cars in players’ grandmothers’ names, and the gaudiest pantaloons ever knitted by human hands.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The NCAA’s attempts to police amateurism have been a history o bumbling officials trying to bail out the Titanic with a water bucket. They could never stop everyone from getting paid or even most people. But they stopped quite a few, and when they did it was often because of Buck Duckett. 1978, his first big case, “Big” Walt Nexus, $2,300 in a Sesame Street lunch box given to his kid brother. 1984, Maxwell Rictus, thirteen gold chains, a Dodge Challenger, pants on the table. 1992, “Lucifer” Nick Lufus caught bragging about $68,000 and a pair of hammer pants overlaid in gold lamé in the lyrics to an obscure song on his cousin’s label that Duckett tracked down in a swap meet and spent four days with a Dictionary of American Rap Lingo in order to decipher that the NCAA ruled as “compelling evidence” to suspend Lufus the night before the Muskie Bowl. 1996, “Wet” Steve Jason got a 38 dollar lunch comped at a local burrito restaurant.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Duckett tells me that his busts came about from patience and a boring willingness to follow facts, trace receipts, and talk to sources. His colleagues paint a far more colorful picture. Bill Maceman– now retired from the NCAA and working private security at a minigolf and go-kart emporium where he keeps a dossier of teenagers banned for petty theft, pirate vandalism, and mooning– tells me that Duckett once slept in a dumpster for three nights in order to catch Moose Manjagt accepting a Member’s Only Jacket from local jute magnate Moose Dugan. Other Duckett stories seem to have become legends. I heard several versions of a story about Duckett seizing a set of golf clubs and rare Vicuña wool golf pants from the power forward Ralph Van Prigg by alternatingly posing as a caddy or burying himself in a sand trap. In one version, he disguised himself as an alligator lounging in a water hazard in order to scare away the other golfers and isolate Van Prigg’s party and then having to dodge multiple rounds when Van Prigg’s policeman uncle produced a service revolver and began firing at him (Duckett cryptically asks me if I thought he’d disguise himself as an alligator when I asked him about it but did not specifically deny it).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">One thing that is nearly impossible to nail Duckett down on is the extent to which he believes in amateurism in sports and the effects of new NIL policies. Every time I press him on this, he simply says “I don’t make the rules.” Duckett says he is simply doing a job, just as he would be following company rules if he was investigating insurance claims or selling time shares. But his enthusiasm for the bust tells me otherwise. It is hard to believe Duckett would be working so hard to nab players getting payment if this was simply a job. Quadd Hatcher, a newspaper columnist who crossed paths with Duckett while defending the suspended tight end Owen Groud after Duckett caught him with a cash sack told me “Duckett wouldn’t be doing this if he didn’t care about players getting paid because this job is so self-evidently stupid.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is hard to see why Duckett would be so attached to amateurism in college sports. He was not a college athlete. In fact, he put himself through school partially as a professional boxer, a wiry lightweight under the name “Gentleman Buck” whose 6-13 record allowed him to graduate in three years with degrees in criminology and pants. Duckett came onto the NCAA’s radar when he was working as an assistant private investigator under the legendary Ike Dreighto. He was shadowing Bike Branton, the heir to Indianapolis concrete magnate Michael Branton III, during his scandalous affair with the famous saloon ventriloquist Margaret Walross when he accidentally discovered that Indiana quarterback Moose Hatton was receiving shipments of custom suit pants from the Brantons hidden in cement mixers. The NCAA appreciated the tip and eventually approached him for a job. Within a year he was wearing a false mustache and running sting operations as a disc jockey named Larry Groove giving away free records to athletes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It remains impossible to see why Buck Duckett is continuing to work cases. Other NCAA investigators are quietly shelving their records and waiting for a new assignment or perhaps a buyout. Duckett’s office is fully operational. Loose papers encroach on his desk like foliage reclaiming an abandoned boomtown. Each wall contains a large corkboard with red string mapping out baroque links between athletes, bagmen, and boosters with spokes veering off into incomprehensible directions (one says “Auntie Annie’s King of Prussia– ask for Pissed Dave”). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And yet Buck Duckett keeps on investigating. He says he will keep doing so until they tell him to stop. All he knows how to do is to keep disguising himself as a mime and secretly taking pictures of a banned cash transaction while pretending to fight against the wind. He does not need to pretend anymore. The wind is here. </span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-2089334031866172222022-10-22T14:11:00.006-05:002023-02-20T10:33:08.282-06:00Well This Is Bad<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern football is not particularly fun at the moment. While the 'Cats managed to hang around in all of their losses to the point where it seemed possible that they could, with some luck, managed to have actually won some of those games, that did not happen against Wisconsin. They got completely blown out. They got whomped. The offense faltered. The defense made Wisconsin's usually plodding and inept passing game look like the Greatest Show on Turf. At one point, Northwestern was down four touchdowns at the end of the half and Fitzgerald made the ludicrously unserious decision to kick a field goal from the three yardline that missed in every sense other than serving as a metaphor for Northwestern's football season.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO_4MT7gRyUigTYh3SGZHneSpYQuRe9QRkBAoBLadGfoSN8R7Ri-qOSFnqyFhqwy8oVkLqWkyyQ3zGlRCcLTf_ErRMxF3iDypB6m3G-QzOY09vc96JX6axfXEMjDOH136V5mECppRi-3T6aBHGz7FE3CzDZDPGZcortv2kZkYdpjwTCD5RVX4v4u0d/s1200/fitz%20yell.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO_4MT7gRyUigTYh3SGZHneSpYQuRe9QRkBAoBLadGfoSN8R7Ri-qOSFnqyFhqwy8oVkLqWkyyQ3zGlRCcLTf_ErRMxF3iDypB6m3G-QzOY09vc96JX6axfXEMjDOH136V5mECppRi-3T6aBHGz7FE3CzDZDPGZcortv2kZkYdpjwTCD5RVX4v4u0d/s320/fitz%20yell.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A contrite Patrick Fitzgerald was forced to tearfully concede that the team is a playing like "rece davises" (the Northwestern video of him saying this bleeped out the word "rece.") </span><br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Wildcat football is down in a way that we haven't seen for decades, and I have no idea what the solution is. They are playing in exactly the same way that they have for the entirety of the Pat Fitzgerald era, but it is no longer working. The new offensive coordinator somehow has managed to reconstruct from the ground up the rickety, limping offenses of his predecessor; the only observable change is that he is no longer whimsically referring to tight ends as "superbacks." The defense has cratered under Jim O'Neil and while I have no idea what it is his specific scheme or coaching or just a loss of a generation of good defensive players, he makes for a handy scapegoat because there's only one other person in the crosshairs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is virtually impossible to imagine the program moving on from Fitzgerald. He has been incredibly successful by the generous standards of Northwestern football, and although he has not hit the highs of his predecessors who won the conference and went to the Rose Bowl, his teams have been more consistently good. He has also made himself synonymous with the program and oversaw an overhaul of the team in his own image while effectively using Pat Ryan as a money</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> piñata </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">that has allowed the school to build fancy new facilities, arenas, and a new stadium which will be the House that Fitz Built. And yet, it is difficult to imagine him changing, looking for new solutions, or imagining a way to play football that doesn't match the grimy and delightfully disgusting way he has managed to make a career out of clinging to three-point victories. I have no idea how bad it would have to get before the athletic director and boosters start having The Conversation; I know we are nowhere close to that happening yet, and I don't know that there exists on the face of the earth a more viable alternative. What I do know is that the school's decision to allow Fitzgerald to function essentially as God Emperor of Northwestern Football in perpetuity and then watching as he oversees a bunch of seasons identical to the early 80s misery days while gritting his teeth and claiming that they just need to execute better is, at the very least, incredibly funny.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b> MARYLAND PREVIEW </b><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This week the Wildcats travel to Maryland. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>BASEBALL'S PLAYOFF RANDOMNESS IS EXTREMELY ENTERTAINING WHEN IT IS NOT YOUR TEAM<br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The baseball grumbleratti were out in full force the Dodgers, Braves, and Mets were defeated before reaching the NLCS by some objectively crummier teams. The argument is that the 162-game season provides an endless, grinding crucible that reveals the best teams whereas any team, no matter how lousy, can get hot in a three- or five-game series and therefore the playoffs exist essentially as a random crapshoot where the eventual champion could easily be some also-ran that has materialized in the postseason only because of Rob Manfred’s generously expanding playoff structure. And the rebuttal to that for any team that is not one of those eliminated juggernauts is: hahahahaha.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdO-9AEa_njSaXE9Iy722JqR-J4uLIIOswhzyNeL-00lKvOvKeq8ZbqH_UfR4NPPjmv_6LqL8e8vGKQqSJe9tfA7qYntIY0DfnyS0Hcht4ufdFLhb6T-Vxut_l5-o5qZXfVn7ZxaRZZ0T1UKhTt2DpjLpNslUX4dD19l_6zyKdOcZABktFB9rS1k2E/s2400/dodgers.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdO-9AEa_njSaXE9Iy722JqR-J4uLIIOswhzyNeL-00lKvOvKeq8ZbqH_UfR4NPPjmv_6LqL8e8vGKQqSJe9tfA7qYntIY0DfnyS0Hcht4ufdFLhb6T-Vxut_l5-o5qZXfVn7ZxaRZZ0T1UKhTt2DpjLpNslUX4dD19l_6zyKdOcZABktFB9rS1k2E/s320/dodgers.jpg" /></a> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">You would think the Dodgers would be <a href="https://bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com/2020/10/i-am-not-sadist-but-clayton-kershaw.html">used to this</a>. I like this picture because it looks like Clayton Kershaw is mournfully playing a harmonica.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The people whining about how the baseball playoffs have rendered the season meaningless are laboring under the delusion that they exist to determine the best baseball team instead of existing to provide an exciting and colorful tableau to enjoy the game and get manically scolded by Bob Costas. And, more importantly, it provides the extraordinarily funny and satisfying situation of a superteam that has spent the past six months of a grueling, daily grind proving that it is easily the best team in the entire game go out and just get humiliated by some wildcard team inspired by a terrified goose plopped on the field. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_UyHAuYJEGsdnnzalQdr4YDuQvWYRAE9RX_G9gp4gKcB_cYvFPKFimR5FCnQywQJBLLRstp2AnHYTBpW-asPTzwxUxQsUhZCTGF6xvpe83s37RlH-1xoji2VTLfIoVZXDsbgitq1Han5E-km69FkYvQY8PvcO73LWEeYOFABp9ViTUJ9jQN4SVEfH/s800/untitled.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_UyHAuYJEGsdnnzalQdr4YDuQvWYRAE9RX_G9gp4gKcB_cYvFPKFimR5FCnQywQJBLLRstp2AnHYTBpW-asPTzwxUxQsUhZCTGF6xvpe83s37RlH-1xoji2VTLfIoVZXDsbgitq1Han5E-km69FkYvQY8PvcO73LWEeYOFABp9ViTUJ9jQN4SVEfH/s320/untitled.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I have spent the past several days mind-poisoned by Costas's call of the Yankees/Guardians series where I constantly mutter to myself in a Costas voice things like "Another run in and here comes/Francona to the mound/And the pitcher has to be wondering what awaits him in the locker room from his teammates after this/atrocious performance/Blame?/Recriminations?/Perhaps, even death/Which would be a horrible crime but, one that is, under these circumstances/understandable. </span><br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The past two decades have seen an explosion in knowledge in baseball and a frankly astonishing race among the serious teams to gain an edge through statistical analysis, high speed cameras, and weird Cronenbergian body technology that allows teams to monitor players' performance that was unthinkable fifteen years ago when the biggest debate in the sport involved nerds on the internet getting shouted down by former players and the type of local sports columnist that was still photographed with a conspicuous typewriter about whether getting on base was bad. This total victory in the field of analytics and investment-style strategies in the game has obscured something that the pointy heads devoted to separating objective knowledge from luck cannot handle: that baseball is incredibly dumb. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Baseball Analyst now says that baseball playoffs are tilted too far towards luck. One study suggests that the minimum amount of games that could meaningfully allow for the superior team to win would be a best-of-75. And yet, the entire magic of the baseball playoffs is based on the short series, where every pitch looms with unimaginable terror. What may be luck also translates in the heat of a playoff race to individual acts of skill or valor, of the poetics of clutch and choke.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For fans of teams that win and win all season long, the playoffs loom like a portent of doom. They have destroyed all comers and their prize is three to five games where they can be crushed at any time by a hot pitching staff or a single bad pitching change. In this way, the playoffs undermine the excitement of a great season for fans who have nothing but anxiety and misery to look forward to in the playoffs. But the odds are that you don't root for a team like thatand instead you get to luxuriate in the possibility of a very good team eating shit and watching fans of a team that had no championship aspirations explode in ecstasy while watching a better teams fans sit with sourly clenched jaws for three hours. This makes for spectacular television.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The short series and high stakes give the baseball playoffs its dizzying tension in the way that a team extending its division lead to 15 games by beating the Cincinnati Reds who are starting a 43-year-old part-time shrimp boat captain does not. I can see the concern that the baseball playoff structure incentivizes teams to forget about the regular season and just aim to sneak into a wild card spot because the playoffs are completely random, but it turns out that teams continue to labor under the impression that having really good players could help in the playoffs even if the Dodgers tend to get bounced every year despite their overwhelming cavalcade of hall of famers. But for me, I will take the chaos-- that is unless there is somehow a 100-win Cubs team that gets knocked out by a crappy wild card team and then I will probably be very angry and put on a bowtie to write a screed about how they are damaging the Integrity of the Game.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>BUCK DUCKETT IN: THE EVENING TREE, BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR</b><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The delivery was not going to be for another hour, but Buck Duckett was already lying in the cold field under a pile of moss. The grass was chilly and the dew was already soaking into his coat, but he didn't mind; he thought it would hide him better. There were no voices yet, no lights, no cartons of pants changing hands, and all that existed were the shadows of trees. Dark forests represent something frightening to us, echoing something buried deep in human psyche. It might contain wolves or bears or something else-- the fact that our minds are capable of conjuring stories has allowed us to create a foreboding roster of fictitious beasts and monsters lurking there. There was something primeval about these fears. Buck Duckett, though, was not thinking about those things. He was contemplating the trees and the concept of eternity. It was a comfort for him to think about the almost unimaginably long life span of the trees surrounding him standing as sentinels over this athletic practice field as he waited for the Colonel to arrive with his shipment of trousers, before he would have to stop contemplating and return to the his own mundane business.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is all I managed to write. Several weeks ago, I logged onto the web and got an e-mail soliciting a story about a pants detective for a minor college football website and I had declined because I did not know what any of those words meant and I was working on a book of essays about the objects in my bathroom and what they said about my deepest fears and insecurities. But the e-mails kept coming every day. They became more insistent, almost hectoring and more and more cryptic. Why a pants detective? Apparently, more than a decade ago an athlete got in some sort of trouble for selling autographed football pants and a perverse and psychologically damaged website editor thinks this is still funny. This assignment was nonsensical and insulting, but I was stuck on an essay about how the rubber ducky represented the unpredictable tyranny from my volatile father that I was desperate to avoid passing onto my own children, and a creditor was calling me every day demanding payment one of the houses I had purchased on a small, bleak island where I could pace and smoke, so eventually I gave in. I hoped that no one I respected would see it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Apparently in United States college athletics there are, or were, rigid codes about amateurism policed by a small cadre of investigators that would allow the institution to punish athletes or institutions for paying players. This system could not be more alien to me. I am told that college sports there are big businesses, and the teams play in enormous stadiums. I went on the web and looked at some videos and the spectacle was impossibly lavish. This is a very different situation then sports here, when my friend Geir got a chance to try out for the Fløy football team at 17 and was sent a bus ticket and paid 3,700 kroner for his trouble before getting unceremoniously cut. We all got extremely drunk that night and he turned his ankle badly getting chased by a neighbor who had caught us urinating in his garden, and Geir had to write to Gjøvik-Lyn and Tromsdalen telling them he was on crutches and could no longer make their try-outs.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The short story assignment felt like a straight jacket. No matter how much I walked around the forest path smoking and brooding or drinking fifteen cups of coffee and staring at my computer, I could not even begin to think about how to write about something as profoundly stupid as a man who investigates pants. When I asked for more details, the editor told me that recently the college athlete association had changed the law making it legal for students to advertise products and get paid and hypothetically could, under certain arrangements, receive an unlimited number of free pants without consequence. This made the idea not only stupid but impossible. But in a moment of weakness I had signed a contract, and the threat of entering into international legal conflict over a story about a pants detective became so onerous and miserable that I sat down to write. Buck Duckett. What an idiotic name. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I sent an e-mail to my friend Per, who had experience teaching at an American university in order to see if he could offer some insight into the profound quagmire I had found myself in. He told me that my assignment had nothing to do with American sports and had been conjured up by a madman. "I do not want to alarm you, but I would check to see if you are the victim of a prank. Do you remember, for example, when the <i>Paris Review</i> got Coetzee to cover an entire season of arena league football and he embedded himself with the Chicago Bruisers? When he found out it was a jape, he got so enraged that he tried to fly to New York to bludgeon <a href="https://medium.com/@byctom/back-off-the-plate-you-impudent-rascal-887ebdaf3182">Plimpton</a> with a dial-a-down but they would not let him on the plane with it." But after checking with my American agents, I sadly found that the Buck Duckett enterprise was too real and evidently inescapable.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I logged onto the web and clicked the link the editor had sent me to look at other Buck Duckett entries. What I saw was appalling. It was all third-rate detective nonsense and shoddy, almost illiterate parodies, and the other authors had been able to submit them anonymously to protect their literary reputations, if they had any. When I was fourteen years old, I was working at my school's literary magazine called <i>Det Alvorlig.</i> I published a poem in nearly every edition, but the editor, a boy a year older named Espen, had clearly set himself up to the be star. At every one of our parties in the woods while the rest of us would be drinking ourselves into oblivion with the reckless enthusiasm of young people who had just discovered getting drunk, Espen would be lounging on a log issuing his literary pronouncements, damning the literary establishment, and (this infuriated me) surrounded by girls. Espen had always been kind to me, welcoming me to the magazine, publishing my work, and being gently encouraging and because of that I despised him. In retrospect I wanted him to hate me, to fear me as a rival who would take control of the magazine through the superiority of my work, and I took his kindness as a condescension but at the time I only felt sourness and fury. I felt that his poems were mediocre and derivative. We were teenagers, and all of our poems were mediocre and derivative at best; the work we churned out that was wholly original was embarrassing (I published a poem from the point of view of a train engine that had very strong right-wing political convictions and quarreled with his communist caboose). By the spring, I had decided that I could no longer bear his literary swashbuckling and needed to destroy him. As a young teenager, it is very difficult to engineer a rival's literary destruction. I know this from fending off numerous attacks from a Swedish memoirist who published a nine-volume account of observations about his own life cheekily titled "The Little Red Book," and who remains beneath mention. I had lodged in my brain that Espen's poems were largely derivative of the early twentieth-century poet Olaf Bull. Not only were they essentially plagiarized, as far as I was concerned, they were also anachronistic, the themes and language plundered and thrust haphazardly into a more contemporary style. The previous summer, at my summer literary magazine independent from the school magazine, another student had told me that I was badly regurgitating Tarjei Vessas, and the experience had been utterly crushing, a blow that still reverberates in me every time I publish anything, an icy fear in my spine that a critic will rise up and blast me with the Vessas smear. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I biked to the library and searched and searched until I found a book bearing the logo of the Olaf Bull Society and then I tucked it into my shirt, took out a pair of meat shears that I had found in the kitchen, and neatly removed the logo. I pasted it to a paper and then used the magazine's mimeograph machine to make it appear like crude letterhead. Then I began typing. The letter accused Espen of "gross misappropriation" of Bull's prose and said it was "perverse and disgusting" how he had "warped it and inserted contemporary cultural references like one of those surrealist faeces paintings." I used the phrase "literary disfigurement." The letter contained a shockingly long and detailed set of decreasingly plausible thefts that I kept adding because I believed that the letter had to have heft in order to land with the most devastating effect. It had not occurred to me in the frenzy of my hatred that the idea of a literary society viciously attacking a teenager publishing in a student literary magazine was so implausible and insane that it could not possibly be real; I had instead focused on making my accusations seem more literary and became proud of how incisive my critiques had been. It did not occur to me, at least, until several seconds after I loosed the letter into the post addressed to the student magazine, when the ridiculousness of the letter, its pettiness, and its obvious path to my hand exploded in my brain like a detective solving a mystery, like perhaps this idiotic Duckett character finding a pair of fucking pants, and it was too late. I tried using a branch and a piece of chewed gum to try fishing out every letter in the box one by one until I could find mine (surely the fattest envelope) and destroy it, but people kept coming by and I had to pretend that I was not trying to break into a mailbox and was merely loitering near it with a disgusting stick and gum apparatus like it was some sort of new youth trend that I had seen in a magazine. When the letter arrived, I was ridiculed. I had tried saying it was just a silly prank, but the savagery of the barbs and self-seriousness of the letter contained no whimsy and just venom. I was cast out of the magazine and its woods parties. Three weeks later, Espen was hit by a train and everyone was so wracked with grief that the letter largely went forgotten or unremarked upon. We all had been so aged by loss and shock that it seemed impossible to remember anything so childish had happened.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I looked over my Buck Duckett paragraph and could not summon the dignity to actually finish it. The entire episode was too sordid, and I was prepared to endure a lawsuit and sell two or three of my other rustic smoking cabins to compensate. I invite the editors of this horrible blog to do their worst.<br /></span></p><p></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-48453851402532283192022-10-08T07:55:00.001-05:002022-10-08T07:55:10.042-05:00Soaked<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is a small but extremely twisted slice of football fans in the United States who, like me, follow both the Northwestern Wildcats and the Chicago Bears, and since Pat Fitzgerald has taken over it has been like watching these two football entities merge into a hideous team like how Jeff Goldblum turned into the fly except instead of turning into a disgusting and vomitous mélange of insect and man who says ah a lot they are turning into a single football entity that runs doomed inside draws on 3rd and 5. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is a term called carcinization that is a process I know about only from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation">this Wikipedia page I have just read</a> that is the odd tendency for multiple unrelated creatures over billions of years to evolve into crabs, and this is how the Chicago Bears work: no matter how many new general managers and coaches they bring to install new offensive systems that they promise will bring about an exciting era of Bears football no matter who is in charge they keep defaulting into offenses where the quarterback throws for exactly 168 yards and they only win the game if their linebackers score two touchdowns. Under Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern has changed from a fun offense led by scrappy, tiny quarterbacks that desperately tried to outscore teams 48-45 to a defense and punts outfit that has until recently managed a shocking amount of success by trying to win games by going up by exactly three points in the second quarter and then switching to an offensive gameplan that involves getting the ball at their own 35 and attempting to dig a hole. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Bears opened the season in a horrifying "supercell" storm that soaked the field and was watched by the few people in the area that were not bailing out their basements, and in this maelstrom the Bears' objectively hideous Mess Football managed to stymie a vastly superior San Francisco 49ers team that was also helpfully starting a person who appeared to have learned how to play quarterback by sending away for an instruction manual from the Sears catalog. Last Saturday, Northwestern traveled to Penn State and played in what appeared to be a miserable constant downpour. Penn State had trouble holding onto the ball in those conditions and it seemed like every five minutes one of their running backs would fumble the ball in a hilarious and exaggerated manner like an exasperated Daffy Duck flinging a tray of food 35 feet backwards after slipping on a banana peel and then having a safe land on him before his hands come out from under it and do the combination and open the door to reveal his lump-ridden head. Unfortunately, Northwestern could not take advantage of these turnovers and pretty much immediately punted every time. They scored zero points off the turnovers. They ran for something like 6 yards. The Penn State Nittany Lions playing in a tempest who were they thought they were and they let 'em off the hook.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis37ACli5Vqee4wAfKT2uNyj1v1BDt1XQsVYiihHy2fByK26HvQEk3eXnAUKvPU6wOIxZ40r_s7jlx67gm-mY9CTHuHHt0FqTjOFpMIR-MSipUzr0SU5mPlNOHTgasmmzlp0qMIXSzBJWJ-P2Ll1JpghM-1Ew_cqsfPND-l0W8ce0PzC1kRsmat2Mx/s1280/dennis%20green%20northwestern.webp"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis37ACli5Vqee4wAfKT2uNyj1v1BDt1XQsVYiihHy2fByK26HvQEk3eXnAUKvPU6wOIxZ40r_s7jlx67gm-mY9CTHuHHt0FqTjOFpMIR-MSipUzr0SU5mPlNOHTgasmmzlp0qMIXSzBJWJ-P2Ll1JpghM-1Ew_cqsfPND-l0W8ce0PzC1kRsmat2Mx/s320/dennis%20green%20northwestern.webp" /></a></span><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Dennis Green's pronouncement that "The Bears Are Who We Thought They Were" is the most profound and accurate thing anyone has ever said about the Chicago Bears</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">No one was expecting Northwestern to upset undefeated eleventh-ranked Penn State on the road, but a sloppy shit game in horrible weather presented the ideal conditions for Northwestern football and they just could not manage to capitalize on it. In what is looking like three out of four years of absolute football disaster, I am starting to question Northwestern's previous ability to look bad in one game and still manage to win several games it should not out of what appears to be pure stubbornness and spite. And yet, despite myself, I still think they might have a shot at the Dreaded Wisconsin Badgers in what promises to the Big Ten's most miserable homecoming.</span></p><p><b>COACH CYCLE</b><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If there is one time to face the Wisconsin Badgers it is this week when they are reeling. They just got hammered by Illinois (a team that I think, unfortunately for fans of HAT trophies, is going to be pretty decent under Bielema, who has a proven formula to win the Big Ten West). They have unceremoniously fired their head coach Paul Chryst. Wisconsin dumped his ass. Jettisoned him right in the middle of the season. Put him on the cheese truck to Kenosha. I can't remember the Badgers ever firing anyone in the middle of a season before because their coaches tend to just sort of bud off of Barry Alvarez like appendages until they grow the requisite number of chins and fall off. He's the second Big Ten coach to get canned before the teeth of the season, joining Scott Frost whom I assume was dropped out of an airplane cargo hold somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean after screaming at the the athletic director "you don't have the balls to drop me from 30,000 feet into the aaaaaah."</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU2wgzPVKSnN7EuDWg64BbhsOTYlw9OLoxPB8Po2bbZalySVui_VuGPMd0heCrdSHjyAnvv6qG2Jvk4PHxzC3n0BpbYJ3yQV6JW6Y3Sr0-SSPeoIv0SFoRfB-IjCa1hHKavE3EtauoX2BNLawLy6otXFpL9GHWyWhZnTUSZmN--kjdsB7tSYtKHY7a/s1000/paul%20chryst.webp"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU2wgzPVKSnN7EuDWg64BbhsOTYlw9OLoxPB8Po2bbZalySVui_VuGPMd0heCrdSHjyAnvv6qG2Jvk4PHxzC3n0BpbYJ3yQV6JW6Y3Sr0-SSPeoIv0SFoRfB-IjCa1hHKavE3EtauoX2BNLawLy6otXFpL9GHWyWhZnTUSZmN--kjdsB7tSYtKHY7a/w400-h240/paul%20chryst.webp" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Chryst could not be reached for comment because he vanished into a massive crowd of identical looking Pauls Chryst with the real one only identifiable because he was missing a single shoe.</span><br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are a few things going for the 'Cats here. For one, no team that has its coach unceremoniously eating a buyout in early October can be classified as doing well. The Badgers are 2-3 after losing to an unheralded Washington State team and Illinois and getting completely dismantled by an Ohio State team that is for all intents and purposes a professional team that will never lose to a Big Ten West squad unless they are playing in Ross Ade stadium at night where the rules of football and thermodynamics are temporarily suspended. There is also the Mystique of Ryan Field, one of the funniest phenomena in college football where the Badgers, no matter how immense their offensive line and how good their running back is and how much their perennial sort-of-ok quarterback manages to stay out of the way can't help but eat shit in Evanston despite their absolutely overwhelming fan advantage. It is hilarious. Even playing a de facto home game with their tens of thousands of Chicago-area alums and fans making the short drive down I-94 to flood Ryan Field's collapsing rusted guts with an arterial spray of red and making Northwestern go on a silent count in their own stadium, there was a period of time when the Badgers just could not win in Evanston and it would be a great college football story except it involved Northwestern and no one cared.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are a few snags here when it comes to predicting a Northwestern Chaos Victory. Two are practical: For one, Wisconsin's interim coach is the formerly extremely annoying Badgers safety and now defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard who is by all accounts a good and sought-after coach, and the firing of Chryst may be more a move to secure his services before he is poached by another program in college football's amusingly medieval succession system. Another issue is the current state of Northwestern football. Finally, there is a mystical problem here, where Wisconsin fans are pretty down about their season. They are not "considering it possible to lose to 2022 Northwestern" down, but I maintain that the Ryan Field Chaos Engine cannot activate unless there is a scrappy Wildcat team and a preposterously overconfident Badgers team that has a Heisman-caliber running back and world-ending defense and ordinary quarterback that will prevent them from doing anything other than getting bulldozed by Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Without those conditions, I fear that the dreaded Wisconsin at Ryan Field Experience which ideally leaves the 75% of the stadium that is rooting for Wisconsin even though it is ostensibly Northwestern's homecoming game making the Producers Face as they somehow lose 13-11 in a game that somehow involves a one-point special teams safety may not come into play. But goddamn I'm rooting for it.</span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;">BUCK DUCKETT IN DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC PANTS</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span><span style="font-size: small;">You
may have been wondering what has happened to the NCAA's teams of
investigators looking out for illegal payments of free socks to college
athletes after name, image, and likeness policies? Well, I have no idea.
I did not do any research about this. But here is another installment
of a running series this season of fictional vignettes about Buck
Duckett: Rogue NCAA Pants Investigator.</span></span></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Duckett was not sure if the three-eyed mutants in the mall stalls of New Indianapolis could tell the future when they went into their trance or if they were just bilking tourists but he had no interest in either outcome. He usually just hurried by them as quickly on the way to NCAA headquarters, coat buttoned up against the elements and against the crowds of hustlers, unlicensed augmentors, and thieves. He knew these alleys, and he knew what was waiting for him. "It's Duckett," he said to the NCAA guards who never remembered who he was and how many pairs of pants he had confiscated in one legendary raid. He even forgot, sometimes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Hell, it's cold out there," Duckett said, settling into the dingy basement office he shared with Crandall. To get there, he had to go through three checkpoints across rows of auditing machines and past the authenticators that now took up most of the investigations department and down four flights of stairs to a subbasement now mainly used for storage.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"What's going on up there, three ring circus?" Crandall said. Duckett hadn't noticed anything. He generally kept his head down these days. There was very little pants-related activity, and no one up there wanted to hear from him. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"No, what's going on?" Duckett said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"You didn't see the decks last night? They got 'em. They say they do. Brutal Bolus. All hell's breaking loose."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Damn."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Brutal Bolus. The top basketball player in the country, and he was augmented to hell and back. At least, that was what the NCAA thought, although Bolus had passed every test they made him take for three years, even when he blasted Laser State's entire roster of forwards with his forehead cannon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"And no one bothered to ask me about his socks," Duckett said. Crandall couldn't smile, but he managed a jocular grimace.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Duckett was not sure why the NCAA kept him around. He was their most senior investigator but that had happened largely by default after the Meltdowns. He served at first largely as a symbol that the NCAA still had a mission and still cared about amateurism even after basketball stopped becoming recognizable and became a violent basketball-related spectacle that evolved from a four-volume Codex of Futuristic Violent Basketball Rules invented by Bill Laimbeer that also had full color illustrations about speculative haircuts. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The NCAA was not interested in pants anymore. Nor was it interested in shoes, cars, or even cash. The NCAA was now issued in augmentors. Every college basketball player these days was augmented somehow. In the early days, they had their arms replaced with cannons or grappling hooks fused to their backs. But soon players began to show up with strange abilities, eerie abilities to float slightly longer in the air than they should, abilities to move the ball around without touching it, slightly different cannons grafted onto their arms that the NCAA didn't like. These augments were sophisticated and increasingly undetectable. The players were rumored to come from vats and then show up at AAU tournaments with unconvincing backstories and the same few dozen memories. The NCAA's investigations department shifted to unearth these illegal augmentors and ban them from college basketball. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Duckett used to sleep in cars and in fetid piles of laundry in frat houses to catch an illegal pants transaction, but that was not how the NCAA worked anymore. Its analysts monitored patterns: patterns of how players moved, how they bludgeoned, how they spoke in interviews. Players suspected of illegal augments could be seized, and investigators subjected them to a series of cognitive tests. Even the augments from big time programs who had been coached to pass would eventually crack, except for one. For three years, Brutal Bolus had been called in multiple times a season. They gave him the Ramper test. They subjected him to Graschman's Paradox. It did not matter. He passed with ease, he smiled, and then he went out and put his forehead through a point guard ineffectively menacing him with a chainsaw. The NCAA made him his top target. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"How did they finally get him?" Duckett said. He didn't really understand the new methods and did not particularly want to. The whole enterprise seemed sort of grotesque to him, and the new analysts were blank and busy in a way he did not understand.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Don't know yet," Crandall said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Duckett up here. Now." The call on the old deck in the office startled him. No one had called down here before. He did not even realize it was connected to anything and thought it was a piece of junk like everything else. But there was no mistaking that voice. It was Lauck, the Subdirector. Until that second, he would have bet that Lauck had no idea he was still here or even alive, but now he was summoned upstairs. "On my way," Duckett said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The NCAA offices were in chaos. Chairs were strewn everywhere. Analysis stations had dent in them. It was eerily empty, and he had no idea where everyone was until he found them. The hallway to Lauck's office looked like a field hospital, and analysts and other NCAA personnel lay around. The lucky ones were getting bandages. The unlucky ones were getting sheets. It looked like when they tried to bring Bolus in, he had other ideas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lauck looked banged up. He had blood on his sleeve, but it wasn't his. You could fit a change of socks into the bags under his eyes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Duckett, how familiar are you with the Bolus case?" Lauck said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Just what's on the deck," said Duckett. "Crandall told me you got him?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Got him is one way to put it," Lauck said. Duckett realized now that they had a much bigger problem than eligibility on their hands. Bolus was dead. Bolus was dead and Duckett was up here. The mercury drained from his spine. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"You're probably wondering why I asked for you," Lauck said. "Bolus is in there, what's left of him. Whatever augments he had are now gone. No one we know about is capable of anything like his. But when we got him we did manage to salvage these." He opened a biohazard crate and steam hissed out. Duckett leaned over. It was a pair of pants. Pretty standard model, decent stitching, athletic cut. He reached out to feel them but Lauck grabbed his arm. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Look closer, Duckett." Duckett leaned in. The pants were moving. It was subtle, small undulation, almost impossible to spot without staring at it. It was like a breathing motion. Duckett looked at Lauck.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Is that a living tissue? You found these on Bolus? What's going on here, Lauck? What the hell kind of pants are those?" Duckett said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"That's what I want you to find out," Lauck said.<br /></span></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-48632714948800966302022-10-01T12:32:00.000-05:002022-10-01T12:32:07.963-05:00A Loss So Bad They're Destroying the Stadium<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern's nightmare season continued under the lights at Ryan Field last Saturday when Miami of Ohio beat a Big Ten team for the first time since 2003. That team was also Northwestern. The Wildcats continue to spiral into disaster against teams they are favored against and enter the Big Ten season with the verve and excitement of the Terminator slowly sinking into a vat of molten steel.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The difficult thing about trying to figure out anything about Northwestern football this season is that the team transforms seemingly from series to series if not play to play. The Wildcats had series where they easily marched down the field with Hull bouncing off arm tackles and Hilinsky shredding the defense. Then the offense hit a wall and turned into a festival of punts and turnovers. Miami struggled passing the ball all night and it seemed like Northwestern had them shut down and then their running back started finding holes and running through Wildcat tacklers like they were made out of wet cardboard. I was sure Northwestern was going to win this one until they didn't. This crushing loss puts them at 1-3 in what is supposed to be the easy part of their schedule. What had started with a satisfying win in Dublin with dreams of qualifying for the Jesus Christ Why Didn't You Tell Me You Put That There Mousetrap Company Bowl now looks like it could be a repeat of last season or even worse. Not only have the Wildcats failed to win at home this season, they have yet to win in the United States of America.</span></p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Northwestern football, still 1-0*!<br /><br />(*—only games played in Ireland count) <a href="https://t.co/SpXli3SruL">pic.twitter.com/SpXli3SruL</a></p>— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) <a href="https://twitter.com/rodger/status/1573870022975422465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 25, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <span style="font-family: georgia;">Now they go into Happy Valley against an undefeated eleventh ranked Penn State team that has already shredded a mid-tier SEC team on the road. The situation looks incredibly bleak. In years past, we could draw inspiration from Northwestern's penchant for unpredictable and chaotic nonsense in Big Ten play. We have seen Northwestern suffer some absurd losses in the nonconference and then pop up in the Big Ten somehow punting opponents into submission. In this case, the losses have been so alarming that even the comfort of knowing that this team operates purely on spite and annoying people may not be enough to transcend the early season malaise. Pat Fitzgerald has to come up with something to jump start the team; unfortunately Pat Fitzgerald has never come up with anything other than doing the exact same thing he has always done except louder and more magenta-faced.<br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Penn State, meanwhile, is riding high. James Franklin just got to bask in being part of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLhsjH3IBPc">semi-viral video</a> where a heavily made up Eli Manning whose melting prosthetics made him look like the giant goblin creature that is always chasing around the Fraggles and while doing a fake voice that is somehow dopier than Eli Manning's actual voice pretended to try out for Penn State as a walk on who wowed people with his Manning arm. The funniest part of this video for me was Franklin explaining to Manning that at Penn State they don't have walk-ons they have run-ons because no one should be walking, which was a type of doofus football coach talk from a master who was actually hovering in the air while saying it. I find all coaching sayings and acronyms so incredible risible that it is impossible for me to believe they actually inform and motivate people, although it is important to note that is has been more than a decade since I have personally accomplished anything so maybe I should not be laughing at them. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>THE MANIACS ARE GOING TO BLOW IT UP</b><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This week, Northwestern announced they are no longer going through with their plan to renovate Ryan Field. Instead they want to destroy it. The university announced plans to demolish the nearly 100-year-old stadium and replace it with an $800 million dollar pleasure-dome that will have a smaller capacity that will still allow visitors to vastly outnumber Northwestern fans and also allow major events such as a football game involving literally any other team. This is a disaster.</span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Northwestern has proposed plans to demolish Ryan Field and build a modern, small-capacity stadium on-site.<br /><br />The $800M project would be privately-funded and allow the venue to host games, concerts, and other events, per <a href="https://twitter.com/CrainsChicago?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CrainsChicago</a>. <a href="https://t.co/twKhL7UmHc">pic.twitter.com/twKhL7UmHc</a></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">— Front Office Sports (@FOS) <a href="https://twitter.com/FOS/status/1575247326330896385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 28, 2022</a></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> </span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let's be honest: Ryan Field is a dump. It is a shithole. When it comes to watching football you can go to any other Big Ten stadium, even the fake Big Ten East Coast teams, and there is a vague feeling of scale and spectacle and splendor and then you can go to a Northwestern game and see four people standing next to a tarp and stands that are rusting like the hull of a beached ocean liner. They replaced the old astroturf with natural grass that is pockmarked like a WWI no man's land. It is a profoundly ridiculous facility for a team that is pulling ludicrous Big Ten television money and for a school that has a quarter billion dollar death star athletic facility and a basketball/volleyball arena that no longer looks like the Junior Varsity Thunderdome where you can bungee around and instead of getting knives and chainsaws get dinner forks and pool noodles. It is an obscenity, and abomination, and my favorite sports venue.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I <a href="https://bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-unfathomable-sadness-of-possibility.html">wrote earlier</a> when the plan was just to jazz up and renovate the field that it was a colossal mistake because it should be miserable to go to a Northwestern game. Anyone brave enough to go to a Big Ten game there rooting for the 'Cats knows that it will be filled with hostile visiting fans complaining about the field and otherwise making nuisances of themselves and their reward for swarming the stadium in massive numbers should be sitting on frozen ass-murdering bleachers in a blizzard while Pat Fitzgerald orders 56 consecutive runs up the middle and the wildcat hiss-growl plays over the PA more or less constantly regardless of what is happening on the field. There is an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbC0-tuYE2o">episode of the television show Nathan For You</a> where he comes up with a way to advertise televisions for a dollar by imposing absurd conditions like forcing people to dress up in tuxedos and then crawl through a tiny door into a room where there is a live alligator, and these roughly approximate the ideal conditions required for Michigan or Wisconsin fans to see their teams beat up on Northwestern at Ryan Field. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidiavmpkTaGsa_D4nvVPEpQGsAJ_JuTICJ4dLvbzYj-YAMnGRey6sQ4q63rww_kOumZrTX2Mp0M4zI0gFiilSYaEcEG3CXHvwH31pEB5m1pQ3trg00K6cZDZb7cys3KPWvuvPtfT4JnwM7rfbk_ymQPXhf2CewJQEcsS3QHLZUwcEaM9RHFTpUF0u9/s985/nathan%20for%20you%20alligator.png"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidiavmpkTaGsa_D4nvVPEpQGsAJ_JuTICJ4dLvbzYj-YAMnGRey6sQ4q63rww_kOumZrTX2Mp0M4zI0gFiilSYaEcEG3CXHvwH31pEB5m1pQ3trg00K6cZDZb7cys3KPWvuvPtfT4JnwM7rfbk_ymQPXhf2CewJQEcsS3QHLZUwcEaM9RHFTpUF0u9/w400-h225/nathan%20for%20you%20alligator.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Northwestern officials prepare the hot dog concessions for an Iowa game </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And despite the fact that Ryan Field is a football pit, I love that it is old as hell. They've been playing Northwestern football there for nearly a century. Granted, a large chunk of that century has been Northwestern getting embarrassingly clobbered, but why not embrace history. Why does Northwestern, of all teams, need a shiny new stadium? What does the administration think is going to happen here? Will a new stadium all of a sudden make people show up rooting for this team? Do they think people in Chicago will think oh Northwestern has a new stadium, actually those billboards are right this is now the Big Ten Team of the city that I'm in even though I went to Illinois? Northwestern football as a product is perfectly matched to its stadium; for a Big Ten stadium it's easily accessible and exudes a shaggy charm that reflects the fact that it is really not a big deal at all and just sort of going on, which is a unique vibe for big-time college football. I can understand some sort of renovation to prevent the stadium from collapsing on people or to stop bleachers from buckling and snaring fans' shins like a bear trap or putting up a net to stop kickers from braining people on the Randy Walker Terrace, but razing Ryan Field feels like an affront to everything this program stands for which is annoying people and making them uncomfortable.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>THE LONG LEG OF THE LAW</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span><span style="font-size: small;">You
may have been wondering what has happened to the NCAA's teams of
investigators looking out for illegal payments of free socks to college
athletes after name, image, and likeness policies? Well, I have no idea.
I did not do any research about this. But here is another installment
of a running series this season of fictional vignettes about Buck
Duckett: Rogue NCAA Pants Investigator.</span></span></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">The gentlemen were still recovering from the previous night's Necktie Olympics at the Musth Club, an exercise that resulted in two whiplashes, one half-garroting, and a widespread plague of laryngitis when Barney Post-Duvet started leafing through the sporting news. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"I say," said Post-Duvet, did you see that you could have gone in thirteen to one on Bruntingham defeating Grossharbor 28 nil? What a spot of business that would have been."</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Do not say NIL in my company," said Rumpo Plainmash-Dorofice before storming out of the club. When he got up we saw he was wearing the most preposterous trousers any of us had ever seen with an elaborate series of check marks and plaids that were so gigantic he was practically swimming in them.<br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">In order to understand Runpo's distress, you should know that he has just returned from East Lansing, where his aunt Probity has a small cottage and likes to attend the autumn leaf season. Rumpo generally tries to wriggle out of these outings when possible, often explaining to his aunt that the fall foliage tends to turn his nose into a plant producing sneezes and elaborate mucuses, although in general his greatest allergy involves missing the Plentham Stakes and old Pitney Pluvatt's annual ball where the boisterous attendees are regularly chased down from the chandeliers. This year, though, no amount of elaborate sneezing into handkerchiefs or notes from his friend Monty Manto who took several courses in chicken physiognomy and practically make him a physician that explain the dire effect of the leaves on poor Rumpo's health could dissuade her from demanding his presence. So Rumpo went out to East Lansing prepared to subject himself to endless amounts of lectures on the flora and fauna from his aunt's roster of irrepressible bores.<br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">But once he arrived in Michigan, Rumpo had a welcome surprise when he spotted his old school friend Gorge Blabbitt at an interminable lecture about saps at his aunt's country house. Gorge, whose parents are on numerous boards and in too many societies to count, had become somewhat of an expert in being able to find some sort of amusement in these types of residencies; for Rumpo it was like being thrown into prison with a chap who is expecting the delivery of a file baked into a loaf of bread. Gorge immediately motioned him to a side room where he pulled a small bottle that had been hidden in a bust of Earvin "Magic" Johnson. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">While Rumpo was a man with a large amount of sporting blood, Gorge was practically oozing the stuff. This sometimes landed him in spots of trouble. Rumpo had not, in fact, seen Gorge for several years. It was rumored around the club that Gorge had tried to play the Yearwood Gang against Gramps Fester's operation but when Piper Puffer fell down in the third leg of the Welmingstor Stakes, both outfits began a friendly contest to capture Gorge and have him stuffed. Rumpo had heard that Gorge took the opportunity to take a long holiday in areas of the world where they look down on taxidermy.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Rumpo, it may look like we are trapped in an awful dungeon of nature walks," Gorge said, but I have found as sure of a money-maker than shaking a revolver at a bank teller. They have college football here."</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"College football? Is that the sport where the large lads have the thrashing pads and the bashing helmets?" Rumpo replied.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Precisely. And there is a mint to be made wagering on it," Gorge said.<br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Well I enjoy shaking some notes in front of a blood sport as well as anyone, but I couldn't tell you a single thrashman from a bashing outfit. How am I supposed to bet on a game I don't understand?" said Rumpo.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"It is simple enough when you know that regardless of what happens you will have the top players that make the other squad look like anaemic weaklings that could barely lift their arms for a smashing." Gorge said.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">Gorge explained that he had gotten involved with a local booster named A. Pudrington Flost who scours the nation for the stoutest lads at the eating clubs and on the train-lifting circuit and invites them to play at this university. Unfortunately, there are rival universities attempting to lure these giants into their own teams, and so Mr. Flost has devised a plan simply offer them incentives for their clobberous services.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Do you mean you are part of a bribery scheme to lure youngsters with overstimulated pituitaries to your stadium?" Rumpo asked </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Preposterous," Gorge said. "We are not doing anything as gauche as luring them here with bundles of notes. We are simply offering to outfit these gentlemen with such rare and unfortunate proportions with a well-fitting and stylish trouser as a courtesy for representing the old alma mater," Gorge said.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"This all seems a little bit rum, Gorge," said Rumpo. "Is this, strictly speaking, legal?"<br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"The law?" Gorge replied. "Well not any law on the books in the United States of America." Gorge did mention that the trouser scheme did not technically adhere to a code that the university mandated in order to preserve the athletes' amateur status, but no one is particularly exercised about that. He told Rumpo that he he was going to a deliver some trousers that afternoon to "Moose" Maszer and his steel biting club that afternoon under the guise of going to a conifer identification seminar and invited Rumpo along. Rumpo, afraid that if he heard one more word about cartenoids he would have to hurl himself into the nearest creek, agreed to accompany him.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">The two of them pulled up to the Greater Lansing Squashing and Thumping Club with a squeal of tires and a festive tooting of the klaxon and four of the largest people Rump had ever seen clambered out one by one ducking under the door to meet them. Each was bigger than the next, with rectangular heads and shoulders that started around their ears and ended somewhere near their midriff. They blotted out the sun. The biggest one, whom Rumpo took to be Moose, frowned.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"You can't make all of this noise you blockhead. I've heard Duckett is nosing around here."</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">Buck Duckett, Gorge quickly explained, was a sort of detective in the employ of the athletic association who was forever trying to foil illicit trouser transactions and had become a pest to Gorge and his associates. Duckett was the zealous type, always prowling around in ditches or popping up unexpectedly from trees and once had been known to sleep for a week in a zoo enclosure with the facility's most ornery rhinoceros in order to prevent a cycling team from getting a haul of long underpants for free. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Don't worry about Duckett," Gorge said. "This oaf would get hopelessly lost trying to find his own moustache." </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Is that so?" said one of the large men. Rumpo noticed that he had looked less sturdy than the others, not more robust, but swaying and with a rubbery quality about him that Rumpo had assumed came from the diet of meats and tires that he must eat to keep up his mountainous physique. But then his skin began to quiver and split. A smaller man emerged as his bulk deflated and fell to the ground. This wiry man slick with perspiration stood before them standing in front of what appeared to be a discarded rubber apparatus that made him look like a much larger fellow. He ripped off a wig covering a bald head an then tore off a false mustache that had been concealing a smaller and more officious mustache.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"What appears to be going on here is a clear violation of NCAA trouser protocols," the man said. It was the famous investigator Buck Duckett. Moose stared at him and his mouth drooped open to resemble the approximate shape of a cave that Rumpo had been forced to enter at the behest of his aunt to study a bat habitat. "I'm sorry Mr. Maszer. I needed to do a spot of undercover work here as Caboose Cudlow in order to infiltrate your syndicate. I assure that those tender things you said to me about your mother will remain in confidence."</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">Any thought that Gorge had of smiling at that remark retreated when Moose looked like he was about to crack his skull in between the folds of his brow. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Mr. Duckett, I believe you are misinformed," Gorge said. My friend and I were simply coming by to show our chums the new style of trousers that we had purchased. We were not going to hand them over. As you can tell, these gentlemen are connoisseurs of the latest sartorial styles."</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"If that is the case, let's see them on you," Duckett said. Gorge and Rumpo looked at each other and began to put on the trousers. They were enormous. Each of them could probably fit entirely within a single leg with room for an umbrella. The two of them stood desperately clinging to the enormous and garish garments scarcely able to move without causing them to fall down or allow an enterprising squirrel or forest pest to leap into them and rummage around for roughage.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"As you can see, the new style demands a bit of bagginess in the waist," Gorge said. "Much like the Fabulous Five wore their short pants in their netball championships."</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"The fact is there is nothing I can do for you ruffians," Duckett said. "But this is all highly suspect. Moose, I am afraid the NCAA is not going to allow you to play any football this season until we can get to the bottom of all of this."</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">Moose started to stomp towards Gorge and Rumpo. It looked like he had been devising some rigorous new exercises that required the bending and stretching of human beings into new and anatomically impossible configurations. <br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">"Well, if that's about it, I suppose we should be going. Moose, Mr. Duckett, good luck on the investigation and all of that," Gorge said as and Rumpo leaped into the automobile and sped away to get out of Michigan without any of their baggage.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="font-size: small;">At first when Rumpo returned to the club, he had been thankful to escape without his extremities used as an exercise apparatus, even if he had left all of his trousers behind and was forced to mince around in the gigantic footballer's slacks. But his mood quickly darkened. It appeared that the day after he had left, the athletic association had decided that football players like Moose and his prodigious ilk could accept all of the trousers they had liked as long as they were performing some sort of advertising. This policy had been called name, image, and likeness or NIL He also got a cable from his aunt saying that she had called him to Michigan in order to give him a tidy some of monies she needed to dispose of for tax purposes that would have kept him in the black through the West Manglian Stakes, but due to his abrupt departure that had caused so much embarrassment in front of Professor Yorpling she had decided instead to donate it to a wolverine sanctuary. His bank account was now close to nil as well.</span></span></span></p><p></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547134571364490534.post-36059823609781513022022-09-24T13:52:00.002-05:002022-09-24T13:52:55.574-05:00Hey! Wha Happen?<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sometime on Saturday afternoon, Northwestern lost a football game to the Southern Illinois Salukis. I did not know this happened. I spent the day oblivious to the ominous things happening just up the Lake Michigan coast as the 0-2 Football Championship Subdivision SIU Salukis were painstakingly taking apart Northwestern in their home stadium in front of what I can presume were several Northwestern fans. I taped the game, intending to watch it that night, but instead I checked the score and there it was: SIU 31, Northwestern 24. I have not watched a single second of this game.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio9hsaLfDOo_zCwEnYas-Dm9561b-rMOengMOYMHTv-vjyLKedUHQedD_PS2_XWjXuYXpAI04SOJVynF4NwMk73F1m8985ZPnt9S6TMNHz5YiP1WwQUcfGL8q3ZdYVft7u7vRlWlWEhPaf02KgR2zpkpJW2gK9JxY0Gh3249bNEVBLs6tAUrz7UpjW/s640/herzog.webp"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio9hsaLfDOo_zCwEnYas-Dm9561b-rMOengMOYMHTv-vjyLKedUHQedD_PS2_XWjXuYXpAI04SOJVynF4NwMk73F1m8985ZPnt9S6TMNHz5YiP1WwQUcfGL8q3ZdYVft7u7vRlWlWEhPaf02KgR2zpkpJW2gK9JxY0Gh3249bNEVBLs6tAUrz7UpjW/s320/herzog.webp" /></a> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I had Werner Herzog listen to the broadcast to tell me what happened, but I am not sure I believe him when he says that everyone was murdered by the cold, unfeeling hand of nature</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">This is not the type of blog where I pretend to be a Football Person who analyzes the All 22 and tells you about blocking schemes and look at that guy fire off the line of scrimmage there, see he's just using the classic claimjumper's squat there with his outside leverage. I have written blogs off of illegal streams, radio feeds half listened to by cleaning, and obsessively following one of those ESPN game casts where the little football moves around on arrows like a Family Circus cartoon. But I don't really feel the need to analyze this game to see what went wrong when the thing that went wrong is that Northwestern lost to Southern Illinois.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">I would say that this game, combined with the Duke game, and combined with the fact that the Wildcats' big win over the world-famous Nebraska Corn Huskers is looking less and less impressive as it becomes obvious that they are a bad team that was being held hostage by a maniac coach who was only there to demand his ceaseless Barf Tribute, augurs poorly for Northwestern, but the Wildcats are not a team that tends to augur. Northwestern has gone to bowl games coming off seemingly impossible losses; this is by my count the third time Northwestern has handed a steel briefcase full of cash over to an FCS school and then gotten embarrassed by them in recent years. In the past, it seems like nothing that happens in the non-conference season seems to matter to a Pat Fitzgerald football team.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">One of the problems with rooting for Northwestern is that it bypasses one of the most joyful parts of college football fandom, which is people with absolutely insane takes hooting and hollering about football because there are so few fans that no one really covers them. No one is too upset that Northwestern loses to an FCS team at home because for some reason everyone always expects the Wildcats to be bad even though it's been almost 30 years since they were putrid and Northwestern does not have nearly enough fans to get people to call into sports radio and go absolutely nutso. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Some of the greatest
pieces of audio art ever assembled was the Doug Buffone and
Ed O'Bradovich Bears postgame show after the Bears inevitably got
completely
destroyed in a prime time game. They were irate. They were upset. The
callers were incoherent. Everyone was screaming over a low din because
they were inevitably broadcasting from an Elmhurst car dealership. One
time, they played the Giants and Jay Cutler got sacked nine times in
the first half, and I discovered that the phrase "he got sacked nine
times in da first half" was perhaps the greatest Chicago accent
shibboleth that has ever been devised. There is something satisfying
and incredibly funny about people absolutely losing their minds over a
sporting event that has gone badly. </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">The idea of someone getting upset over a Northwestern sporting event is actually funny. We got a meme out of it. It's not like the Greater Chicagoland Region is bereft of maniac sports takes; the Chicago Bears alone are one of the most psychically deranging forces operating in the United States right now. Would it be useful or satisfying to be able to tune into a sports radio station and hear someone braying trubinskyishly that Pat Fitzgerald is a fraud who was propped up by Mike Hankwitz? Would it be interesting to hear eight different people call in all demanding to start a different quarterback, at least one which graduated six years ago? Would it be tremendous to hear someone go on the air and criticize Pat Fitzgerald for wearing shorts? </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Actually that probably would not be very useful, as funny as it would be. Now Northwestern is heavily favored over another team in a non-power five division that is coming into Ryan Field to ruin the Wildcats' day.<br /></span></span></p><p>TIGERBLOG</p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">It's 1997 in Primorye, a lightly-populated outpost in the far eastern outskirts of Russia in the taiga and a man is dead. There is no doubt what has happened to him because only one thing looks like that. It was a tiger attack. The victim had been a poacher, the tiger the most valuable commodity available. The question that immediately comes up among the local community and to the Inspection Tiger team that comes to investigate the attack is why the tiger had come for this man, why it waited for him, and whether it would be satisfied with this kill or come back. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">John Vaillant's <i>The Tiger</i> is about this attack, but it is also about Primorye and about the relationship of human beings to tigers and whether people's innate desire to destroy is an innate part of millenia living as prey. It shares a lot with the other tiger attack book <a href="https://bringyourchampionstheyreourmeat.blogspot.com/2022/08/baseball-maudlin-sentimentality-check-in.html">I reviewed earlier in this blog</a>, Dane Hucklebridge's <i>No Beast So Fierce</i> about the infamous Champawat tiger that has traditionally been blamed for more than 400 kills in India and Nepal around the turn of the twentieth century. Both books share a fascination with the horrifying efficiency and brutality of tigers as predators. Both center a search and hunt for a maneating tiger. Both use goofy sports analogies: for Hucklebridge a tiger is the middle linebacker of the animal kingdom, while Vaillant describes the tiger's head and limbs as a basketball team with the jaws as the center, the front paws as the forwards and the back limbs as the guards. And both books seek to situate tiger attacks in the context of environmental change and despoliation and the political and economic changes that began to pressure tigers into more conflict with people.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">For Hucklebridge, the main force that created the Champawat tiger and other man-eaters was colonialism as British policies increased cultivation and decrease the tigers' natural habitat that sent them in an increasing collision course with villages. For Vaillant, the chief issue is perestroika, liberalization of the Soviet economy under Gorbachev, and the general chaos that came with the Soviet Union's dissolution in the 1990s. Vaillant describes Primorye, at all times a hardscrabble border area, as one where the very meager supports from Soviet logging and energy companies in the 1980s completely collapsed and left many residents in a desperate struggle to survive off the taiga by foraging nuts, hunting and trapping whatever game they could find, and poaching. Tigers came to represent a massive windfall. Some hunters, according to Vaillant, referred to them as "Toyotas" because that was the amount of money they could expect to get for killing one and selling it over the border in China. This practice was incredibly risky-- not only was tiger hunting illegal, but an attempt to kill a tiger that does not succeed results in just about the worst thing the hunger could possibly imagine. That's what Vladimir Markov, the tiger's victim, unfortunately proved.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Where the two books differ is that the attack on Markov happened relatively recently. Vaillant was able to travel to Primorye and meet the people involved (interestingly, Vaillant reveals in the acknowledgements that he did not conduct the interviews himself because he does not speak Russian, so they were all conducted by a research assistant, which lends an interesting coloring to the immediate you are there narration). He also could draw on a documentary about the incident. Hucklebridge, on the other hand, relies a lot more on conjecture and has no living witnesses to speak to. Vaillant also structures the book differently. While Huckleridge's account of the Champawat tiger reads sometimes like a monster movie as the tiger terrorized an entire region unsure when it would strike next, Vaillant's book reads more like a detective novel. Here the central question revolves around trying to figure out the tiger's motive, which requires him to spend a lot of time trying to understand exactly what a tiger's motives are, how tigers think, and the fascinating question of whether a tiger is capable of vengeance.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">One interesting concept that frames Vaillant's attempts to understand the tiger is the umwelt, a term coined by Jokob von Uexkull. As Vaillant describes it, the umwelt is an organism's bubble of relevant things it can sense, understand, and perceive as important; within each umgebung, von Uexkull's word for the natural world, each creature has its own umwelt.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: small;">In the umebung of a city sidewalk, for example, a dog owner's umwelt would differ greatly from that of her dog's in that, while she might be keenly aware of a SALE sign in a window, a policeman coming toward her, or a broken bottle in her path, the dog would focus on the gust of cooked meat emanating from a restaurant's exhaust fan, the urine on a fire hydrant, and the doughnut crumbs next to he broken bottle. Objectively, these two creatures inhabit the same umgebung, but their individual umwelten give them radically different experiences of it.</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Vaillant argues that the residents of Primorye who depended on the taiga necessarily had to learn about the tiger's umwelt and generally could come to an uneasy peace with the tigers by understanding the tigers' boundaries and limits and their own place within the tiger's kingdom. Markov also understood these things, but Vaillant suggests that he became desperate enough to believe he could overcome them.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">If you are going to read one book on tiger attacks, I recommend <i>The Tige</i>r.<i> </i>Vaillant makes the story more suspenseful, he's closer to the people in it, and the questions he asks about people, the surrounding environment, and the functions of human behavior are more interesting. The way he switches from flinty detective prose surrounding Yuri Trush, the local head of Inspection Tiger to lyrical contemplations about the meaning of human beings' descent from trees onto deadly ground is a better read. It also feels to me that a lot of the scientific points Vaillant is making are sort of bullshitty, but I am not an animal behavior scientist, so that doesn't bother me. There's also a harder edge and intensity to <i>The Tiger</i> and the prose is less forced. There's nothing wrong with <i>No Beast So Fierce</i>. These are two different books trying to do two different things and covering vastly different scales of time and polities. At the same time, the politics and issues of conservation and of people's role preventing the eradication of tigers from the face of the Earth in both books converge in a fascinating way as two books that spend an inordinate amount of time discussing tigers as monsters and detailing the various unpleasant ways that a person encountering an angry tiger will be crushed, disemboweled, and devoured end up coming to the conclusion that people should do everything possible to keep them around.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><b>BUCK DUCKETT SECTION</b><br /></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">You may have been wondering what has happened to the NCAA's teams of investigators looking out for illegal payments of free socks to college athletes after name, image, and likeness policies? Well, I have no idea. I did not do any research about this. But here is another installment of a running series this season of fictional vignettes about Buck Duckett: Rogue NCAA Pants Investigator.</span></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">1. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">There was not a lot of shade by the shuttle stop outside NCAA Headquarters and by the time the bus came, the official NCAA track suit I had that was issued to all employees was soaked. It was supposed to wick away sweat, but it was outwicked, and my hair, which was recently trimmed to NCAA specifications, was not stopping it from trickling into my eyes and around my lips. When the shuttle finally came, it felt like I had been thrown into a meat freezer. This was around '18, back before the Reorganization.<span style="font-size: x-small;">(1)</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">The orientation process had been a blur. They flashed pictures of athletes wearing different pairs of pants at us and we had three seconds to determine if they were legal, illegal, or suspect. They did not tell us how we did, but after four hours of this, about two-thirds of us were summoned into a room and told to gather our things and get on the bus to Plainfield. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">The NCAA's Pants, Shoes, and Apparel Processing Facility was temporarily located in Plainfield after the Tattoo, Jewelry, and Automobile section expanded. It was a converted warehouse, and they had just screwed cubicles into the ground. Everything echoed. There was a single phone connected to the Section Head, Lynn Mealer who never stopped scowling about the relocation, and when it rang it sound like a piercing wail. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Our job was simple, Mealer said to us, her voice booming like an offstage deity in a play. We do not investigate. We do not even try to investigate. The Investigation Section back in Indy did all of the stakeouts, the following, the disguises, the shootouts on the docks. We just watched. All of us had a monitor and all day we looked at pictures and video of players' pants(2) and tried to determine if something seemed off. If it was, we'd flag it and it would go to investigations for a second look. At 9 AM you got your first feed. No music, no radio, no conversation except for designated break areas. You will learn how to differentiate brands and cuts of pants and you will know how much they cost and you will memorize the Pants Cost Matrix in the third tab of your binder, and if you start flagging too many normal pants, the investigators will come down here. You don't want to see Duckett or talk to him, believe me. You're the tip of the spear, she said. When she was done, I asked to call my probation officer. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">My parents really wanted me to be good at football. My father was all state in Ohio, my mom's brother's played DII ball, and I was good at running kids over in peewee football. But I hated the game. I hated the practice, I hated hitting people, I hated my dad, and I hated how Coach Tremppo told me I was lousy player and lousy kid and I was only on the team because he needed someone on the team to get shoved around. What football did get me was access to players, and get me close to Price Glauker, who got me into pants. Glauker's uncle was a booster with a pants warehouse. Pretty soon, we had the whole team outfitted illegally and were moving onto the junior college the next town over. The summer of my senior year, I spent the entire time driving from college town to college town giving away bags of pants and shorts to recruits and anyone on the teams who would take them, even the punters. It was a punter that got me. I didn't know he had washed out the team and got picked up the The A.(3) The NCAA judge told me if I wanted to go to college I would be sentenced to working for the NCAA(4). <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">We all coped with the processing differently. I started to see pants every time I closed my eyes. Every time I left the Facility, I was immediately scanning everyone's pants and making notes. At least four times, someone threatened to hit me, and that's when I generally stopped leaving the apartment complex. Gerry Wicks stopped wearing them altogether. Even in the dead of winter, he was in shorts. He was standing in a shin-high snow drift waiting for the shuttle from our Plainfield apartment complex, the Lamplighter, shivering, his legs turning red and raw but he would not put on a single pant, not even after a series of memos then meetings, then threatened legal action and counter-action. Harry Denn was the only one who wanted to be there and he only talked about pants. He checked into his station with a crisp pencil, he talked about pants on breaks, he talked about pants at lunch; I once saw him looking at pants Perry Crossing with a weird little smile on his face, his eyeballs sort of rolled up into his head. It was like that for weeks before no one would talk to him anymore. We just could not bear it. He seemed to understand that, that his life would consist finding the exact amount of pants conversation anyone could bear before being relegated to his odd little world. He would hit the buttons on his Feed with his eyes blissfully closed, and we could never figure out how he did it. He hit the button and took small, strangled breaths.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">2.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">The phone rang buzzed in the car. Duckett still had a flip phone and the NCAA made him turn it on but he could not answer it. He was motionless under a blanket and wide receiver Darryl Mant was about to get some pants from a booster from the trunk, but it did not have any pants, but had Buck Duckett ready to spring into action. The phone buzzed again, but there was also a crack of daylight.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">It was another meeting he had missed. Duckett knew that he could not avoid the Reorganization forever by hiding out in the field, but he was going to try as hard as he could. Duckett's section chief Ed Nackro had been telling him that things were coming crashing down. "Duckett, it's over for pants," Nackro said to him. But Nackro had been saying that since '05, when they moved Pants over to that warehouse in Plainfield, and here they were still reeling in busts and suspensions and vacating basketball games.(5) <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Duckett had tried to get out of pants once. He wanted cars. Everyone in the entire section wanted cars. He put his head down and did his best with pants. The Deputy Vice President of Investigations cited him for his "dogged pursuit of pants violators." And when they announced the promotions to Automobiles the next year, he was still in pants. Instead, the promotion went to Phil Prompt, who made fewer busts but was at more meetings. Prompt was great in meetings. He always wanted to add technology; Prompt actually created the idea of Processing. Processing produced few leads, that is far fewer than Duckett's network of pants informants in athletic departments and malls, but the NCAA wanted to move towards computers while Duckett was still filing reports in carbon. After that, he got put on another reorganization committee, but he could not stand the endless power points and the meetings, the whole time there were pipelines of pants shooting through underground networks while they talked about more efficient ways to fill out forms.(6)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now, though, Duckett had heard that they were going to legalize it all. Duckett could not think about it. He came in every day and looked at his corkboards, and talked to his informants. His sources did not have much to say anymore other than questions about why he was still doing this. Every day, ominous memos about The Reorganization piled up on his desk. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">1. The Reorganization was a massive reallocation of NCAA resources away from its Invetigations and Processing sections to its Sponsorships and Marketing sections. In one stroke of a pen, 14 section heads were merged into other departments, 13 were bought out, and one, the Tattoos Investigation Section head Luther Varnich, disappeared completely with a briefcase of sensitive documents which were later recovered at the crash site outside a regional airport in Honduras. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">2. The Feed was introduced in 2005 as a more efficient way to monitor athletes and prevent costly and dangerous undercover missions. It came as a result of a bureaucratic war that saw Investigations Deputy Section Head Walt Malt arrested after trying to sabotage the Feed servers with homemade explosives. The explosion took head of Feed Security Irving Luarent's right hand, which he replaced with a menacing but useless claw.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">3. Employess of the NCAA referred to it at the time as "The A."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">4. The case was the first known attempt by a judge to sentence a defendant to work for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. This judge, A. Barbara Three, had run on a reelection platform of cracking down on pants. The next time she tried it, it resulted in the landmark case NCAA vs. Oprock, which got all the way to the Supreme Court where the justices ruled 9-0 that this kind of sentencing was impossible and absurd. The judge resigned. Jimmy Oprock had lawyers and not parents who just told him to sign whatever they put in front of him. Oprock later sued and won $468,000 for his trouble. By this time, I had been finished with the Processing Facility for six years.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">5. Buck Duckett's massive bust of the A&M Ring caused the school to vacate 22 wins in the season and take down an NIT Participant banner. They gave Duckett a replica banner to hang in his office, but he never put it up. It was the largest pants bust in NCAA history, with 75 pairs of illegal pants displayed for the TV cameras and Duckett grimacing through a press conference where he refused to speak.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">6. To be more specific, the NCAA Investigation Section Reporting Meeting Series from April 2007 to February 2008 met to determine whether they should switch from the standard V-238 Violations Form for student-athletes caught with contraband which was then filed in a database to a V-500 Series report that was on a newer system and allowed tracking from other departments, which could be cross referenced into larger investigations and flagged for the Special Section, which would allow for much larger investigations and possible activation of the armed Enforcement Section. The issue was whether the increased efficiency would be counterbalanced by the need to retrain all Investigation Sections and whether the availability of information would allow for investigations to be compromised. This was not a concern when the Meeting Series was initiated in 2005, but in the next year, an internal NCAA mole connected to a powerful sports agency destroyed 38 active shoe investigations before the mole was chased onto the Chase Tower and he plummeted to his death.</span><br /></span></span></p><p></p>BYCTOMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328173374753787181noreply@blogger.com2