THE ARCH-DUKE

Northwestern survived a shaky opening game and went to Durham to prove that they would not repeat last year's out of conference nightmare that changed season from one where they hoped to compete for a division title to one that involved scrapping for bowl contention.  Instead, they went to Duke and got run over by trucks.

Foiled once again by the Duke Boys

The 42-17 bludgeoning at the hands of Duke promises a repeat of last year's season where a disastrous start to the season somehow turned into a feisty run through the dregs of the Big Ten to a Pinstripe Bowl Championship.  The revamped schedule only has one more non-conference game that could turn into white knuckle terror before the 'Cats have to face the two most terrifying games on their schedule.  Meanwhile, Illinois has shown alarming signs of football competence and Purdue has thrown away its staid old playbook of painting tunnels on the side of a cliff and then running into it to a series of plays where Purdue runs triple-reverse flea flickers at all times and distributes propaganda leaflets to opposing defenses that sow confusion and dissent while the Purdue quarterback strolls towards the endzone.  P.J. Fleck now coaches Minnesota with the insane stare of a man who has literally paid $100,000 to continue yelling at people to row the boat; I don't know what Fleck means by Row the Boat, but there are few things more dangerous than a football coach with a monomaniacal mantra that is now his intellectual property.

Fleck explains that part two in the Row the Boat Process is The Boat

The Big Ten West looks far more dangerous than it did a year ago, and after two games Northwestern's path to its most important goal, a berth in the Go Ahead and Bite It Attack Dog Arm Protector Bowl has become fraught.

DUKE GAME RECAP

Pat Fitzgerald shouldered past the dial-a-down. Planning on taking it one game at a time. Sound practice advocated by such diverse football tacticians as George Halas, Bum Phillips, Dr M.H.H. Rarritt advertising on the back pages of Football Man's Advocate PO Box 412. One game at a time makes sense, temporally; no madman could possibly play two games at the same time, two fields, two quarterbacks, two head coaches and replay officials, all jumbled in the same corner of space-time, unfathomable. If that happened, Pat, you'd have a much larger problem than the Wisconsin Badgers is what the professor professed at him when he pulled him aside and very quietly inquired about the physics of taking it two or even three games at a time. You can't do that, young men, he told them every day at camp, halfglassesed, chalksmeared. He suspected Mick McCall thought otherwise, but the two had decided not to discuss theoretical physics, not again.

DURHAM-- The blue-clad spectators indulged in their joyous Satanic rituals as they watched their Blue Devils make minced-meats upon the hapless Wild Cat of Northwestern.  They rejoiced as their heftiest Dukemen tossed aside Northwestern's line men, sacked their quartered-backs, and browbeat them with a variety of approved touchdown dances.

The grisly rampage took place in front of a group of Duke notables: the Vice Chancellor, the Bursar, the Acting Bursar, the Landlord Shelden Williams, Three Cameron Crazies, A Duplicate Krzyzewski-- one of many deployed against the numerous attempts to kidnap or poison him upon the Tobacco Road, an Eminent Professor of Semiotics, a Slightly Less Eminent Professor of Semiotics who is preparing a devastating attack upon his colleague in Fightnote: The Journal of Learned Insults, the Committee for the Ducolax Opiod Related Constipation Bowl.

FITZGERALD
(Grabs his wrist, his face in strained gutshot pantomime.) Held. Held. Armpinioned and engulfed.

REFEREE
(Stonefaced. Staring at the dial-a-down.)

FITZGERALD
(Makes a series of pained referee gestures). Rough-tackled. Illegally celebrated. Persecuted for false targeting. 

REFEREE
(A gargoyle.)

AIR WILLIE
(Its tongue lolling, its eyebrows arched. inflated by some sort of sulphurous gas as it sways side to side). HISS HISS

CATPOSTS95
(Logs on.) Unacceptable. Horrifying. Fire him. Siege his office and take his memorabilia.

CHATCAT
(Also logs on.) Fire him. Roast him. Slash him with an iron claw.

FANOFCATS77
(Shimmers through carbon fiber.) Disgraceful. Unimaginable. An appalling and low moment to the program, that this Pat Fitzgerald would present himself in front of America and his God in short pants.

CATPOSTS95
(Whips computer mouse around in a threatening nunchuk pattern). Scratch him. Fight him.

CHATCAT
(Breaks keyboard in half with his forehead). Claw him. Bite him.

FANOFCATS77
The shorts are not only the sartorial choice of a languorous child, they present numerous tactical disadvantages vis. exposure of the knee to the elements.

FITZGERALD
(Rides through the Canyon of Heroes brandishing his Pinstripe Bowl trophy.)

NEW YORK SPORTS FAN
(Throws newspapers. Strains to get a glimpse, dangerously halfway through a window, beckons to a coworker to hold on so he does not go plummeting into the Canyon of Heroes himself.)

VENDOR
(Sells bootleg Pinstripe Bowl merchandise that contains the misprint Pinstripe Bowel to throngs of fans shaking money.)

THE MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY
(Bestows on FITZGERALD  the key to New York, awarded for winning the city's most prestigious Sports Championship.)

MIKE GOLIC
(On the dais, sweating, howling as a MIKE GOLIC buds off of him.) Mike?

BUDDING MIKE GOLIC
(Coming into being.) Thanks, Mike.

FANOFCATS77
I have read that Nick Saban often wears two pairs of pants. Even if, during the course of a game, his pants become ripped, soiled, or otherwise damaged, he has with him an entire extra set of pants.

RON ZOOK
(Waterskis through the Canyon of Heroes). Trousers? Slacks? Hot pants? This isn't haberdashery. This isn't fine Italian silks. This isn't monocle accessories. You go and you get the dang ball. This is football, gentlemen. Page 27, from Gentleman, Comma by Ron Zook.

CATPOSTS95
Impossible.

CHATCAT
Meaningless

A KRZYZEWSKI IMPERSONATOR
(Bites FITZGERALD.)

FANOFCATS77
Knute Rockne never wore regular pants, but had surplus US Army tents cut down and made into specialty Coaching Pants. For it was a different game back then, when spectators would lunge, attempting to take the opposing coach's pants as a trophy. Vincent Lombardi sewed his pants into his legs, and they could only be changed via a painful surgical procedure.

FITZGERALD
We will take it one more game at a time I promise.

AN EMINENT PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS
(Assembles unwieldy mound of charts and books.) R. Deborah Pwy, "Football Time, Football Space," the Journal of Coaching Science; J.A. Shermanesque, "A Theoretical Construct of Two Games at a Time," International Review of Time-Game Literature; Chasen Mantis, "What If They Play No Games at a Time Did I Just Blow Your Mind," No Way/Way. 

FITZGERALD
It is the sound conclusion of the scientific community.

BOWLING GREEN 

Here's an interesting and reassuring fact about Northwestern's UNDER THE LIGHTS clash against the Bowling Green Falcons: Northwestern has never beaten them.  They have only played twice-- once in a November shootout that they lost 43-42, and another in the ill-fated 2003 Motor City Bowl, at that point the lowest ebb of Northwestern's bowl loss streak that wasted a 237-yard day from running back Jason Wright.  I expect to see an intimidating flock of Falcons fans descending upon Ryan Field with numerous reproductions of the Motor City Bowl trophy.

There are dedicated football wonks who have film and two-deeps and sophisticated computer rankings about Bowling Green, but these types of games represent opportunities to project the hopes and fears for the coming Big Ten season.  I don't know whether Bowling Green has a good defense, but I do know that if Northwestern continues to struggle running the ball against them it bodes ill for a coming clash with the literal tons of Wisconsin linemen.  I have no idea what Bowling Green's offense looks like, but it will be encouraging if the limping, wounded remnant of Northwestern's flight-suited Sky Team manages to match up with their receivers before Trace McSorley comes to town.  I have no idea if Northwestern can get over psychological mind games that the Falcons will certainly use from the 14-year-old bowl humiliation, but that sort of thing is crucial when it comes to overcoming Fleck's boat taunts not to mention the crucial contest for The Hat. 

Northwestern remains, for some reason, heavily favored once again, when the lights and the cameras of Big Ten Network Regional Coverage will be on them once again as they attempt to defeat the Bowling Green Falcons for the first time.

Week 1: Bronco News Letter

The barricades are up on Lake Shore Drive, the helicopters are circling, and Ryan Field prepares for the annual pilgrimage of thousands of fans from Chicago hoping to catch a glimpse of their Big Ten team. Last year's Wildcats surged to an unexpected and delightful ten-win season for only the fourth time in school history based entirely on Body Clocks, and now they hope to take their assault on opponents' circadian rhythms to Indianapolis.

The 2015 Wildcats had a simple gameplan-- to smother the opposing offense, run Justin Jackson into the other team, and bury them beneath a merciless hail of punts.  When the strategy worked, the defense erased the other team and the running game wore down the clock in an excruciating exhibition of football brutality.  When that didn't work, they put their fist-claws in the hands of the insane gods of football-- they won a game on a botched two-point conversion, a last-second field goal gifted by incompetent clock management, and brain-disrupting satellites launched into low orbit that subjected the referees to space hypnosis and forced them to continue taking touchdowns away from Wisconsin until they were roused from their stupor by a hail of snowballs.

Alex Erickson's attempts to reason with a referee fall on deaf ears 

Will Northwestern be able to repeat their extraordinary feats of football derring-do?  Bah-humbug football experts say no, based on their fancy statistics, distrust of a football team that wins numerous games by opponents unveiling ludicrous Twilight Zone coaching tactics, and the tendency for Northwestern teams with preseason rankings to become grotesque, avant-garde parodies of football as part of someone's senior thesis. 

"M00N: 100 Yards of Sorrow" captured a jury prize in the Exhibition of Football Nihilism for 
demonstrating "an apt metaphor for the purposelessness of violence"

Yet there are some reasons for optimism.  The 'Cats return several key contributors to last year's dominant defense, including superstar linebacker Anthony Walker.  Quarterback Clayton Thorson has a year of experience under his belt and hopes to improve his passing game to complement his herky-jerky auto lot inflatable running style.  Former running back Solomon Vault and cornerback Marcus McShepard have switched positions to bolster the receiving corps and expose opposing defenses to the terrifying possibility of the forward pass, virtually unknown in the modern game of football.

There is no more pointless pursuit than predicting Northwestern football.  They have to play Ohio State and Michigan State on the road.  Their chief rival is no longer coached by a maniac who came out of a Joseph Conrad novel about football.  The difference between a Northwestern victory or loss usually comes down to a play so ridiculous that it turns into a Wes Anderson version of football where a blank-faced twelve-year-old coach with a false mustache calls a play out of John Dominic's Manual for Foot Ball Aptitude and players dressed in immaculate old-timey football costume are unable to catch a papier-mache football that goes through an intricate series of Rube Goldberg devices involving a hamster wheel, a 1960s style vibrating weight loss belt machine, and a tricycle before the ball crosses the line and a blank-faced referee played by Bill Murray unenthusiastically signals for a touchdown. 

By my statistical formula, devised on a vision quest through the mystical environs of the Greater Chicagloand Metrolitan Area, Northwestern is going to the Rose Bowl.

BRONCO NEWS

NFL analysts have spent the last two weeks with their corkboards and pushpins trying to piece together the beguiling series of events that have led to Trevor Siemian starting at quarterback for the defending Super Bowl Champion Denver Broncos.  Peyton Manning retired.  Backup Brock Osweiler left for Houston.  And the main competition for Siemian was journeyman quarterback Mark Sanchez, known mainly for attempting to run through another man's buttocks like he was Wile E. Coyote charging through a tunnel made of paint.

Mark Sanchez with the haunted expression of a man who sees butts every 
time he closes his eyes

Certain maniacs have suggested that Siemian may struggle in the NFL because he put up some of the worst statistics by a Northwestern quarterback in recent memory. These so-called football experts, who spend their summers sorting through index cards in their homes filled with arcane statistics, know nothing about Northwestern football. Do they know, for example, that Siemian spent most of his career as a change of pace co-starter who only came in when it was time to throw like one of those World War I cannons mounted to a railroad car? Or the psychological toll taken on him by the strain from coming in as the “passing quarterback,” which set off a whole series of diabolical mind games about whether he would actually pass or he'd run or he'd pretend to run but still pass or he'd pass anyway or he'd spend the entire offseason disguised as a Western Illinois player named A. Augustus Vermillion only to betray his new teammates in the second game and lead Northwestern to a 24-7 victory?

Siemian should, according to proprietary BYCTOM algorithms, immediately become the greatest quarterback in the NFL because of his expert kneel-down game, Super Bowl experience, and the time he led Northwestern to victory against Notre Dame and created a mass-hysterical event where thousands of Notre Dame football fans attempted citizen firings of Brian Kelly through their most unhinged message boards.  Expect Siemian to blithely swat down all challengers as he rampages through the futile professional defenses of the NFL.

Entertainment impresario Carl Denham cautions against allowing a 
rampaging Siemian to climb to mile high heights

The Trevor Siemian Era of Broncos football begins now.  I can't believe it either.

ADDITIONAL BRONCO NEWS

Northwestern faces the Western Michigan Broncos Saturday at Ryan Field.  Coach P.J. fleck, a wide-eyed football evangelist who has out-recruited the Big Ten basement, led the Broncos to an 8-5 record last year, knocking on the door of perennial MAC bullies Northern Illinois. SBNation's Bill Connelly graded them higher than Northwestern last season, using his mysterious S&P+ rankings.  Though Northwestern is favored, this is no easy contest to ease into the football season; the Broncos play in the Eastern time zone and have therefore fortified their body clocks against the dangerous football disruptions caused by Central Time.

P.J. Fleck will bring his exciting “Row The Boat” catchphrase back for yet another season. Sometimes I wonder whether Fleck ever gets tired of his performative rowboating, like he’s at a pep rally and the band’s about to break into Western Michigan’s disappointingly non-maritime fight song and Fleck is just staring at the crowd who are all wearing row the boat shirts and some are hoisting oars and maybe one or two students is dressed up like a Gorton’s Fisherman and they’re all waiting to explode into an orgy of rowboat pantomime and he just can’t do it anymore, he’s out of it, the boat in his mind just sitting dead still in the center of a pond, but then the booster comes in, a Colonel Tom Parker type, and he’s staring at him through dead, flinty eyes, and he says Jesus Christ Fleck these people paid their damn money to see you row the GODdamn boat so why don’t you just get some pep in your step and give ‘em a show, who the fuck do you think you are, Bear Bryant? are these folks here to watch you diagram a sumbitching OFFtackle play? no they aren’t, he says, and so Fleck goes out there and when the klieg lights hit him and the trombonists start waggling their instruments around you’d have no idea about any of this, the doubts, the desperation, the nights spent with a chalkboard where he’s written and erased “drive the car” and “pedal the bike” and even “hang the glide” and the smile is there and the jaw squares around that football chin, and the eyes sparkle with conviction. “Row the boat,” Fleck says, and the cheers engulf him and his team streaming out onto the stage in padless jerseys.

Or maybe he just really likes to say row the boat

Western Michigan, like most college football teams, holds a precarious spot in the football ecosystem.  Fleck's recruiting prowess has elevated them to a MAC championship contender. With each victory, though, Fleck becomes a more tempting target for a powerhouse team to poach in the offseason, wined and dined in the stately dining cars of the Power Five's suspender-thumbing boosterati.  Regardless of Fleck's future, the Broncos hope to make a statement by coming into the most intimidating stadium in the Big Ten and come away with a win.  The 'Cats have no choice but to row them to hell.

Western Michigan returns to Kalamazoo across the Lake Michigan

OPENING WEEKEND

The lines are painted, the field is green, the tarps are set, and the Northwestern Wildcats hope to prove that last season was not a fluke.  We have absolutely no idea.  It is a fool's errand to predict football, where a fraction of a second can change a triumphant march to Indianapolis into a desperate fight to qualify for the Amalgamated Anvil and Anvil Lubricants Bowl in some god-forsaken Rust Belt thunderdome.  Even the Alabamas, Ohio States, and Oklahomas will at some point this season have to hold onto their butts.  Northwestern will probably lose some game they should win and author a heroic upset that causes the cry of UNACCEPTABLE to echo across the college sports internet.

It is unlikely that Northwestern will benefit from as many weird bounces and space-hypnosis referee decisions as last year.  But they could also be better. They could somehow replace the rain of punts with a hail of airborne passes, discovered by offensive coordinator Mick McCall as an exotic punt that potentially allows you to retain possession.  Trevor Siemian is the starting quarterback for the defending Super Bowl champions.  Anything can happen.

The Least Northwestern of Games

Last Saturday, the 'Cats opened the season at Ryan Field by hosting out-of-conference nemesis Syracuse.  The 'Cats hoped to improve on their first game with the comforts of home: a reasonable time slot instead of playing at some ridiculous midnight moon time, stands full of Wildcat partisans, and an inspiring tarp that stood in for empty seats that opposing teams could look towards and imagine thousands of angry fist claws shouting at them on third down, theoretically.
 
Early speculation remains that the tarp will be deployed at a future Big Ten game-- 
imagine the opposing team feeling comfortable down by the north endzone and 
prepared to go about its business when the tarp is suddenly lifted to reveal a secret 
cache of Northwestern fans in a common football tactic known as the "Trojan Tarp"
(Photo from nusports.com)

Northwestern and Syracuse have played enough over the past few years to create something of a rivalry.  Some Syracuse fans have complained about the officiating in the last game that allowed Northwestern's dramatic comeback; I will never forgive Greg Paulus for his excellent play in a win against Northwestern, and I'm disappointed that Fitz never returned the favor by putting in Juice Thompson or Luka Mirkovic in for a play to show them what it's like and also to accrue a never-used NCAA infraction for attempting to play graduated basketball players in a football game because of spite.

WHAT THE HELL KIND OF WIN WAS THAT?  I WANT MY MONEY BACK

I think as Northwestern fans, we can all be greatly disappointed by the kind of football played by Northwestern the past weekend.  Kain Colter returned to combine with Trevor Siemian into an unstoppable bomb-throwing, scrambling, optioning, quarterbacking monster that I will be referring to as The Colterian.
 
As the old football adage says: if you have two quarterbacks you 
have no quarterbacks unless they are melded into a two-headed 
multi-limbed mutant capable of optioning to itself and coming 
up with the world's most elaborate celebratory handshake

The high-powered offense and an opportunistic defense that snagged another four interceptions allowed the 'Cats to leap out to a 34-7 lead at the half.  I don't know about you, but I watch Northwestern for the adrenaline after last year's Four Quarters of Terror campaign, not to watch them slice up a defense, to watch Dan Vitale and Treyvon Green become stars, and to see the spread offense wreak havoc with an arsenal of receivers who are all named Jones.  There weren't even accusations of Wacky Races skulduggery to have opinions about and no coaches calling the team a disgrace to the concept of college football which is doubly insulting because the NCAA exists and sets a pretty high standard of being an insult to college football. 

I hope the Northwestern football establishment realizes the disappointment of fans who expect to spend the duration of games strapped into their recliners as the Wildcat defense is expected to perform a Reverse Teen Wolf and return to a feeble teenage Michael J. Fox status that allows the other team to start inexplicably executing hail mary passes and Roundtree Catches.  What kind of lunatic who is invested in a college football team wants to see them playing extraordinarily well against an ACC team because of an incredibly entertaining offense that dominates even with Venric Mark out?  I don't ask much from Northwestern football other than a vision of oblivion in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter where I enter an otherworldly plane, an out-of-body experience that is happening because I'm worried that the football team I like might lose.

BRONCO BUSTING

This week, Northwestern will play Western Michigan.  This was not supposed to happen.  It came about because of the Assassination of the Northwestern-Vandebilt Rivalry by the Coward James Franklin.  As you may recall, and given that you are reading like the eighth-most trafficked Northwestern football blog on the internet I'm guessing that you do, Vanderbilt canceled its 2013 and 2014 series against the Wildcats with a variety of low-tech notification methods including a telegraph, a passenger pigeon, a Soviet-era analogue hotline, and a disastrous attempt to send a gorilla-gram with an actual gorilla that just ended in a tragic Nashville-area gorilla rampage presumably because Northwestern kept beating them and James Franklin and the Vanderbilt Athletic Department are yellower-bellied than the Yella Fella Yellawood pitchman who is apparently a powerful football booster at Auburn University.
 
No, thank you, I prefer not to be Coltered, says a 
terrified James Franklin.  I should probably add here 
that I have no idea if Vandy dropped the series because 
they wanted an easier schedule, but I took a vow long 
ago that if I could vaguely accuse an opposing athletic 
program of ducking Northwestern I would react the 
same way that Clubber Lang would because I train 
alone, I blog alone, and I tweet "shut up old man" at 
any geriatric Vanderbilt supporters I can identify 
in cyberspace

Western Michigan is a program in transition.  They are led by 32-year-old first-year head coach P.J. Fleck, who has the square-jawed enthusiasm of a Fitz but has decided that he is obsessed with overwrought boat-paddling metaphors.
Fleck traces the influence of his motivational techniques to Hagar the Horrible

The Broncos have had a rough season so far.  Last week, they were upset by FCS Nicholls State in the Fortress Waldo Stadium (which is perhaps the platonic ideal for a MAC stadium name, with the possible exception of Kelly-Shorts-- much like the Great Fillmore/Arthur Muttonchop Debate, I believe that is best left to the taste of the reader).  Northwestern is expected to prevail here against an inexperienced team whose best days are ahead of it.

It would be a mistake, though, to assume the 'Cats are taking this lightly.  Pat Fitzgerald is more committed to living one game at a time than Vin Diesel is to living one quarter-mile at a time and expressing himself through tank top.  Fitz doesn't care about what happens beyond that; if a government agency were to deploy to his house and tell him that in two weeks, a group of malevolent aliens will invade the Earth and the only way to stop them is by commandeering a spacecraft that can be piloted by high-intensity fist pumps and that Fitz was the only one who could stop the imminent destruction of the planet, I'm fairly sure he would send them away because he wants to take another look at that Western Michigan bunch formation.

HAT UPDATE

I don't know if you've been paying attention, but the Illini had a fairly convincing victory against a Cincinnati team  that had previously laid waste to Purdue University.  This week, they take on a ranked Washington team in Soldier Field.  According to ESPN's Big Ten Blog, "Illinois athletic director Mike Thomas said back in 2011 that he hoped the university would become the 'king of Chicago,'" in the escalating War to Determine Chicago's Big Ten Team.  Jim Phillips then escalated the situation by dressing in regal purple robes in front of a map of the Demesne Kingdom of of Chicagoland with sketches of dragons in Missouri and giants near Peoria.  The desperate attempt of Northwestern and Illinois to capture the Chicago market has been one of the most dramatic turf wars in the Big Ten as they vie against each other and the approximately 99% of Chicagoans who root for the Bears and whatever college they went to.

Meanwhile, Tim Beckman and new offensive coordinator Bill Cubit are planning on extricating themselves from the Big Ten cellar this season.  A win against Washington would not only be a major step in righting the program and establishing the Beck Man Era in Champaign, it would also be a warning shot fired across the bow of Northwestern, a notice that the Beck Men are coming for The Hat.  As we speak, Beckman is doing pull-ups in a dimly-lit corner of the Illini football complex and had #HAT tattooed across both of his sets of knuckles.

A CLOOTS BY ANY OTHER NAME

"However, when the revolution broke out, he changed his name to Anacharsis Cloots and set himself up as a spokesman for the human race."

That is a pretty good sentence, and it is by Hugh Gough in an essay about the French Revolution's effect on Europe (in his edited volume Ireland and the French Revolution).  He is referring, of course, to the Baron de Cloots, a Dutch-Prussian nobleman who got caught up in the revolutionary fervor of 1789 as a way to promote his ideas about a broader revolutionary world state.  Cloots was a close relative of Cornelius De Pauw, a French philosopher who pushed the idea that the New World degenerated all men and beasts who arrive there.  Americans took umbrage to this.  Even ideological enemies Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton could agree that they did not live in an ecological backwater that stunted growth and had cruddy, inferior wildlife.  Jefferson and Madison exchanged notes on weasel measurements in order to counter claims of degeneracy; Jefferson attempted to counter the claims of the Comte de Buffon, the leading degeneracy advocate, with a process that could best be described as "take a look at this moose-- who is degenerate now, Buffon?" 
 
Buffon scoffs at the paltry size of American 
weasels

Cloots got too wrapped up in the Revolution for his own good.  As the Terror folded back on itself, Cloots was unable to see the Revolution carried into universal human principle.  On the other hand, he left a legacy of inspiring historians to craft spectacular sentences, such as this one by William Doyle in the Oxford History of the French Revolution:

"To substantiate the charge of a foreign plot, a clutch of colorful aliens perished with them too, including Clootz, who bade farewell to his beloved human race in front of the biggest crowd ever to surround the guillotine."

WEEK 3 IS HERE, EVERYONE

Western Michigan may not be the most daunting opponent on the schedule, but the Broncos have nothing to lose in Evanston.  Fitzgerald will attempt to guide his team to another rejection of Northwestern football as we know it by winning without trying to kill his fans and without accusations of intrigue.  And then he will take the title of Anacharsis Fitz, Spokesman For All Humanity when he declares "Something something, Our Young Men, Winning, Go 'Cats."

Fistpump.