The NFL Has Been Very Unfair to Our Beautiful Quarterbacks

The idea of attending an NFL draft seems like one of the most nightmarish sports-associated experiences a person could have. I can’t imagine spending hours on my feet listening to Roger Goodell bleat out 70% of a teleprompted sentence, waiting in a 45 minute line for a porta potty, or weathering the threat of getting accidentally getting bonked in the head by a ferula wielded by someone dressed as the Arizona Cardinals Pope who is in a drunken shoving match with someone dressed as the St. Louis Rams Hulk while a band blasts a saxophone-heavy cover of Lose Yourself. The fact that the draft was held this year at the hellmouth of Lambeau Field only made the entire enterprise seem even more unbearable.

And yet, the NFL draft maintains a mysterious and embarrassing hold over me. Every year I write about how stupid and ridiculous the draft is and every year I let the entire thing wash over me like a Lake Michigan wave on a water quality alert day. I am not a Draft Guy either– I don’t pore over mock drafts or look at highlights or listen to draft podcasts, and I’ve never heard of most of the players even in the first round unless they are Big Ten guys who I watched obliterate hapless Northwestern players. I have absolutely no idea how nor any interest in figuring out whether a good college player will turn out to be as a pro by looking at his Sudden Jumpability or Elite Pad Placement, or any of the other bullshit that NFL draft analysts spend all year inventing to say that a guy is big, strong, or fast except with the stilted argot of a police report. I also have no patience for the manipulation of “draft capital” and “value.”

What I love about the NFL draft and what will keep me watching is that I am addicted to the production. It will never stop being funny to me that the stentorian goofballs who treat the NFL like it is a branch of the United States armed forces and not a sport where enormous people run into each other and then do crotch pumps have been put in charge of putting on an NFL fan convention. Every decision is baffling to me. The new innovation this year was putting players waiting for their names to be called in little patches of fake yard and then having them walk down a hallway that was long enough to be a Get Smart sight gag– I was mildly disappointed that no draftees decided to run down the hallway, fall down, and start clutching their knee as a bit. I also enjoy rubbernecking the crowd who are drunkenly booing the concept of the New York Jets while a person wearing a necklace featuring a New York Jets fan license plate looks on with the pained vaudeville expression of a professional wrestler hearing his rival’s theme song; this is the same way I enjoy the local TV station that for some reason broadcasts the New Year’s Eve celebration at the Rosemont Hilton every year to delight Chicagoland audiences with the swaying grandees of the northwest suburbs. I also really like the ESPN the pick is in noise.

This year’s draft featured a slightly less psychotic presentation than years past: there were no orangutans manipulating ipads or circus performers getting stuffed into a barrel while NFL films music blared over highlights over a linebacker from the University of Utah. The most exciting thing happening other than a band that I would describe as charmingly wedding-adjacent playing the hits of 2003 was that they kept cutting to fans from sites of international games and I got to hear a French person say the word “linebacker.” But they did not need any of that because ESPN and the NFL got handed a Major Draft Narrative.

This year, the entire draft centered on the fall of Colorado quarterback prospect Shedeur Sanders from a consensus that had him getting picked late in the first round in that zone where quarterback-desperate teams eventually lose their minds and trade up for an obvious bust– this time it was the Giants hoisting themselves back into the first to grab Arnold Schwarzenegger Pronunciation Icon Jaxson Dart– to the fifth round, where he was picked by the perennially disastrous Cleveland Browns.

The Sanders fall, which also involved the dullard son of the Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator trying to hoodwink him with a ponderous prank call, became the main topic of the draft as analysts tried to explain why teams continued to pass on Sanders. As this happened, sourced-up reporters began to leak vague details of Sanders’s lousy attitude in interviews, his substandard “board work” whatever that means, and his unwillingness to participate in predraft workouts and bowl games in a way that reminded me of the plot point in the deranged Kevin Kostner movie “Draft Day” where he declines to pick a quarterback because of Character Concerns after learning that his teammates did not go to his birthday party.


One of the funniest examples of Hollywood Ball Knowing Failure is that in the movie draft day the projected number one quarterback is coming from the University of Wisconsin

But the issue that loomed largest for Sanders was his existence within the greater Deion Sanders media ecosystem. Any team that drafted Sanders risked invoking the ire of his father, who has a red hotline-style phone that goes to live on air to every braindead ESPN Yak Show. To NFL teams, Sanders’s “off-field” issues threatened coaches and executives with something much worse than players who have been accused of things far more odious than having a pain-in-the-ass celebrity father– the ability to potentially get them fired from their phoney-baloney jobs.

Mel Kiper, Jr, spent the entire draft in an extended meltdown over the Sanders fall after he had him listed in his top five. Kiper, whose famous hair has been engaging in a years-long retreat to higher ground on his scalp so it now looks like he is wearing a greased Magneto helmet, railed against the NFL as ignorant about the Quarterback Position. He fumed. He ranted. He whined about how the National Football League was being very unfair to Sanders, very unfair and in fact it’s a disgrace in the now-ubiquitous cadence of every aggrieved septuagenarian television creature that is the sole cultural legacy of the president of the United States.

Kiper’s deranged three day long psychotic break on ESPN’s draft presentation raised the question of what he is even doing there. I don’t think anyone even in the very silly world of Draft Knowers takes anything he says seriously and his own jeremiad against the NFL’s ability to evaluate quarterbacks instantly brings reminders of the times he has stuck his neck out for some of the funniest draft busts imaginable. Kiper remains on ESPN television as a sort of NFL Draft mascot, a sort football muppet who can instantly talk about a college player’s Motorability or Jump Rate for five minutes without blinking, so it is very funny when he throws a nuclear tantrum about how the NFL is being very unfair to our beautiful quarterbacks for what is like six cumulative hours or television.

Every year after the draft, Mel Kiper is admitted to a clinic for removing all of the moths and flies that have flown directly into his mouth and are trapped in his body in a painful seven hour procedure

The Chicago Bears used their first three picks on a tight end, a wide receiver, and an offensive lineman. These players will reinforce a coterie of new offensive linemen hired from free agency and the Bears’ new head coach, who has a reputation as an offensive mastermind. The changes from the Bears have led some pundits who use think that you can use rational thought to analyze the Chicago Bears to believe that Ben Johnson and these new players along with lauded quarterback Caleb Williams can lead to them having a functional and coherent offense. I disagree.  My contention is that they are the Chicago Bears and are doomed to have a sisyphusian Bears-style offense that depends on fumble returns from linebackers for eternity or at least until the National Football League is banned either for either being a brutal death sport or for not being fascist enough for the United States government in the near future.

I DON’T WANT TO ALARM YOU BUT THERE’S A NORTHWESTERN GUY IN THE LITERAL NBA PLAYOFFS

Something crazy happened when I tuned into the NBA’s All-Star Saturday Night program to watch spindly car wash inflatable Matas Buzelis represent the Bulls in the rookie/sophomore tournament. Former Northwestern guard Pat Spencer, the Man who Once Played Lacrosse himself, showed up in the same tournament as a member of the Santa Cruz Warriors. Northwestern sort of had a player in the NBA.

The Wildcats have not had consistent representation in the NBA since Evan Eschmeyer got drafted by the New Jersey Nets. A few players have appeared here and there: Reggie Hearn got a few minutes for the Pistons, Vic Law played for the Magic in the Disney Bubble, Scottie Lindsay and Chase Audige have been floating around in the G League, and Boo Buie briefly held a two-way contract with the Knicks but has not yet made it to the Association. But there was Spencer in a vaguely All-Star-adjacent event for a national audience.

I am pretty surprised that of all the players to pass through Welsh-Ryan in the decade or so that Northwestern has fielded a few pretty decent teams that the guy I am now watching in the NBA is Pat Spencer. To be honest, I had sort of forgotten about Spencer, who had led Northwestern through a single, forgettable eight-win season. Spencer was a novelty, a guy who was surprisingly good for someone who did not play college basketball at any level before being flung into the Big Ten meat grinder but probably would not start for any Big Ten team other than Northwestern. Spencer’s 2019-20 team features a lot of players who would eventually be pretty good– Boo Buie, Pete Nance, Robbie Beran, and Miller Kopp were all on the team, but they were all freshmen (except sophomore Nance) and needed some time to develop into the bones of the teams that would eventually make the NCAA Tournament. Buie showed some early signs by going off for 26 in a loss to Michigan State; it would not be until the next season when Boo Buie would begin regularly torturing Tom Izzo into a sputtering beet-red reverie.

 

Pat Spencer is the only person in the world who has played with basketball legends Boo Buie and Stephen Curry

Spencer eventually joined the Warriors and I started seeing him in occasional garbage time in actual NBA games. But I had not noticed that he had made the Warriors roster until I started to see him appear in playoff games as part of Steve Kerr’s desperately expanding rotations. Spencer was materializing in competitive minutes. He was on the court with Steph Curry. He was getting screamed at as he was frog-marched by security off the court at the Toyota Center for throwing a light NBA-style headbutt at Rockets center Alperen Sengun.

It has been very funny to see the reaction on the internet to Pat Spencer. Spencer, who now sports a Performance T-shirt under his jersey and for some reason a combination of stubble and bushy mustache that makes him look like a nineteenth-century saloon keeper, has been running around and scoring buckets using a clumsy looking jump hook, leading to a lot of social media comments perplexed by his entire deal and characterizing him as a pickup player. He wears number 61. The announcers have been working overtime talking about his storied lacrosse career every time he is on the court. 

Pat Spencer has shown his barber a picture of a guy ducking under the bar as soon as the piano player starts hitting diminished chords

Northwestern’s NBA footprint remains minimal. The ‘Cats have not had a player drafted in the twenty-first century, and they have not had a player who has been an NBA regular since Billy McKinney in the early 1980s (Rex Walters also had a meaningful NBA career in the 1990s, but he transferred to Kansas for his last two seasons, so I am not sure how he fits as a Canonical Wildcat because I had absolutely no awareness about the existence of Northwestern basketball when he played). I am not sure I would have picked Pat Spencer as the first Northwestern player attracting any sort of attention as an NBA player in 20 years, but perhaps a mustachioed Jud Buechler-style bench guy whose most interesting attribute is the fact that he did not play basketball is the most accurate representation of Wildcat men's basketball to the broader world.

THE CUBS ARE GOOD AND FUN AND ARE DESPERATELY HOPING THAT YOU DON'T THINK ABOUT THE MONEY YET

The Chicago Cubs made a trade in December for the best player they’ve rostered since Kris Bryant won an MVP, and then they went into the season with some of the worst vibes imaginable. This is because every year around the annual Cubs convention Tom Ricketts decides tp put on a barrel with suspenders and go on the radio to lecture fans about how he and his billionaire family are boiling and eating shoelaces in the hopes of affording another 35 year old utility guy on a minor league deal. Ricketts was lambasted by the national media about this– to the extent that the Cubs have come up in conversation at all in the last few years of their metronome-like 83-win finishes it was every media member involved with major league baseball mocking the Cubs for not spending money.

Starting in 2015, after the Cubs finished the teardown that saw them become unbearably bad and cheap as part of Theo Epstein’s rebuilding plan, the Ricketts family started to spend big money. The Cubs took advantage of the fact that their core players were all young and cheap and spent at the top of the free agent market. It seemed for a few years that if the Cubs wanted a guy, they got him, luring top players like Jon Lester, Ben Zobrist, Yu Darvish, and Jason Heyward. They had joined the Red Sox and the Yankees as a Serious Big Market Team. Then, after 2019, they stopped. They traded Yu Darvish for a group of teenagers, let beloved slugger Kyle Schwarber leave, and began unloading the world series players and bringing in unknowns who were distinguished mainly by the paucity of their paychecks. This was during the partial pandemic shutdown, when Ricketts began squawking about “biblical losses” and people started appearing in Cubs uniforms with names like “The Romine Brothers” and “Johneshwy Fargas” like barnstormers from far-flung AAA teams.

The Cubs gave up a lot to get Tucker including phenom Cam Smith, third baseman Isaac Paredes, and Hayden Wesneski who is the best pitcher I have ever seen at bellowing FUUUUUCKKK after giving up a massive dinger, but it has already paid off. Tucker looks like an MVP candidate and gives the Cubs a hitter that teams are afraid of. But the conversation around Tucker in Chicago is dominated by money. He is a free agent after this season, and it looks like he could command nearly a half billion dollars in his next contract. The Cubs under Jed Hoyer, whose own record in free agency is largely throwing up his hands and  saying “too rich for my blood” while loading up on washed up veterans on low-cost contracts who end up getting released three months into the season, have not come close to looking like they are willing to pay it. For some reason, the Cubs had to play the Dodgers seemingly once a week for the first month of the season, and it almost felt like Tucker would at some point in the middle innings start wearing a Dodgers uniform. Almost no one believes the Cubs are willing to pay Tucker whether they work out an extension before the season or if Tucker enters the free agency market. The Cubs seem no longer to be in the superstar business.

It is impossible to tell what Tucker is thinking. I have watched a fair amount of Tucker interviews from the time the Cubs traded for him and even for a baseball player he seems devoid of personality. Tucker insists that behind the scenes he is capable of having a conversation; ESPN had to run an entire article about it where Tucker goes on record to claim that he is "decently outgoing." I don’t blame anyone in the spotlight who chooses to go about their business wearing the armor of cliches and nonanswers, and if Tucker doesn't want to ever say anything interesting into a microphone, that's his prerogative. And in that way, Tucker fits in with the rest of the Cubs, an outfit that seems to prioritize bland players. The team right now has about three guys who seem to have any discernible personality, and two of them speak to the media exclusively through translators. But even in this beige, staid bunch Tucker stands out. I love having Tucker on the Cubs and I will be elated if the Ricketts family somehow decides to dip into their billions to pay him and maybe even the dreaded Luxury Tax. But this dude makes Nico Hoerner look like Rickey Henderson.

Kyle Tucker, pictured having the best time of his entire life

The Cubs have been very fun this season. Tucker has been amazing, Suzuki is knocking the crap out of the ball, Pete Crow-Armstrong looks like a superstar and the most fun Cubs player since prime Javy Baez. They are stealing a million bases. Their veteran backup catcher is inexplicably putting up small sample Barry Bonds numbers. Their bullpen is horrendous, and they have somehow had to comeback from down ten runs repeatedly, the already shallow rotation has lost its two best pitchers, including having ace Justin Steele out for the season, and third base remains a black hole. But for now they are fun and I guess we will have to wait for the offseason to see how content with mediocrity the Ricketts family is willing to remain.

The Big Ten's Own Rules Could Not Prevent More Northwestern Basketball

 

After a series of injuries and ridiculous, hard luck finishes torpedoed Northwestern's men's basketball season they have managed to wash up on the shores of the first round of the Big Ten Tournament. This is a new indignity for Big Ten basketball fans. Until Kevin Warren got on a horse and wandered the West rounding up sports programs, it was the solemn and dignified right of every Big Ten team no matter how bad to get to go to the conference tournament and get to play at least one game, even if it is getting blown out in a sad afternoon spectacle. Now, the conference is so unwieldy that teams have to qualify for it, with the three worst teams eighty-sixed into a cold Midwestern alley with a series of byzantine tie breakers serving as a bouncer. 

There is a certain romance to a conference tournament that promises teams that no matter how lousy they have been in the season they still had a chance to enter the NCAA Tournament by going on an insane run.  For small conferences, this is a lifeline; I immediately thought about Bill Carmody's Holy Cross team making a run in the Patriot League tournament to somehow end up playing in the First Four. In the Big Ten, the fabled conference tournament run is more myth than reality. I cannot remember a single team winning the Big Ten Tournament that would not have otherwise qualified for the NCAAs.  Very few bad Big Ten teams have had particularly memorable runs.  But then again the entire brand of March Madness is the fact that the sport stacks an enormous number of advantages for larger programs that should make it functionally impossible for any smaller programs to beat them and then allow a crew of misshapen, headbanded, mustachioed March Madness Oafs the opportunity to try. 

This season was bound to be a hangover after the glory of Boo Buie's two senior years, years in which Northwestern made the NCAA tournament easily, repeatedly vanquished Illinois and Indiana, and upset the number one team at home twice in the same calendar year against the best player in college basketball who was a literal giant.  Buie gave Northwestern a player they've never had before, a bona fide star who other teams feared and a throwback player who needed four years to turn into a supernova.  

But even without Buie, the Wildcats returned a seasoned, veteran team that had battled through the Big Ten twice.  They played tough defense.  They limited their own turnovers.  And they are largely a team of older players who could play a physical shove-based basketball, willing to take advantage of the Big Ten's blood combat referees if that meant they could beat up on teams stocked with younger, more promising players.  This was a team with Matt Nicholson who appears to have just gotten finished putting a bear in a full nelson and is wearing its fur on his face and Brooks Barnhizer, who routinely finished games without all of the teeth and blood he started with.  In their first conference game, the 'Cats took a well-regarded but young and transfer-heavy Illinois team to overtime hell at Welsh-Ryan (this Northwestern team loves overtime) and won.

The plan was for Barnhizer to take over the team this season.  Barnhizer emerged last year as Buie's do-it-all sidekick who could play defense, grab rebounds, hit his signature mid-range fadeaway, handle the ball, and never leave the court.  Barnhizer already hit a legacy shot, the running layup to send last year's first-round tournament game to overtime, overcoming the adversity of having the CBS television commentators repeatedly make fun of his burgeoning mustache.

The surprise of the season, though, has been the emergence of Nick Martinelli who came out of nowhere to lead the Big Ten in scoring and minutes and who has become one of the most delightful pain-in-the ass players this team has ever produced. Martinelli is big and strong but also has a surprisingly deft touch around the basket and is left-handed; the result is that he scores with an array of clumsy-looking jump hooks, scoop shots, Rube Goldberg-style bank shots, and the occasional three to keep them honest that seems to me like the most annoying arsenal of shots that can be mustered by an opposing player. As Martinelli gained more and more playing time last season after a plague of injuries left large chunks of the Wildcats' starting rotation forced to watch games in casts and wheely scooters, commentators just kept pointing out that he was just going to go to his left-handed hook and everyone knew it, but modern players do not train against elderly men at the Y and were powerless to stop his musty, wood-paneled 1970s rec room game. 

This year, Martinelli turned into an unstoppable scoring machine, becoming a devastating clean-up man around the rim, playing physical defense, and becoming a deadly clutch scorer. He finished off USC and a very good Maryland team with last-second game winners at Welsh-Ryan.

Martinelli embodies the fun of college basketball.  A lot of NBA purists hate the college game because the difference in skill, athleticism, and tactics make it practically another sport.  On the other hand, college basketball is delightfully more weird.  There is no one in the optimized, pace-and-space NBA who plays like Nick Martinelli.  College basketball is still the place where jump hook specialists and prematurely balding goggle guys and centers whose skill is just being absolutely enormous can thrive.  There are simply not enough athletic freaks walking the Earth to remake college basketball in the NBA's image.  This is not a value judgement or saying that the college game is more "pure" or whatever-- if a state-of-the art one-and-done NBA draft pick guy decided for some reason to come to Northwestern I would be thrilled-- it is just a fact that whenever Northwestern has a good player, his game is probably going to be a little weird because otherwise he probably wouldn't be here.

Even at full strength, Northwestern's hopes of returning to the tournament this season had dwindled as the 'Cats sank into the meat of the Big Ten schedule.  They lost some heartbreaking games, most notably a on an absolute prayer launched with .8 seconds left in Iowa City, and also some stinkers to teams they probably should have beaten.  Then, another plague of injuries.  Barnhizer eventually could not longer try to play high-level basketball on a broken foot, as Chris Collins announced through tears. Jalen Leach, a grad-transfer scoring guard, tore his ACL soon after. The 'Cats lost two of their top three scorers, neither of whom will ever suite up in purple again. A gutted and discombobulated team then faltered on a depressing West coast road trip.  

Despite the heartbreak, Nicky Jump Hooks has managed to lead the Wildcats into the first conference tournament where the Big Ten could have legally prevented more Northwestern basketball.  They do not want to make it that easy to watch.  The first-round games are banished to the Peacock streaming service as part of the Big Ten's wretched new media deal.  The Big Ten's media empire draws its power from the simple promise that by getting your TV provider to carry its service you can watch all of your team's games, even the shitty ones that would never be on TV before. Instead, the games have now been farmed out to a patchwork of networks and streaming services-- one thing that I fully believe is that if a person is willing to spend their time watching a Northwestern-Penn State basketball game, that person should be allowed to do so even if they must also be put on a list.  The teams playing in the first round of the tournament are playing for the chance for fans to actually see them on television in the next round.  On the other hand, listening to a Northwestern Big Ten Tournament game on the radio during working hours is an important ritual in its own right.

There's no tanking in college basketball. If a team's top players get injured and the season falls apart, that's that. There's no draft picks or incentive for being bad. Players out of eligibility are done, either facing a fraught and uncertain world professional basketball in remote corners of the world or getting a job outside the game.  The program moves on without them.  This happens in the NBA too but no one really gives a shit about the fungible, fringe players on tanking rosters who are then recycled throughout the league as contract values or G-League bodies.  Each season is a college basketball team's last.  Every game in the conference tournament or maybe in the NIT or one of those fly-by-nite fake tournaments-- for example, there's the one Fox is pushing called "The Crown" where they keep putting graphics on teams in "The Crown" like it is something that already exists and people know about and does not exist in the fevered imagination of some Fox executive who assumes there are people in a sports bar saying hey who do you think is ending up in "The Crown" this season-- represents a chance to keep playing one last game.

It's been a rough season for Northwestern basketball.  And yet here I am eyeing their side of the bracket thinking they might be able to beat Minnesota again and then who knows maybe steal another one. The Big Ten tournament regularly crushes any hope of the bottom teams advancing like a fleet of monster trucks rolling through a pile of old sedans. But it's March basketball and I'm going to embrace the power of hope, embrace the power of bullshit third-tier postseason tournament berths, and, most importantly, embrace the power of the left-handed jump hook.

Crimson Homecoming

WRIGLEY FIELD- Wrigley Field was red. It was strange to see so much red in the stands at Wrigley like the entire park had been taken over by Jim Edmonds cosplayers. Northwestern had chosen this venue and this opponent for its homecoming and the result was a stadium full of Ohio State fans with only tiny smidgens of purple visible. The effect was surreal: the video board cues and music and stadium art all had the markings of a Northwestern home game played to absolutely no one cheering for the Wildcats. They brought out the lacrosse team. They brought out a football team that went to a bowl game. They brought out Northwestern legend Corey Wootton to sing Take Me Out To The Ballgame at the beginning of the fourth quarter. DJ Commando was there. No one in the stands knew who any of these people were and instead clamored around some face-painted helmet man. 

The red in the stands in Wrigley made it seem like the team had been invaded by an army of Scotts Spezio

And yet, despite the farcical, surrendered homecoming, I found the setting to be kind of cool. I can’t help it. As a person with fatal Cubs fan poisoning, I am an easy mark for Wrigley Field, and this was my first time experiencing Northwestern football there. On a comfortably gray day, with the ivy showing its autumn rust and the scoreboard awkwardly transformed for football purposes, Wrigley was a fun, novel setting for the game. Somehow, the various sinkholes and turf pits that had pockmarked the field during previous years' Wrigley games seemed less of a problem this year and what unfolded was shockingly a relatively normal football game.

Northwestern fans may have been overwhelmingly outnumbered, but for much of the early part of the game it meant getting to examine a gallery of clenched jaws as sour-faced Ohio State fans grimaced through the first quarter. Northwestern held Ohio State scoreless in the first quarter then took a lead early in the second quarter. This brought to mind the last meeting between these two team where a rain storm and gale force winds stymied the Buckeye offense and allowed Northwestern to hold them to a tie all the way to halftime, leading to one of the happiest sights in football: thousands of Ohio State fans sitting wet and miserable in the rusted Ryan Field stands unable to understand what was happening to them.  For a second, even though I knew how unlikely it would be, I allowed myself to believe, to briefly ponder the logistics of storming Wrigley Field and carrying the goalposts into Belmont Harbor. 

This year also marked the 20th anniversary of Northwestern's last victory over Ohio State when Noah Herron broke the Buckeyes' hearts and sent a stadium full of Buckeye fans home in complete disbelief.

By nature I am not a very optimistic person, especially when it comes to sporting events. Part of it is a way of handling anxiety, attempting to feel some element of control from a sport I am not playing by pretending I have some idea what’s going to happen when listing what seem to me like inevitable disaster scenarios. Part of it comes from the expertise one gains from watching a sports team all season and coming to know the teams' exact weaknesses. Part of it also comes from a way to brace myself against disappointment and that by constantly prophesying doom I can hope to somehow shield myself from the awful feeling of not only disappointment but feeling stupid and gullible when I've allowed myself to believe and then it does not work out, a situation that is wholly unique to sports and has nothing to do with recent news events. Being a pessimistic curmudgeon doesn’t actually make any of this feel better and only makes me somehow even more annoying, but it doesn’t feel like that in the moment.

Northwestern's best case scenario right now is sneaking into a bowl by an academic technicality, Ohio State is the second-ranked team in the country gunning for a national championship, and eventually the game looked like that. But for about 25 minutes of real time, the Ohio State fans who filled Wrigley Field to the brim looked absolutely disgusted down 7-0 to a team that they probably were not sure is even in the Big Ten. The end, however, came quickly for the ‘Cats. Northwestern had to play a perfect game to have a shot against the Buckeyes, but they mangled a snap on a punt, a tragic play because based on their offensive output the 2024 Northwestern Wildcats should have absolute mastery of the punt play. After about three minutes elapsed in the second quarter, pretty much nothing else positive happened for the Wildcats, and Ohio State romped to an easy victory,

And so, in this Northwestern homecoming game, the Ohio State fans stayed and cheered. They brought out W flags, which as a Cubs fan finally found me on the other end of how annoying that is. They never doubted for a moment that their team would clobber the 'Cats and they escaped unscathed for a titanic showdown with Somehow Indiana. The 'Cats meanwhile continue to limp on through the rest of the schedule with their bowl hopes on life support. But fortunately what seemed like an impossible combination of games late in November looks slightly less daunting because what lies ahead in Ann Arbor is far less scary than it appeared last year.

POSSIBILITIES IN MICHIGAN

The Michigan Wolverines are not going to win a national championship this year. Last year's team weathered innumerable scandals from a Jim Harbaugh hamburgers suspension to a ridiculous espionage saga that involved accusations of wet work on the sidelines of Central Michigan, a suspicious vacuum repair venture, and several court injunctions on the way to what football scholars are calling the most annoying national championship of the twenty-first century. Michigan fans tend to see themselves as the protagonists of college football and they got the entire spotlight last year where they got to see their team kill everyone in their path but also got be extremely aggrieved and litigious the entire time, which I imagine was something like a dream scenario for them. On the other hand, no one was happier about this than Northwestern's administration because the spotlight on the Michigan Spying Doofus kept its program's scandals, which were far worse than anything Michigan did, in the shadows.

The most indelible image of the 2023 college football season

But the 2024 team is not a fearsome national championship squad. Michigan is vulnerable in ways they have not been in a decade, a five-win team that needs a win against Northwestern just to qualify for what is described in college football circles as a Northwestern-style bowl game. Harbaugh, pursued by the NCAA's elite squad of violation-spotters, has fled to the NFL along with numerous key players from last-year's squad. While Michigan still has a tough defense and running game, their passing game has gone away. A year after winning it all, Michigan football has become something unimaginable: a Big Ten West team. What we're looking at here is Fancy Iowa. And now Michigan is a Big Ten West team staring down the barrel of a rock fight against a weaker opponent that also is clawing away for the right to play in the Buffalo Jim's Tailgate Injury Tables Bowl. Michigan this season is in a hall of mirrors and just seeing a bunch of Northwestern reflected back at them.

Of course, Michigan remains heavily favored. Northwestern has already faced real Iowa and could do nothing against them and also faltered against Wisconsin, an even lesser version of this team. The Wildcat offense has trouble stringing long drives together, and the defense can only hold out for so long. The one bright spot from the Ohio State game was the return of Bryce Kirtz, who shares an almost mystical connection with Jack Lausch and helped the 'Cats move the ball against a fearsome Buckeye defense. Enough bombs to Kirtz, a few turnovers, and some gritty runs by Lasuch and Cam Porter could keep the 'Cats in this long enough to slop their way to a rare victory against Michigan. It would be a shame to squander the opportunity because it is unlikely that Michigan will be this bad again.

A win here would immediately make Northwestern viable for a bullshit bowl sneak-in and turn the Illinois game into a Bowl Qualification Hat Showdown. A loss ends any hope for a normal bowl season. Northwestern football has a singular power over other schools in the Big Ten because no team at any point believes they can lose to them. But this season, with Northwestern struggling in the Enormous Ten, the possibility for this particular Northwestern team to beat Michigan no matter how diminished they might be, would be an incredible opportunity to train the catastrophic You Lost To Northwestern weapon on Ann Arbor.

MICHIGAN STADIUM, ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

After the construction of Michigan's colossal new stadium in 1927, university authorities feared that they could have trouble filling it. So to drum up interest, they released a radio adventure serial set in and around the stadium filled with intrigue and plots against the beloved local team foiled weekly by the intrepid Conrad Mustangs. Today, here the script from an episode taken from the Michigan Radio Archive.

Note: None of the things I wrote about above are true. I made it all up. It is fiction. For entertainment purposes. Michigan fans, please do not email me about Historical Inaccuracies.

BIG MESS AT THE BIG HOUSE: EPISODE 14: A SINISTER UNIFORM CONUNDRUM

ANNOUNCER: Tonight’s broadcast of Big Mess at the Big House: A Conrad Mustangs Adventure is brought to you by Vance Crayfish’s Leaded Paints. No paint is more brilliant, more beautiful, and more bold than Vance Crayfish’s. Your neighbors and friends will be stunned by the bright colors of your walls. Other paints are dull and faded because they do not provide the American consumer with the lead he deserves. Vance Crayfish’s patented formula has nearly 40% more lead than all other paints available. Write to Vance Crayfish, 432 Rinsdow Ave., Moth, Ohio. Today’s program is also sponsored by hogs. Next time you have pork, insist on hogs.

And now, here he is, the man of a dozen faces, the fearless fighter for freedom and football, your hero Conrad Mustangs in another thrilling adventure. Last week, Mustangs outwitted the hoodlums and punch-merchants of the dangerous Maroon Syndicate by replacing their cigars with ones tainted with undetectable gut-tonics. These blighted belvederes put these toughs in such a gastric distress that they were forced to flee the Big House for an outhouse, and Mustangs was given the Key to the City while his enemies groaned out a stomach symphony. But there are sinister forces afoot in the shadow of the old stadium who have it out for the Wolverines.

We start our story with two mysterious figures having a clandestine meeting outside Michigan Stadium.

(sound effect: the sound of someone getting a sap to the bean attained using a baseball thrown into a pile of burlap sacks and person yelling HURGH and the sound of someone getting dragged away by putting a cantaloupe in one of the burlap sacks and dragging it across a table)
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE(whispering): Hurry up you nitwit! Change into this sap’s clothes while he’s out of it.
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: The hat doesn’t fit.
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: Well, we didn’t have time to wait and find someone coming who had a noggin as gigantic as yours. It would take us all day. You must be a world record holder with that cranium. Just jam it on. Here. (sound effect: a hat being pulled over a large head using a paper sack being pulled over a basketball).
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: Ow!
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: Just shut your kisser or I’ll wax you in the brainpan. Hurry up, grab those football uniforms and bring the ones we brought in. But don’t manhandle them with those mitts. I was told not to touch them without gloves. We need everything to go perfect for the big game Saturday. Then those Wolverines are in for the surprise of their lives. Ha ha ha ha.
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: Haw haw haw haw haw
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: You don’t even know what you’re laughing at you ox.

ANNOUNCER: Meanwhile inside the bowels of the stadium, Conrad Mustangs meets with Coach Van Roast in his office.

COACH VAN ROAST: I say, Mustangs, that Maroon Gang really had us in the soup there. Good thing we had you around to give them the what for with those stogies.
MUSTANGS: Well, it is all in a day’s work. We have to remain vigilant. As you know, the enemies of Michigan football are everywhere and they will stop at nothing to foil our exploits on the field.
COACH VAN ROAST: That’s right. There are plots from crackpots and eggheads constantly popping up against our lads to prevent them from winning fair and square, the Michigan way. Mustangs, tell me, with a big game coming up this week, have you seen anything hinky?
MUSTANGS: My network of street urchins informants have been telling me that something strange might be going on at Cooley Technical High School so I disguised myself as a rough-back named Quig Pomona and infiltrated their game.
COACH VAN ROAST: Did you find out anything?
MUSTANGS: Well, we were down 4-2 in the final quarter so I told the lads to dig deep and execute the headbutt dive. Coach, we pummeled those kids into fields behind the school and got the winning score and afterwards we went out to celebrate at the meat stand. But then Moose Frangella and his Red Street Boys came by looking for a fracas. Things got heated very quickly and I had to give Little Jake Mastodan the old one-two right in the breadbasket and then I beat my feet right out of there.
COACH VAN ROAST: Troubling. But did you find anything out about the game?
MUSTANGS: Yes, we’re going to thrash Johnson High on the field next week after we slapped them into next Sunday at that meat stand donnybrook.
COACH VAN ROAST: No, did you find any plots against Michigan before the big game?
MUSTANGS: Oh yes. Michigan football. No. Not yet. But I know as we speak an unknown enemy is moving among us, Coach.

ANNOUNCER: And Mustangs is right. For even as we speak, there are evil forces afoot that are threatening your beloved Wolverines. 

(Sound effect: thunder and lightning, rain steadily rattling off a rooftop)
SINISTER MAN: Did you switch the uniforms?
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: Yes, no thanks to this lunkhead here.
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: Hey! I did my job, I socked him good.
SINISTER MAN: You know what they say about a bad workman and his tools. But excellent. Years of research and finally, a way for toad venom to soak into a garment, putting the victims into a stupor, and those Wolverines will finally be exposed for the bilious worms they are.
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: And a job well done by us. Which brings us to our arrangement. Ingots, as we discussed.
SINISTER MAN: This is a delicate manner. I have had to move with great caution because I am not just an ordinary criminal mastermind. No, you have been hired by Dr. Jacopo Manbanner, the Chairman of the Big Ten Conference. My goal is to destroy the Michigan Wolverines whom I don’t like because their university president once snubbed me viciously at the All Universities Toasting Fête.
(sound effect: organ playing a diminished chord)
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: That is a tremendous story, Professor. But we want our money.
(sound effect: cocking of a revolver)
(sound effect: the BLATT BLATT of a heavy liquid hitting someone in the face achieved by dropping marmalade from great height onto an old casserole.)
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: Argh! My face!
DR. JACOPO MANBANNER: That’s a double dose of my toad venom. By my calculations, you have about thirty seconds before your mind starts to take you on a journey to realms of insanity from which you’ll never return.
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: Boss, did he just say he’s turning us into toads?
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: No, you lugnut. We’re going to fall into a reverie of madness. Say, why do you now have two enormous heads?

ANNOUNCER: Our hero Mustangs has not yet uncovered the sinister plot against Michigan football. But he is undaunted and trying. We now find him in a nest of iniquity, a speakeasy where Mustangs is wearing a false nose and large, bushy mustaches while he tries to get a whiff of a plot while mingling with the dregs of the Ann Arbor criminal underground
(sound effect: hot jazz music blaring)
(sound effect: a boisterous crowd buzzing and shouting and clinking glasses and occasionally shouts of HUZZAH or “Boatman’s Uncle”

MUSTANGS (as his alter ego Trent Ghent): Haha the festivities are ripping. Sir please give me an alcohol, and make it extra illegal. Hey fella. As you can tell by this alcohol, I love breaking the law. Do you know of any criminal plots against Michigan football?
MAN AT SPEAKEASY: Get away from me!
MUSTANGS: A tough nut. Maybe one of these dames can tell me something. It’s time to cut a rug. Ladies, may I? No? You’re waiting for Moose? Oh I understand. Tell me, is he involved in any illegal plans to cost Michigan the Big Game? Ok, I’ll scram. I’m scramming.
(sound effect: shoes running away gotten by playing a coconut with drum sticks)
MUSTANGS: You, mister. You look like a strapping young fellow. In fact, you’re someone I have in mind for my criminal operation targeting Michigan football. Would you like to help? Or maybe you’re already in some sort of anti-Wolverine scheme that I can join.
ANOTHER MAN AT SPEAKEASY: Mustangs.
MUSTANGS: I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m the tool and die magnate Trent Ghent.
ANOTHER MAN AT SPEAKEASY: Mustangs,, cut the malarkey. I’m working for you! I’ve been working this room for weeks. You don’t recognize me? You called me your brightest bean!
MUSTANGS: Of course. Jimmy The Neck. This, eh, was a test. And you passed most admirably. Do you have any leads?
JIMMY THE NECK: No. But I keep hearing something about toads.
MUSTANGS: Preposterous!
JIMMY THE NECK: I thought so. But it keeps coming up. Every underground football criminal has been saying all sorts of nutty things but they all somehow involve toads.

ANNOUNCER: And so our hero Conrad Mustangs goes to his famous Disguise Closet this time for a false beard, a bright green suit, and some alligator shoes. His investigations have taken him to Ann Arbor’s reptile district, a bazaar of boa constrictors, a plethora of pythons, a variety of vipers.
(Sounds effects: lizard noises that come from the hissing from air being let out of a bicycle tire, voices periodically shouting “Turtles! Iguañas!” in the distance.

MUSTANGS: Toads?
VENDOR: Snakes only. Move along.
MUSTANGS: Toads?
ANOTHER VENDOR: Get out of here before I call in the police.
MUSTANGS: Toads?
A THIRD VENDOR: (loudly) I’ve never sold a toad here in my life. Those are illegal. (softly) You shouldn’t be that brazen. There are eyes everywhere. Come in, and be quick. (sound effect: opening and closing a door)
THIRD VENDOR: What makes a man like you in the market for a toad?
MUSTANGS (affecting a terrible and unplaceable foreign accent): Pleased to meet you. My name is J. Konstantin Kroboshkin, toad fancier, enthusiast, scholar.
VENDOR: You certainly do not appear acquainted with the toad market here.
MUSTANGS: (still doing the accent but it’s wobbling like a prizefighter who has been battered about the head for thirteen rounds) Sir, you must forgive. I am normally very active in the market overseas. Baku, Tashkent. Bratislava. These American restrictions are troubling. Land of the free, you say. Not in terms of toad.
VENDOR: You can call me Mr. Glenavery Hiss. What sorts of toads are you looking for Mr. Kroboshkin?
MUSTANGS: Exotic. Dangerous. What sorts of toads typically move through this market?
MR. HISS: Funny you should ask that. We’ve had a large uptick in venomous toads from South America. Big buyers.
MUSTANGS: Interesting. What can I do to get my hands on one of them? Do you have another shipment coming in soon?
MR. HISS: Let me check my ledger. (sound effect, rustling around in drawer recorded from rustling around in a drawer.)
(sound effect: a revolver cocking)
MR. HISS: Mr. Kroboshkin, your inquiries are a bit bold. You hardly seem to be a toad man at all. What are you, police? Customs? Out with it.
MUSTANGS: I am afraid you are mistaken. Perhaps my manners here are… uncouth. I am simply a toad fancier from a foreign land seeking to understand how you do business. There’s no need for guns.
MR. HISS: Very well. But if you’re as experienced of a toad man as you say, then you should have no trouble with this serum of toad-derived insanity poison. I am assuming the exposure should make you mildly odd. Of course a man who had never been exposed to toads would become completely deranged within seconds. But that’s not a problem with an experienced toad man like you.
MUSTANGS: Ridiculous. I am leaving. Someone else here surely wants my ingots. (sound effect: rattling a locked doorknob)
MR. HISS: I’m afraid I cannot allow you to leave, Mr. Kroboshkin. You will take the toad insanity serum right now and we will see about your toad tolerance.

ANNOUNCER: And so Conrad Mustagns finds himself in another pickle with a sinister toad merchant. Will Mustangs lose his mind? Will the tainted uniforms turn the Michigan Wolverines from a fearsome football squadron to a bunch of uncoordinated oafs in the Big Game? Will Jacopo Manbanner’s sinister plot against the Wolverines succeed? Tune in next week for Big Mess at the Big House: A Conrad Mustangs Adventure.

The Fine Print Bowl

When Kevin Warren, then the Big Ten Commissioner, went out shopping the rights for the glamorous new Enormous Ten, he was pitching the television networks on the excitement of Ohio State and Oregon, Michigan and USC meeting as a regular season game and not in one of those early 2000s Rose Bowls where the Wolverines got regularly obliterated, and even a disgusting Iowa and UCLA matchup which featured numerous cuts to punt-crazy Iowans reacting incredulously to sunlight. What he had in his back pocket was Northwestern-Purdue, a game that no one has any interest in yet for now continues to be a part of Big Time College Football because these teams were tackling each other in mud pits before the players got shipped off to battle the forces of the Kaiser.

Here it was in 2024, the Fine Print Bowl between teams buried in Big Ten Network Regional Action featuring a team that has yet to defeat an FBS team and a team that cannot fill its own temporary 12,000 seat stadium. Purdue, for all of its football woes, still has value to the Big Ten as a basketball power  because people will tune in to see the inevitable eight-foot oaf that plays on its basketball team who is unveiled in a Carl Denham spectacle every fall. Northwestern is still currently in the Big Ten, according to the Big Ten website.

Prussian king Frederick Wilhelm scoured Europe for the largest men he could find for his special regiment of giants that he maintained and obssessed over, a practice that has been abandoned until it has been reinvigorated by Purdue basketball coach Matt Painter

Anyone deranged enough to tune into this game, including the crowd that admirably packed Ross Ade Stadium to no decipherable end, got what they were looking for: an exciting overtime shocker filled with football action that can best be described as inexplicable and silly. There is no situation where a college football team tells announcers they’re going to be working in another quarterback for a couple of series as a designed plan that is not an admission that the staff is baffled by their passing situation and desperate to do something– both teams did this in this game. Northwestern’s switch was more disastrous, leading to an immediate interception and an end to the quarterback switching experiment, whereas Purdue’s was more of a switch between ineffective passing attacks before Hudson Card had success moving the ball in the second half as part of Purdue's comeback to tie the game.

The main takeaway from this game will be Ryan Walters’s baffling decision to go for it on 4th and 6 in the first overtime period. I guess Walters was correct in believing that he could not settle for a touchdown in this situation since Northwestern scored a touchdown almost immediately in their overtime period, but as an isolated decision, a bet that your defense could not stop the 2024 Northwestern Wildcats seemed to me to be insane. At that point, though, Walters had engineered a second half comeback while Northwestern faltered. Ryan Braun, the Maestro of Timeouts, had already conducted his symphony of play stoppages and left the Wildcats with none left by the early fourth quarter, which left them unable to stop the clock with the ball on a potential game-winning drive at the end of the game. The Wildcats squandered a 17-3 first-half lead and were lucky to hold on for their fourth win, while Purdue continues to build a comfortable home at the bottom of the Big Ten standings.

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Northwestern has folded up its lakefront bleachers and put the Endzone Obstruction Poles back in storage and moves to its second home stadium at Wrigley Field. Northwestern’s games at Wrigley have each been minor disasters. In the first attempt, they were legally barred from using one of the endzones and the turf has a mystery surface that either turns into a giant slip ‘n slide like it did against Purdue or into a series of sinkholes and pits as it did last year against Iowa. The novelty of a game at Wrigley Field only increases the interest from opposing fans and somehow turns the park into even more of a home venue for the visitors than the swarms of fans at Ryan Field. Northwestern has also never won a game there, most recently falling victim to Iowa after the Hawkeyes completed their sole pass of the season to set up the winning field goal.  The Wildcats have never won there. 

  

A photograph of Wrigley Field's Forbidden End Zone from the 2010 Wrigley game against Illinois when NCAA officials determined they could not use one of the end zones "on account of the brick wall." Since Northwestern's recent return to Wrigley, they have been cleared to use all available end zones.

Tom Wolfe wrote that you can't go home again, and for Northwestern this is true because Pat Ryan has dynamited its stadium.  This year's homecoming festivities will therefore be celebrated at a baseball stadium that I'm guessing will be at least 75% fans of the other team.  I suppose it made sense to schedule things this way because for much of this year Wrigley Field had a huge leg up on the temporary lakeside stadium by existing.  Nevertheless it is strange to put a homecoming game somewhere no one has come home to, even if I spent a not insignificant amount of my time at Northwestern trying to buy cheap Cubs tickets off the street so I could heckle Todd Hundley. I do not know if they still do a homecoming court, but it will seem more like a government-in-exile.  

A WELL-RESEARCHED FILM AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF NORTHWESTERN'S MATCHUPS AGAINST OHIO STATE

Northwestern and Ohio State will play a legally sanctioned football game on Saturday at Wrigley Field.

OHIO STADIUM, COLUMBUS OHIO

In 1922, Ohio State began construction of its stadium, known as The Horseshoe. Today's fiction section is a letter protesting this construction from Dr. Augustus Morgan "Pepper" Matschafter, professor of Physical Education, who was upset at the university's misplaced prioritization of football.

To the Robust and Vigorous Board at The Ohio State University,

Every year we are subjected to the same sights of battered, broken young men sacrificing themselves in the sport of Football for the entertainment of the dullard masses. And now, the University seeks to build an enormous stadium of poured concrete just for this sad spectacle so we can cram more students and yokelous onlookers into it to watch these youths smash and bash each other for their base amusement. Well I, and other high-minded faculty at this supposed Institution of Higher Learning have had enough. I demand that the University cease allocating resources to Football and immediately redistribute it to more important, educational ends. It is time for the University to immediately transfer all funding to the superior sport of Brains Wrangling.

I am frankly embarrassed that our esteemed school is hosting a sport where these young men sprint into each other while trying to gain possession of an oblong pig’s bladder. Ridiculous! These lads should be crashing into each other in tests of strength and brains-power by which I mean they should be trying to injure each other by bludgeoning each other with their own skulls. What sort of dullard is interested in “touch downs” or “half-backs” or those endless procedural meetings mediated by a referee who stops them for infractions for moving the wrong way or being too rough with each other? I cannot imagine thousands of people wanting to see this sort of dainty rules-mongering instead of scores of thick-necked oafs lining up on opposite sides of a field, taking a running start, and trying to headbutt each other in the torso.

The slack-jawed masses currently enamored with football will soon grow tired of its elaborate rules  regime, especially when confronted with a more daring and vigorous sport where young people are spun around by the ankles and thrown into a crowd of opponents who must try to withstand a bludgeoning from the skulls of these human projectiles. Instead of fussy referees constantly trying to penalize the players, the officials will join in the fray, unleashing their own heads upon lollygagging competitors whose bashing of their opponents is feeble and underwhelming.

I urge the university board to reconsider building this palace to a sad, passing fad, a sport that will go the way of bear-baiting and train-punching. University funds simply cannot be allowed to be tied to a dying pageant of tedium where players are not thrown at each other via trebuchet nor allow biting of opponents when the referee has given the signal for legal mouth-combat. Every week, I receive a report from the top scientific minds at the Brains Wrangling Society (the most recent of which I have submitted with this letter) warning of a precipitous decline in football interest in newspaper columns and people shouting about it on the street and (while it may offend the delicate sensibilities of the Board to know that their game has been sullied in this way) I have certain intelligences that suggest that football has seen a significant downturn in underground betting parlors. The men who frequent such dens and shake their money in order to place bets have expressed what I have come to understand as an overwhelming interest instead in a sport where the competitors are dropped on each other head first from great height.

What, may I ask, will the Ohio State University do with an empty concrete behemoth once the greater Columbus dunce population grows tired of this boring, wearying sport? What happens when people, craving robust tackling action instead see a bunch of pointy-headed collegians carefully plotting out their so-called “plays” with protractors and slide rules and bump into each other while swaddled in helmets, like soft-headed children? What will fill the stadium? Chess matches? Competitive examinations? Petting zoos for local children? As you can see, a stadium for football would be another grave mistake and black mark for this University, an even larger error than the one this very board made funding my colleague Professor Brun Punda’s nonsensical paper proposing a sport called “Top Speed Bludgeoning” that made him the laughingstock of the entire field for how brazenly it copied the existing rules for Brains Wrangling that I published years ago.

Instead of spending untold sums of university money for a sport that may not even exist by the end of the decade, it would be far wiser to invest the money in an activity with staying power. With a mere fraction of the funds being spent on this concrete monstrosity, the Brains Wrangling Society could demonstrate a superior sport that would capture the imagination of sporting fans all over the country. For mere pennies compared to the stadium fund, my Brains Wrangling team could instantly attract the attentions of any town in the state by using an old-fashioned railroad pump cart to launch team members head first into someone’s torso, an arresting and daring feat that would instantly conjure up great interest in the sport.

According to the Brains Wrangling Societies’ projections from the esteemed professor Abel Bruus, a conservative campaign of literature distribution, newspaper advertisement, and a modest tour featuring demonstrations of pump cart headbutts would have Brains Wrangling eclipsing football in popularity in the state of Ohio by 1932. I know it sounds astonishing and I personally shook Professor Bruus violently when he presented the figures to me because they sounded so outlandish, but we both painstakingly checked the mathematics. According to our calculations, the University would require a significant stadium built to Brains Wrangling specifications just to handle the demand from crowds who would travel for hundreds of miles just to see Migal Yerop, the Iron Forehead of Bucyrus, put his entire cranium through a concrete block and then swing it wildly at competitors until the referees catch him in a giant net and subdue him with Sporting Grade Laudanum.

Please do not make the same mistake after you built the ridiculous arena for the short-lived Horseless Polo craze of 1893. You will soon make another horse mistake with this ill conceived boondoggle of a stadium for a sport no one will believe that anyone had ever watched.

Yours,

Professor Augustus Morgan "Pepper" Matschafter, PhD, President and First Secretary of the Brains Wrangling Society of the United States

The Quarterback of Monte Cristo

Iowa and Northwestern can be reasonably relied on to put together a truly obscene display of disgusting Iowa-style football and the first half gave all of the twisted perverts who opened up a browser window in incognito mode to watch this everything we wanted: Iowa 12, Northwestern 7. Iowa getting a safety. Northwestern scoring its only points on an interception return on a pass that was precision targeted at defensive back. The sky was darkened with punts. 

 

 

Showing this to a Big Ten West fan and saying "see anything you like?"

 

Then Iowa decided to just blow out the ‘Cats and the game went from delightfully awful to just awful. The catalyst for Iowa was a quarterback switch from Cade McNamara to Brendan Sullivan, the former Northwestern quarterback. The freedom of movement granted to the players from the transfer portal came with some unimaginable consequences and one of which is watching Iowa batter Northwestern with its own quarterback in a psychologically devastating “why are you hitting yourself” situation while the grim specter of Pat Fitzgerald bedecked in Iowa clothing haunted the sidelines.

 

I am not going to lie, I turned this game off and deleted it from the DVR pretty shortly into the third quarter after googling the score. Life is too short to watch Iowa put up 40 on you; regretfully I missed the other Northwestern touchdown on a punt return. Two weeks after a hilarious aerial assault against Maryland, the Northwestern offense has seemed to have stayed in College Park. The Wildcats now own one of the worst offenses in all of college football. Watching Northwestern try to move the ball right now is like watching one of those giant Scandinavian strongest man guys wearing a Volkswagen with suspenders trying to walk 50 meters shaking and turning the color of a pencil eraser. 

 

The Northwestern offense attempts to move the ball 10 yards

 

The hopes of a bowl season have all but evaporated. The fun atmosphere from the novelty of The Lake is now gone, replaced by away games and the hideous bog surface of Wrigley Field. And David Braun’s incredible achievement last year is fading into memory as he faces questions about the future of the program in a cutthroat conference with no room for error. On the other hand a lot of those negative feelings can be held at bay with a successful visit to Purdue.

 

THE ROMANCE OF PURDUE

 

There is something almost romantic about Purdue/Northwestern. It was a matchup that was a punchline for awhile, often the grimmest game on the Big Ten schedule until the arrival of Rutgers. And yet now, something about it is wistful. It's Purdue/Northwestern at 11:00AM in November, shunted off to the narrowest band of regional coverage that would be allowed by broadcast contracts. Northwestern and Purdue were protected rivals in the pre-Rutgers and Maryland Big Ten. Then they continued to play annually in the Big Ten West as a pillar of that division’s dedication to Ass Football.

 

The expanded playoff format has only broadened the TV networks’ obsession with the championship. But while their rosters of square-jawed analysts squinting into the teleprompter for the 330th consecutive hour of discussion about the same 10 teams, they have forgotten that there’s a whole universe of football out there, an army of fans who care desperately about their crappy teams. I am not dismissing anything out of hand, but it seems unlikely Northwestern and Purdue are going to meet any time soon in a game that means much of anything to the fabled Playoff Picture. And yet they’ll play nearly every year on gray Sunday mornings desperately trying to scrape a conference win off of one another, in a matchup that perhaps means more to the soul of the sport than a million Big Noon Saturdays.

 

 

Purdue/Northwestern games have had serious implications for the Quick Lane Bowl

 

It is perhaps appropriate that a Northwestern-Purdue game served as the swan song for Ryan Field in a ridiculous game that saw numerous missed field goals and repeated Purdue turnovers at the two yardline. Northwestern was fighting for a bowl berth and to bring the stadium out on a win; Purdue was trying to win a football game for a weird change of pace.

 

Fans of disgusting Midwestern football have a lot to look forward to on Saturday. Purdue, at only 1-6 on the season, its lone win coming against FCS Indiana State, is clinging to a near win against powerhouse Illinois in between clobberings from Big Ten powers. This should be a fiercely-fought game, largely because for both teams this represents one of the only remaining chances for a win this season. 

 

This should not be a barn burner. Purdue ranks 109th in offensive yards this season. Northwestern sits second to last, barely sputtering out 271 a game. Northwestern’s defense is ranked much higher than Purdue’s futile unit. The question is whether the the Wildcat offense will be able to stay on the field long enough to prevent the defense from getting exhausted, whether they can score or get reasonably close on defense or special teams, and whether David Braun will be able to temporarily quell his addiction to truly silly field goal attempts with a moonlighting punter.

 

GODDAMMIT BRING IN THE PUNTER! David Braun shouts on 4th and 1 on the opponents' 35 as he knocks his goblet off of a table

 

There is something comforting about a game like this. It feels like a family affair between Northwestern and Purdue fans. It is virtually impossible to imagine an otherwise disinterested college football fan choosing to watch this game over anything else unless they have the type of gambling problem that requires them to call one of the 800 numbers that is breathlessly micro machines manned into the end of 40% of all commercials that run on sporting events. One of these teams is going to be elated to get a Big Ten win, another is going to be crushed, and the result beyond that will be utterly meaningless in a beautiful way.

ROSS ADE STADIUM, WEST LAFEYETTE, INDIANA

 

This week's fiction section is features a municipal election in West Lafeyette in 1922 where the construction of a new stadium for Purdue featured prominently in one candidate's platform. Here is a speech from Menley Quackow, transcribed from the West Lafeyette Crackpot Archives.

 

Well folks, you can tell me a pig’s a pig, but I'll be checking to see if it makes bacon. Now I’m not a fancy big city Lafayette man like Mr. Ross or Mr. Ade, with their spats and their hats and their monocles and their handpicked candidate. But you know what? I think they’ve got some good ideas. That’s right. Now I know you’ve read my pamphlets showing a picture of me kicking them in their behinds until their top hats fall into the Wabash River and you’ve heard my campaign slogan “The Time For Kicking Has Begun” which I’ve also made into a song that my nephew performed on the washboard. But they are right about one thing: Our beloved Purdue University needs a new stadium.

 

Friends, Stuart Field where we gather to watch our Boilermakers play against Notre Dame, Depauw, and the hated Little Giants of Wabash whose tiny beanstalks we’ve seen Purdue cut time and time again, is no longer suitable for so-called “Big Ten Football.” And I have no problem with these fatcats shelling out for a new stadium, which they’re going to name after themselves.

 

But these men and the university are on the wrong track. In fact, they’re not on any track at all. Now, you can tell me a pig’s a pig, but I don’t need to wash the mud off if it’s mooing at me. These, well I can’t politely say what I would call these gentlemen here, but these fine folks want to build a stadium on a piece of land and make us come to it. Imagine that. Putting on your suit, your tie, and pipes you use to defend yourself in case the Rose-Hulman Tech Fighting Engineers gangs come here and menace us with their t-squares and protractors and going to a football game. I say that we in West Lafeyette deserve better. The people deserve better. We deserve a stadium that comes to us.

 

That’s why I’m proposing an easy solution to the stadium problem. Not a fancy new stadium like my opponent supports with gilded spittoons for the Rosses and Ades of the world but an honest stadium for honest hard-working people: I’m saying we put the entire stadium on a train. That’s right. The stadium that travels with the team. You want to play the Boilermarkers? Well, I say let our boys roll up on the rails with their own stadium, with stands and grass and goal posts and thousands of screaming Purdue fans and a band wailing the March of the Purduemen right in their municipal train station while the opposing teams all look at us with their mouths open in disbelief and get upset enough to lose 48-3. The first mobile, locomotive stadium. Right here at Purdue.

 

With a mobile locomotive stadium (I call it “The Train”), Purdue can take on all comers, even cowards that won’t come to play in West Lafeyette. The mobile stadium could even travel between campuses during the game with each team switching off whatever side the wind is blowing from the train's speed and with stops between quarters for fans to get on or off the train. Imagine the excitement when a player gets tackled out of the stadium completely and into a tree or a barn or even onto another passing train as the player who thought he was on the way to the end zone is now on the way to Tucumcari. The novelty will inspire other teams to build their own train stadiums and could fill the rail lines with wholesome football instead of with the swindlers and hoboes the currently clog our cars.

 

Folks, I’m sorry to say that my opponent Mr. Orville Pawpus does not support a train stadium at all. Maybe it’s because he’s attached at the hip to Mr. Ross and Mr. Ade. You can tell me a pig’s a pig when it’s suckling at a trough. No, he wants to build the same stadium that you can see all over the country that can’t transport an entire field and bleacher complex to Columbus Ohio with only 72 hours notice. Now, I’m a gentleman and I believe in a clean campaign so I would never insult my opponent. But I would make a general observation that people who cannot see the advantages of a stadium mounted entirely on rails as pretty light in the brain meat.

 

I’ll confess that I have been reading Mr. Pawpus’s pamphlets and listening to his speeches (I know, someone has to), and I don’t think that he cares much about Purdue’s stadium at all. No, when it comes to this critical part of infrastructure for our state and our country my opponent is strangely silent.Instead, what Mr. Pawpus seems interested in talking about is that Purdue football needs to be represented by a grotesque mannequin that he has invented.

 

Frankly, Mr. Pawpus’s creature is disgusting. People don’t want to look at it. He says it should look like a person but have a giant bulbous head and vacant eyes. He calls it Football Jack and wants it at the games, at the schools, and in your community. While you and I and the other great hardworking people of Tippecanoe County are wondering about putting food on the table for our families or figuring out how Purdue University can have the first operating train stadium that whisks it from Greencastle to South Bend, time and time again my opponent insists his most pressing concern is that Football Jack should be “wielding an implement.”

 

And when it comes to the stadium, my opponent wants his horrible Football Jack all over the place. He wants to have students dressed as this odious cretin wandering around the stadium and accosting children. He wants it capering around the field for amusement, to amuse him and his perverse friends in the legislature. Friends, I have been told that Mr. Pawpus has drawings of a large mechanical version of Football Jack’s head so the Boilermakers can run out of it at the beginning of games like it is vomiting them all over the field. That is an insult to me and you and the entire game of American football.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to search inside of yourselves and really think. Do you want our boilermakers, our lads playing football in a palace devoted to a balloon-headed specter? Or do you want our boys traveling in comfort in their own stadium on their way to thrash Milikin? I promise you I will fight hard for train stadiums for football, basketball, track and field, and even swimming. That is my promise to you. God bless you and the great state of Indiana.

 

Menley Quackow and Orville Pawpus received a combined 3% of the vote. Pawpus lived to see Purdue unleash Purdue Pete onto the world in 1940 and when he saw him he instantly died.

What A Bad Idea!

You can look at Northwestern's loss to Wisconsin in two ways: either the great Daemonic Powers of Ryan Field fueled by the sacrifice of millions of soggy hot dogs and plus size midwestern asses to the unforgiving bleachers and the palpable waves of anxiety from the student section about consulting internship applications that allowed the Wildcats to more frequently than anyone would guess be able to defeat heavily favored Wisconsin teams did not travel to the Lake last Saturday or Northwestern played a crappy game against a better team.

I would like to see the Wisconsin Badgers beat Northwestern here

The game initially dwelled in the comfortable sludge of a Big Ten West matchup as the teams traded listless punts and missed field goals. Northwestern was stalling on offense and hanging in there on defense preparing to go into halftime down only 7-3. Then David Braun and his staff did something that we were not used to seeing at Northwestern. Their eyes got big. They wanted to try to score before the half. This is not something we are used to seeing. If it was possible, Pat Fitzgerald would have tried to kneel out the last ten minutes of the second quarter or had the quarterback cover himself with a giant cape. With less than 30 seconds left, the 'Cats dialed up a pass and before you could scream "NOOOOOO" in slow motion there was the sack, the fumble, and the touchdown. It was 14-3, Wisconsin was getting the ball on the second half kickoff, and it was over from there.

🗣️ "OH NOOO DISASTER. WHAT A BAD IDEA."

Eric Collins' reaction to this fumble is something every fan screams at least once on a CFB Saturday 💀🤣pic.twitter.com/fEfsoDnbbi— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) October 19, 2024

The most elegant summary of Northwestern's late half playcalling 

Last week, Northwestern had success throwing reckless bombs all over the field. That did not work against Wisconsin's stouter defense. It did not help that, in one disastrous stretch, the Wildcats saw its top two receivers and defensive captain limp off the field and the injuries happened in such close succession they nearly caused a line to form at the medical tent. It also did not help that the offensive line succumbed to an endless series of penalties to the point where Northwestern was forced to play an after school special about linemen peer pressured into false starts by bad influence linebackers called "So You Think Procedural Penalties Are Cool" on the jumbotron.

It was a sour ending to a season on The Lake. Northwestern has finished its season on its temporary picturesque home. The stadium was a triumph of novelty football venues with the university turning a disaster of poor planning into a legitimate destination. Now they will play their remaining home games at Wrigley Field, a place that has been an absurd place to play football for the past two seasons marred by a ridiculous playing surface and lengthy delays while desperate ground crews try to come in and fruitlessly stomp on giant holes in order to prevent players from vanishing into the bowels of the stadium where Bryan LaHair reigns as the Phantom of Wrigley Field, playing his mournful version of the da da da da duh dah charge song.

IOWA WEEK

They may have upended the Big Ten, destroyed the Big Ten West, and thrown the entirety of the sport into upheaval but one thing the powers that be in college football have decided not to do is prevent a Northwestern-Iowa game in 2024. Games between these schools are less scheduled than inflicted and remain one of the most disgusting football games on offer every year. Consider last year when these two teams met in Wrigley to combine for 17 points as the field disintegrated under them while both offenses operated as if they were being coordinated by Bartleby the Scrivener. There are two things that occurred around the margins of this game that I feel compelled to point out a year later and that is that Cubs rookie sensation Shōta Imanaga was apparently in attendance to witness this and still decided to sign with the Cubs and that Brandon Sullivan who started for Northwestern on that day is now Iowa’s backup quarterback, meaning that the Hawkeyes are now in control of 100% of the quarterbacks that played that day.

Imanaga, who has said that he is not yet familiar with football, presumably enjoyed the blissful ignorance of not knowing that what he was watching was absolute horseshit, but he will soon learn as a person who has decided to watch the Chicago Bears 

Last year’s Iowa team was a phenomenon, the apotheosis of Iowa football as the offense reached unheard of levels of ineptitude under the coach’s oafish son who, by the time of the Northwestern game, had already been pre-fired and told he would not be welcome back for another year but was still allowed to go out there and dial up the running around like a cartoon mummy play. The defense was good enough to stop most teams, and the special teams were fueled by a generational punter; Iowa's success despite its unwatchable garbage offense became celebrated on the internet until they had to play Michigan in the Big Ten Championship game and got absolutely destroyed. This year, Iowa is not that team. For one, they have a legitimate offensive weapon in running back Kaleb Johnson. And they also gave up 32 points to a more or less functional Michigan State team, which is more points than they gave up in calendar months of last year.

There is nothing I would like more than to see Northwestern get Iowa. There was a time when Northwestern had Ferentz’s number and no matter how highly the Hawkeyes were ranked, Northwestern would reliably beat them in a very stupid and annoying game where they would just do the same nasty Iowa shit right back at them and the the two teams would punt at each other until someone was forced to score a touchdown as a dare. It has been awhile since Northwestern has won. They came close last year with a late touchdown but somehow allowed a long pass and long field goal. Northwestern’s crummier teams tend to just get blown out. They don’t have a win against Iowa since 2020, and the Hawkeyes have taken four of the last five. 

The bookmakers don’t think this will be close. Iowa is favored by more than 14 points, and I’m mentioning that not because I have any interest in gambling but because it was rare that Iowa could attain fourteen entire points in a single game last year. The ‘Cats just got beaten up by Wisconsin inside on both sides of the ball, and given that Wisconsin and Iowa are just different colors of Mike ‘N Ikes that taste exactly the same, it could very easily be a boring Iowa blowout as Northwestern can’t move the ball and eventually the defense starts allowing Johnson to gain momentum. On the other hand, Northwestern and Iowa games exude a palpable unpleasantness, a void where the entertainment value of watching football disappears as both teams grimly hold on until someone commits a stupid penalty, and if the game is like that Northwestern may actually win.

Northwestern desperately needs this win to have any chance of going to a bowl game, a path that would require beating Iowa, Purdue, and one of a diminished Michigan on the road, Ohio State, or a very good Illinois team at an orange Wrigley Field. There is of course a small possibility that they could only get two wins  and go to a bowl game if college football runs out of eligible teams and is forced to throw Northwestern out there in a development that can be described as "very funny."  But it is very difficult to tell what Northwestern will look like in any given game at all except that in a game between these two programs that try to play the worst football game you've ever seen as a part of their strategy the prediction is that this game will be bad.

KINNICK STADIUM, IOWA CITY, IOWA

This year is all about stadiums, so enjoy this excerpt from the novel "The Demon's Punt House" about the construction of Kinnick Stadium in 1929 as relayed by a stadium worker.

March 6, 1929.
We have finally begun construction by digging an enormous pit. Mr. Phipp [the head of the project] has told us to expect a grueling schedule. Me and the other most robust lads on the team are taking shifts with the mules to haul earth away.

March 9
Construction has been a difficult slog. Every time we believe we have gotten to the correct depth, a part of the pit fills in. Every day is a new setback. Today, that vigorous ass Inus grew frustrated with his mule and began to upbraid it with cruel words and a few sharp blows to the hindquarters. The beast waited for him to walk behind it and then kicked Inus in the solar plexus, a glancing blow, but one that sent him stumbling headfirst into a bucket which got stuck on his head and as he struggled, he managed to stumble into several mules, agitating all of them and they dropped their loads and began kicking out at all comers, a vicious can-can line of animal rage. It took a large supply of mule-grade laudanum to get them to calm down, but we lost a whole day and we are not sure that after managing to grease the bucket to pry it off of Inus’s head we did not permanently disfigure him with upturned nostrils that have given him an uncanny porcine expression.

March 20
The dig came to a halt as crews hit a large piece of metal with their shovels. After several hours of furious digging, they appear to have unearthed a large metal case. It took dozens of men and livestock to drag it out of the pit. I have taken some time to examine it and it appears to be a box with several moving parts and symbols that line up in some way. The men have been taking some time moving things around to try to open it before being sent back down to continue digging and transporting beams. Dabby Dubbert tried to bash it open with a mallet but the mallet bounced off it easily and hit him in the face and he spun around and fell into a bucket that some of us had been using as a spittoon and that night he vanished from the site without a word.

March 22
The box remains propped up on a table in the office. I have been spending all of my spare time (of which there is little as we had a large shipment of pink paints that I have been told will be used to paint the opposing locker room in order to psychologically diminish them according to top Brains Scientists) pondering the symbols. In my dreams I am arranging them on the case. I see it even when I am supposed to be taking inventory of individual nails or reporting the number of men who have fallen to cases of Stadium Bowels, a plague of which has run rampant through the site. Mr. Phipp personally reprimanded me after one of my reports on the latrine crisis consisted of nothing but doodles of the symbols, something that I do not even remember doing and must have written down as if in a trance. We have gotten little sleep, and Mr. Phipp recommended I take two hours for sleeping followed by a course of medical slapping across the face.

March 24
The large man. The small man. The hunchback. The cornstalk. The hawk. The cow. The eyeball. They spin around the box in some combination. They call to me in my dreams. The others don’t understand. I will arrange them.

March 25
I have been reprimanded for muttering. They said I am also negligent in my duties. My ledgers are filled with the symbols. I have also been banned from the tent where they are keeping the case and all managers on site have been authorized to bludgeon me if I come near it. I had been spending all of my time there, sleeping there, writing and writing trying to find the pattern. I am close, I am very close but they shut me out.

March 30
Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo.

April 3
I have the case. I do not know how. I can only recall it in flashes, me wielding a pistol, a desperate cart chase, escaping the clutches of the doctor and his hardest medicinal slaps, yelling “NO” when Mr. Phipp said “come back here you ass.” It is pouring and I am huddling with the case under a tarp in an abandoned barn. I know they’re looking for me but they can’t look too hard. They have a stadium to build and they don’t value the case, they don’t understand it. Not like I do. I consult my notebook and look at the combinations. I will look at the combinations.

April 7
The Combinations.

April 19
The fever has broken. This case was not meant to be opened. It is impossible to break the seal even with a series of powerful kicks, as I have learned and now believe I may have a broken bone in my kicking foot. It is, I believe, perhaps sealed to prevent the unleashing of a great evil. Maybe I should bring it to a university where it can be studied in great detail. Maybe I should bury it far away from the prying of human hands.  

April 20
I believe I have had a revelation about the combinations. It is not about the figures themselves, it is about a narrative message within the symbols. The father and the son. The eye. I see it now.

April 23
I am sore and wounded.  A group of geese also decided to make this barn their temporary home and we were happy sharing the space until they grew aggressive and I had to take out the largest goose, the leader, and in the tussle I sustained several serious pecks before I was able to subdue it with some scientific pugilism and some threatening honks summoned from the deepest recesses of my lungs. The horde flew away leaving behind only feathers and offal. But now I can at last return to the task of opening the case.

May 12
It is open. Forgive me if these writings are blurred with the celebratory tears. I could not believe the happiness I felt when I finally heard that click. I don’t know what I was expecting. Light, music, some sort of revelation. But what was in the case will require further study. They appear to be some sort of tablets and even some papers. This will require further study in the morning.

May 13
I have studied the objects. They are some clay tablets with more symbols similar to the ones outside the case. There are also newer engravings and some paper. It appears that this case has been opened repeatedly and added to. All of the symbols show a common element: a small figure, a larger figure and various other symbols but always those two in that configuration. I call them the Father, the Son (larger and somewhat oafish in appearance). There is also a canister containing a canvass with a large painting of the father at the head of a great host of helmeted men in a field gesturing as if making commands and the son lost in a bog making the same gestures. There is a carving of people looking at a man kicking what appears to be some sort of animal.

May 15
I have been going through a sheaf of papers. One appears to be a journal written in a language I cannot understand but illustrated with pictures of a man kicking. But, in the very back of this case, faded and crumbling but still legible, there is something in an older version of English. It appears to be a part of a log from a ship’s manifest and someone has circled Mr Foghens and Mr Foghens (son, oaf’s passage) bringing with them a Quantyty of Swynne’s Skinness.”

May 31
I have made my way back to the City. Though my beard has made me largely unrecognizable to anyone working on the stadium, I have taken great pains to avoid the site. I have used some money I had saved and bought myself nice clothing, bathed, and restored my appearance as I had grown my fingernails out into what I called “goose claws.” I have spent time at the library researching ancient languages and have sought out an expert at the university in Professor Clegborne, esteemed expert on Sinister Archaeology. I forged a letter of introduction from a colleague of his whom I took from the footnotes of one his publications “I Said Go Ahead and Smash the Laughing Demon Idol” from the pages of Traps and Blowdarts: A Compendium of Modern Graverobbing and presented myself as ancient objects dealer A. Vont Montgontage.

I showed him the objects telling them I have acquired them from the ancient artifacts underground and touched my nose, a gesture meant to show him I knew about where he got things from but one that seemed to leave him baffled. He was very interested in my objects though and said he had never seen anything like it. At first he seemed skeptical like I had made it up (archaeological hoaxes were in fashion on college campuses, as I had read in some publications, and many faculty had been taken in by embarrassing undergraduate mummy scams).  He was able to decipher that one of the writings, one of the most detailed ones, seemed to be written in Old Church Slavonic and he wanted to keep it for further study since he had a book to translate it.

June 4
Midnight. Someone pounding on the door. I would like to say I had been sleeping but I had been troubled by nightmares of the man and his terrible son since I had opened the case and I was up doodling figures. It was Cleghorne. He was distressed. He told me he had translated the document or at least some of it and it was one of the most sinister objects he had ever seen in his long career. Something he saw that disturbed him were repeated references to “the field of maize,” and “the great maize palace” even though there was no reason for anyone writing at the time to know about the existence of corn. There was a reason why this was buried here, he told me. Something terrible was going to happen if they built that stadium.

June 5
We ran to the stadium site and demanded to see Mr. Phipp. The stadium had crude outlines for grandstands and the beginnings of dressing areas for the team. The site was no longer a tent city, and Mr. Phipp had lodging in town. Prof. Cleghorne told him about objects found under the stadium, but Phipp told us they had been hauled away by a madman who had worked here. I grabbed him by the lapels and told him I was that man and in fact I was not mad but the sanest person he had ever met, in fact the most sane person on the site. I told him that the objects in the case portended great calamity if the stadium had ever been built, something that would potentially destroy the sport of football itself. He laughed and asked Cleghorne why he was listening to me and that I had been administered mule-grade laudanum for my many muttering fits. The professor said “I agree, this man must be insane” and then he whispered apologies but he had his position here at the university to worry about and then the cudgeling crews swarmed and threw me out of the stadium site.  By the time I got back to my lodgings, the case was gone.