Lost in the thrum of the opener this season in the midst of clumsily shoehorned Irish references and the excitement from a stadium losing control of its payment system to douse spectators in unlimited free beer and the general celebration of Scott Frost's various ineptitudes and nincompooperies is the question of whether Northwestern might actually be kind of good. That is to say, have the Wildcats discovered a passing attack and brought back their Big Ten-irritating defense enough to get back return to the Fauxltry Powdered Gravy Substitute Bowl or even the Mail Order Nunchuks (For Display Only) Bowl played at an abandoned Discovery Zone?
Here's something that happened in the first half: Ryan Hilinsky, whose identity as starting quarterback was hidden by Pat Fitzgerald by having all passers practice in trench coats and call cadences using the vocal distortion the news uses for mob witnesses absolutely torched Nebraska's defense. Receivers Malik Washington and Illinois Turn-Hat Donny Navarro were always open. And in the second half, Northwestern's offensive line picked up Nebraska's defense and carried it around like a sack of groceries while the Wildcats' suddenly extremely scary cadre of running backs gobbled up yardage.
Last year's offense was particularly gruesome, but under Fitzgerald the offense has rarely been the point. Northwestern has flourished when its offensive playbook looked like one of those surrealist toilet paintings. Last year, the defense also struggled with the departure of its guru Mike Hankwitz and several key upperclassman stalwarts, and it looked like that trend might continue into 2022 as Nebraska quarterback Casey Thompson flung the ball around and made insane video game physics throws on broken plays where he was somehow throwing howitzer passes while moving backwards. But in the second half, something changed. Thompson began to falter. The Wildcats began to get pressure on Nebraska's offensive line, which came out of the locker room all barfed out. Thompson threw two backbreaking interceptions including one that sealed the win for the 'Cats as Frost fled the premises being pursued by Husker fans who had filled up on free beer and were wielding their corn hats with ill intent.
Frost turns around in terror as he is cornered by Nebraska fans who have formed up in a corn hat testudo formation.
The Duke game should be an interesting test for Northwestern because it will be their first contest this season against a normal team. I don't know how good Duke is, but it will be a football team that is playing football and not a vaguely football-themed organization in the midst of a deranging psychic collapse. Scott Frost is the anti-Northwestern; while Fitzgerald frugally aims to win by exactly as many points as necessary with no waste, Frost seems determined to choke as narrowly as possible, and his teams dig deep into an unlimited reservoir of boneheaded special teams gaffes, comically malfunctioning trick plays, and horrendous turnovers at the worst possible moment that can be explained only by deliberate sabotage, hypnosis, or possibly a combination of the two in a nightmarish Manchurian Corndidate Scenario. The Duke game should show if Northwestern is good enough to win against the types of Big Ten West teams it will need to beat in order to play in December or if they are simply good enough to stand back and allow Frost and the Huskers to sink into madness and despair.
THAT FEELING...WHEN YOU KNOW ME, AL
Ring Lardner covered the Cubs and White Sox in the early twentieth century for a few different papers, but he found the best way to convey the spirit of baseball in those early tumultuous years was not through beat reporting or interviews but from from a series of fake letters written by an oaf. These collections of letters from fictional pitcher Jack Keefe to his friend Al back home in Bedford, Indiana after joining the White Sox as he tries to establish himself with a Major League pitcher but mainly gets swindled, humiliated, and drunk. Lardner surrounds Keefe with real life baseball personalities like Charles Comiskey, Kid Gleason, and opponents like Ty Cobb and Christy Matthewson. Given how popular the series became, I am surprised Ty Cobb didn't try to spike Lardner in his office or hijack and train and try to drive it into him.
Lardner depicts Keefe as a lazy, stubborn, and prideful jerk who refuses to listen to anyone, constantly searches for excuses for his mistakes including blaming teammates for what he sees as fielding ineptitude, and is quick to anger and ineptly threaten to fight people, but who remains sort of lovable and charming because of the incredible scope of his gullibility. Lardner has one consistent bit and that is having Keefe describe how he absolutely refuses to do something under any circumstances in one letter and then immediately in the next letter describing how he is doing all of that enthusiastically by regurgitating whatever bullshit someone fed him in order to change his mind. That is how he negotiates his contract with Comiskey and how he tries and fails to go to the Federal League; it is how he ends up married. It's one of those devices that starts off as amusing and then gets old when you figure out that is going to happen in every letter and then gets extremely funny as it just keeps happening over and over again to an oblivious Keefe who keeps running into tunnels painted on the side of a mountain and then fuming several colorful but deliberately grammatically desolate letters later about his hatred of left-handed pitchers.
What distinguishes Lardner is the dialogue, which is conveyed in brilliantly rambling passages from Keefe. Here's an example from when he returns to spring training after ineptly trying to force his way onto the Tigers and meets with Sox coach Kid Gleason:
He says Are you in shape? And I told him Yes I am. He says Yes you look in shape like a barrel. I says They is not no fat on me and if I am a little bit bigger than last year it is because my mussels is bigger. He says Yes your stumach mussels is emense and you must of gave them plenty of exercise. Wait till Bodie sees you and he will want to stick round you all the time because you make him look like a broom straw or something. I let him kid me along because what is the use of getting mad at him? And besides is all O.K. even if he is a little rough.
Ping Bodie, who Keefe makes look like a broom stick or something.
You Know Me, Al is only a small fraction of the Busher's Letters series because they were so popular. According to Wikipedia, Lardner wrote dozens more, only a few of which were anthologized; the immediate sequel, which has Keefe swearing up and down that he will absolutely not go on an all-star world tour covers his inevitable time on that world tour. There was apparently a series where Keefe goes into the army and fights in World War I where I imagine he is persuaded to go over the top dozens of times a day after dubious promises of increased pay or because a field officer convinced him that a German machine gun nest was operated by former Cub Fritz Mollwitz. Larnder seemed to grow increasingly resentful of the Busher content fans demanded, which included a syndicated newspaper comic.
Here's an example of the comic which also gives a pretty decent sense of what the book is like, found here.
As Rob Manfred reaches his apotheosis of Rules Mongering and ushers in all sorts of clocks and restrictions on what areas of the field players are allowed to be on, it raises the question of to what extent the baseball in a book like You Know Me, Al will even be legible in the future. One of the appeals of the game is that its ruleset has remained relatively static when compared to the other major popular sports in the United States; a football game from 1914 is for all intents and purposes a different game then what you see today, whereas the baseball scenes that Lardner narrates through Keefe's self-aggrandizement and various feuds and grudges that he believes are causing all of his problems largely, with exceptions for Keefe using increasing darkness to his advantage and pitchers hitting the ball with bats, translate to modern baseball fans. One major change, though, would be Keefe's role, where instead of waiting around for a start, he would be bouncing in between the minors and the majors to throw two innings before being sent back down only to wait for the next injury. I'm sure Keefe would have a lot to say about that, to Al.
ENTER THE SERPENT'S MAW: A BUCK DUCKETT NOVEL
You may have been wondering
what has happened to the NCAA's teams of investigators looking out for
illegal payments of free socks to college athletes after name, image,
and likeness policies? Well, I have no idea. I did not do any research
about this. But here is another installment of a running series this
season of fictional vingettes about Buck Duckett: Rogue NCAA Pants
Investigator.
THE YACHT "LADY OF NUTZ"
THE DALMATIAN COAST
"You don't have to go to all this trouble, Belly," the man in the shiny suit said, gesturing to a lavish spread of caviars and fancy cheeses in the grand ballroom of the Lady of Nutz, a 148-foot yacht anchored in the Adriatic.
"This isn't for you, Jan," H.S. Belton Waynesneed, Jr. said. Belly was for his buddies, but not for Jan. "I have guests. And I told you I don't want you hanging around."
"And here I thought we were becoming such good friends," Jan said, putting his feet up on a table that cost more than his house. He had immaculately groomed stubble and an untraceable accent. "Very well, we talk business first."
"Let me see the stuff," Waynesneed said.
"I think you will find the merchandise is top quality." Jan opened a briefcase. Inside was a pair of almost impossibly fancy pants. "What you're looking at is the ultimate in luxury trouser. Fabrics so fine they are illegal in your country. Top designers. Hand-stitched. These are clean. No serial numbers, no factory labels. Untraceable."
"And you have them ready to go for the whole team? I sent you those measurements."
"To the inch. Even the... what do you call it, the kicker." Jan smiled. "You know in my country they are all the kicker."
Waynesneed handed him a steel briefcase. "You're one slippery son-of-a-bitch, I'll give you that."
Jan opened it and smiled. "May I?" he said, but he was already wrist deep in rocquefort. A shadow moved over his face from another ship gliding into the harbor.
"You make me sick," Waynesneed said. "Take the money and get the hell off my ship." The faint sound of thumping music began to oontz-oontz its way through the walls. "Sounds like my guests are here. Beat it."
The other ship started to slowly turn to face the Lady of Nutz.
"Next time it's double," Jan said, wiping off his hand. "Pants scene is getting more dangerous every day. I nearly lost my own, you know what you put on the truck..."
"I don't care what kind of sick shit you to do get me the pants. I told you I don't want to know details. I pay you for the pants... and the discretion."
Suddenly, a klaxon blared throughout the shit. "Goddamn it, I told the captain I wanted that damn aoogah horn disabled. I'm not here to get aoogahed on my own damn..."
The captain burst in. "Signore!" he said. "Signore, we need to..."
"Goddamn it I told you for the last time..." Waynesneed said, before the captain cut him off.
"Signore, it's a torped..."
NCAA HEADQUARTERS
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
"Duckett, my office." It was Quinn Chavous, the head of Duckett's N.P.I.S. (NCAA Pants Investigator Service), part of the NCAA's larger I.B.I.B. (Illegal Benefits Investigation Bureau) as part of the Joint P.T.S.J. Taskforce investigating pants, tattoos, shoes, and jewelry. Chavous answered only to bureau chief Jeff van Steve, and he only answered to Mark Emmert who only answered to God.
"I got the State Department breathing down my neck wanting to know how a goddamn NCAA asset-- your asset, by the way-- got torpedoed off the coast of Croatia," he said. "Goddammit."
Henry Smorris Belton Waynesneed, Jr. was the president of the nation's top artificial truck testicle company. It now controlled 97 percent of the artificial truck testicle market after brutally crushing or acquiring three competitors and a breakaway novelty "only the shaft" company during a decades-long war in the truck testicle industry that had cost two executives their lives and one CEO his actual testicles. But that had been H.S. Belton Waynesneed, Sr.'s war. The younger Waynensneed was raised in luxury and installed in the top job after his father's fifth heart attack. Waynesneed, Jr. at first attacked his position with the raw ambition of youth, but after a disastrous and expensive attempt to market various truck testicle characters as part of a Saturday morning cartoon and merchandise empire nearly plunged the company into bankruptcy, he was encouraged to step into a more ceremonial role while the board took over the company's everyday operations. Waynesneed, Jr. was fine with that. It left him more time for his true priority: football.
Over the past several years, Waynesneed, Jr. leveraged his enormous fortune and endless appetite for football into a position as the most powerful booster at his alma mater. And soon he found that it wasn't enough for the practice field to bear his name or for him to have a private suite with a personal touchdown bell that only he was allowed to ring. No, he wanted the players to look good. That's when he got into pants. Deep into pants.
Two years ago, Waynesneed, Jr. found himself in a steamy warehouse negotiating the sale of 109 pairs of satin lounging slacks to a mysterious, Brezhnev-eyebrowed international pants broker he only knew as Tench. That broker was actually Buck Duckett. The eyebrows were fake. They made a deal. Duckett would not report the transaction and the team would not have to vacate their win in the Online Boner Pills Sent In Discreet Packaging Bowl, but Waynesneed, Jr. would need to start getting Duckett to the source of the pants. And now he and whatever information he had was at the bottom of the Adriatic with a cache of slacks almost to sumptuous to behold.
"Duckett, I need that B.S.V.D. on my desk right now as in before I finish this goddamn sentence," Chavous said.
The Booster Source Vetting Document consisted of a folder bulging with press clippings, interviews, and a complete psychological dossier. It was currently spread out in his office as he had been staring at it all night since the news came in.
"I've seen them shot, garroted, and dropped into rotating helicopter blades, but torpedoed is a first." That was Shane Schenk, from Duckett's unit. He grinned and handed him a coffee. "Congratulations."
Schenk and Duckett met at the I.B.I.B. academy and went through Pants School together, where Duckett graduated at the top of his class, Shenk near the bottom. But Schenk knew every top booster at every program from the biggest SEC school to some NAIA powerhouses. He partied with them at their ranches and boats. He knew their biggest secrets. He slept with several of their wives.
"You want us to go out there and crack some skulls?" asked the Pordon "Backhoe" Valence as he squeezed his enormous frame into the office. Valence, a former all-American fullback and member of the NCAA's elite combat unit known as the Rhinoceros has officially killed 38 men. No one has beaten his Rhinoceros record for breaking fifteen bricks with a single headbutt. He earned a commendation for unusual valor in thirteen of the NCAA's most dangerous operations and an eye patch for a desperate scythe fight with the Wisconsin offensive line after catching them accepting an illegal crate of wheely shoes on a dock at Lake Mendota.
"We can cross-reference all apparel-related torpedo attacks in Western Europe with unsual activity from known pants hot spots," said another team member Muriel Utrecht, a woman.
Duckett looked at his team. "This is not an ordinary pants assassination," he said. "I didn't want to tell you this before because it seemed ridiculous or even impossible, but something has been gnawing at me with Waynesneed and it won't go away. I don't think he was taking us to a normal pants supplier. I think he was in something much deeper."
"What do you mean, Duckett?" Schenk said. "Shorts? Maybe even a capri?"
"Jesus christ, that sick bastard would try something like that," Valence said.
"No, I don't think this has to do with manufacturing or distribution at all," Duckett said gravely. "I think whoever it was that torpedoed Waynesneed is not after some nickel-and-dime shorts operation. I think whoever did this is trying to transform how college athletes are compensated." He swung around a whiteboard that he had been hiding in a corner. It said "N.I.L." Duckett put down his coffee and leaned forward on his desk. "I think they're trying to legalize pants."
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