A Loss So Bad They're Destroying the Stadium

Northwestern's nightmare season continued under the lights at Ryan Field last Saturday when Miami of Ohio beat a Big Ten team for the first time since 2003.  That team was also Northwestern.  The Wildcats continue to spiral into disaster against teams they are favored against and enter the Big Ten season with the verve and excitement of the Terminator slowly sinking into a vat of molten steel.

The difficult thing about trying to figure out anything about Northwestern football this season is that the team transforms seemingly from series to series if not play to play.  The Wildcats had series where they easily marched down the field with Hull bouncing off arm tackles and Hilinsky shredding the defense.  Then the offense hit a wall and turned into a festival of punts and turnovers.  Miami struggled passing the ball all night and it seemed like Northwestern had them shut down and then their running back started finding holes and running through Wildcat tacklers like they were made out of wet cardboard.  I was sure Northwestern was going to win this one until they didn't.  This crushing loss puts them at 1-3 in what is supposed to be the easy part of their schedule.  What had started with a satisfying win in Dublin with dreams of qualifying for the Jesus Christ Why Didn't You Tell Me You Put That There Mousetrap Company Bowl now looks like it could be a repeat of last season or even worse.  Not only have the Wildcats failed to win at home this season, they have yet to win in the United States of America.

Northwestern football, still 1-0*!

(*—only games played in Ireland count) pic.twitter.com/SpXli3SruL

— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) September 25, 2022

Now they go into Happy Valley against an undefeated eleventh ranked Penn State team that has already shredded a mid-tier SEC team on the road.  The situation looks incredibly bleak.  In years past, we could draw inspiration from Northwestern's penchant for unpredictable and chaotic nonsense in Big Ten play.  We have seen Northwestern suffer some absurd losses in the nonconference and then pop up in the Big Ten somehow punting opponents into submission.  In this case, the losses have been so alarming that even the comfort of knowing that this team operates purely on spite and annoying people may not be enough to transcend the early season malaise.  Pat Fitzgerald has to come up with something to jump start the team; unfortunately Pat Fitzgerald has never come up with anything other than doing the exact same thing he has always done except louder and more magenta-faced.

Penn State, meanwhile, is riding high.  James Franklin just got to bask in being part of a semi-viral video where a heavily made up Eli Manning whose melting prosthetics made him look like the giant goblin creature that is always chasing around the Fraggles and while doing a fake voice that is somehow dopier than Eli Manning's actual voice pretended to try out for Penn State as a walk on who wowed people with his Manning arm.  The funniest part of this video for me was Franklin explaining to Manning that at Penn State they don't have walk-ons they have run-ons because no one should be walking, which was a type of doofus football coach talk from a master who was actually hovering in the air while saying it.  I find all coaching sayings and acronyms so incredible risible that it is impossible for me to believe they actually inform and motivate people, although it is important to note that is has been more than a decade since I have personally accomplished anything so maybe I should not be laughing at them.

THE MANIACS ARE GOING TO BLOW IT UP

This week, Northwestern announced they are no longer going through with their plan to renovate Ryan Field.  Instead they want to destroy it.  The university announced plans to demolish the nearly 100-year-old stadium and replace it with an $800 million dollar pleasure-dome that will have a smaller capacity that will still allow visitors to vastly outnumber Northwestern fans and also allow major events such as a football game involving literally any other team. This is a disaster.

Northwestern has proposed plans to demolish Ryan Field and build a modern, small-capacity stadium on-site.

The $800M project would be privately-funded and allow the venue to host games, concerts, and other events, per @CrainsChicago. pic.twitter.com/twKhL7UmHc

— Front Office Sports (@FOS) September 28, 2022

Let's be honest: Ryan Field is a dump.  It is a shithole.  When it comes to watching football you can go to any other Big Ten stadium, even the fake Big Ten East Coast teams, and there is a vague feeling of scale and spectacle and splendor and then you can go to a Northwestern game and see four people standing next to a tarp and stands that are rusting like the hull of a beached ocean liner.  They replaced the old astroturf with natural grass that is pockmarked like a WWI no man's land.  It is a profoundly ridiculous facility for a team that is pulling ludicrous Big Ten television money and for a school that has a quarter billion dollar death star athletic facility and a basketball/volleyball arena that no longer looks like the Junior Varsity Thunderdome where you can bungee around and instead of getting knives and chainsaws get dinner forks and pool noodles.  It is an obscenity, and abomination, and my favorite sports venue.

I wrote earlier when the plan was just to jazz up and renovate the field that it was a colossal mistake because it should be miserable to go to a Northwestern game.  Anyone brave enough to go to a Big Ten game there rooting for the 'Cats knows that it will be filled with hostile visiting fans complaining about the field and otherwise making nuisances of themselves and their reward for swarming the stadium in massive numbers should be sitting on frozen ass-murdering bleachers in a blizzard while Pat Fitzgerald orders 56 consecutive runs up the middle and the wildcat hiss-growl plays over the PA more or less constantly regardless of what is happening on the field.  There is an episode of the television show Nathan For You where he comes up with a way to advertise televisions for a dollar by imposing absurd conditions like forcing people to dress up in tuxedos and then crawl through a tiny door into a room where there is a live alligator, and these roughly approximate the ideal conditions required for Michigan or Wisconsin fans to see their teams beat up on Northwestern at Ryan Field.  

Northwestern officials prepare the hot dog concessions for an Iowa game

And despite the fact that Ryan Field is a football pit, I love that it is old as hell.  They've been playing Northwestern football there for nearly a century.  Granted, a large chunk of that century has been Northwestern getting embarrassingly clobbered, but why not embrace history.  Why does Northwestern, of all teams, need a shiny new stadium?  What does the administration think is going to happen here?  Will a new stadium all of a sudden make people show up rooting for this team?  Do they think people in Chicago will think oh Northwestern has a new stadium, actually those billboards are right this is now the Big Ten Team of the city that I'm in even though I went to Illinois?  Northwestern football as a product is perfectly matched to its stadium; for a Big Ten stadium it's easily accessible and exudes a shaggy charm that reflects the fact that it is really not a big deal at all and just sort of going on, which is a unique vibe for big-time college football.  I can understand some sort of renovation to prevent the stadium from collapsing on people or to stop bleachers from buckling and snaring fans' shins like a bear trap or putting up a net to stop kickers from braining people on the Randy Walker Terrace, but razing Ryan Field feels like an affront to everything this program stands for which is annoying people and making them uncomfortable.

THE LONG LEG OF THE LAW

You may have been wondering what has happened to the NCAA's teams of investigators looking out for illegal payments of free socks to college athletes after name, image, and likeness policies? Well, I have no idea. I did not do any research about this. But here is another installment of a running series this season of fictional vignettes about Buck Duckett: Rogue NCAA Pants Investigator.

The gentlemen were still recovering from the previous night's Necktie Olympics at the Musth Club, an exercise that resulted in two whiplashes, one half-garroting, and a widespread plague of laryngitis when Barney Post-Duvet started leafing through the sporting news.  

"I say," said Post-Duvet, did you see that you could have gone in thirteen to one on Bruntingham defeating Grossharbor 28 nil?  What a spot of business that would have been."

"Do not say NIL in my company," said Rumpo Plainmash-Dorofice before storming out of the club.  When he got up we saw he was wearing the most preposterous trousers any of us had ever seen with an elaborate series of check marks and plaids that were so gigantic he was practically swimming in them.

In order to understand Runpo's distress, you should know that he has just returned from East Lansing, where his aunt Probity has a small cottage and likes to attend the autumn leaf season.  Rumpo generally tries to wriggle out of these outings when possible, often explaining to his aunt that the fall foliage tends to turn his nose into a plant producing sneezes and elaborate mucuses, although in general his greatest allergy involves missing the Plentham Stakes and old Pitney Pluvatt's annual ball where the boisterous attendees are regularly chased down from the chandeliers. This year, though, no amount of elaborate sneezing into handkerchiefs or notes from his friend Monty Manto who took several courses in chicken physiognomy and practically make him a physician that explain the dire effect of the leaves on poor Rumpo's health could dissuade her from demanding his presence.  So Rumpo went out to East Lansing prepared to subject himself to endless amounts of lectures on the flora and fauna from his aunt's roster of irrepressible bores.

But once he arrived in Michigan, Rumpo had a welcome surprise when he spotted his old school friend Gorge Blabbitt at an interminable lecture about saps at his aunt's country house.  Gorge, whose parents are on numerous boards and in too many societies to count, had become somewhat of an expert in being able to find some sort of amusement in these types of residencies; for Rumpo it was like being thrown into prison with a chap who is expecting the delivery of a file baked into a loaf of bread.  Gorge immediately motioned him to a side room where he pulled a small bottle that had been hidden in a bust of Earvin "Magic" Johnson.  

While Rumpo was a man with a large amount of sporting blood, Gorge was practically oozing the stuff.  This sometimes landed him in spots of trouble.  Rumpo had not, in fact, seen Gorge for several years.  It was rumored around the club that Gorge had tried to play the Yearwood Gang against Gramps Fester's operation but when Piper Puffer fell down in the third leg of the Welmingstor Stakes, both outfits began a friendly contest to capture Gorge and have him stuffed.  Rumpo had heard that Gorge took the opportunity to take a long holiday in areas of the world where they look down on taxidermy.

"Rumpo, it may look like we are trapped in an awful dungeon of nature walks," Gorge said, but I have found as sure of a money-maker than shaking a revolver at a bank teller.  They have college football here."

"College football? Is that the sport where the large lads have the thrashing pads and the bashing helmets?" Rumpo replied.

"Precisely.  And there is a mint to be made wagering on it," Gorge said.

"Well I enjoy shaking some notes in front of a blood sport as well as anyone, but I couldn't tell you a single thrashman from a bashing outfit.  How am I supposed to bet on a game I don't understand?" said Rumpo.

"It is simple enough when you know that regardless of what happens you will have the top players that make the other squad look like anaemic weaklings that could barely lift their arms for a smashing." Gorge said.

Gorge explained that he had gotten involved with a local booster named A. Pudrington Flost who scours the nation for the stoutest lads at the eating clubs and on the train-lifting circuit and invites them to play at this university.  Unfortunately, there are rival universities attempting to lure these giants into their own teams, and so Mr. Flost has devised a plan simply offer them incentives for their clobberous services.

"Do you mean you are part of a bribery scheme to lure youngsters with overstimulated pituitaries to your stadium?" Rumpo asked

"Preposterous," Gorge said. "We are not doing anything as gauche as luring them here with bundles of notes.  We are simply offering to outfit these gentlemen with such rare and unfortunate proportions with a well-fitting and stylish trouser as a courtesy for representing the old alma mater," Gorge said.

"This all seems a little bit rum, Gorge," said Rumpo. "Is this, strictly speaking, legal?"

"The law?" Gorge replied. "Well not any law on the books in the United States of America."  Gorge did mention that the trouser scheme did not technically adhere to a code that the university mandated in order to preserve the athletes' amateur status, but no one is particularly exercised about that.  He told Rumpo that he he was going to a deliver some trousers that afternoon to "Moose" Maszer and his steel biting club that afternoon under the guise of going to a conifer identification seminar and invited Rumpo along.  Rumpo, afraid that if he heard one more word about cartenoids he would have to hurl himself into the nearest creek, agreed to accompany him.

The two of them pulled up to the Greater Lansing Squashing and Thumping Club with a squeal of tires and a festive tooting of the klaxon and four of the largest people Rump had ever seen clambered out one by one ducking under the door to meet them.  Each was bigger than the next, with rectangular heads and shoulders that started around their ears and ended somewhere near their midriff.  They blotted out the sun.  The biggest one, whom Rumpo took to be Moose, frowned.

"You can't make all of this noise you blockhead. I've heard Duckett is nosing around here."

Buck Duckett, Gorge quickly explained, was a sort of detective in the employ of the athletic association who was forever trying to foil illicit trouser transactions and had become a pest to Gorge and his associates. Duckett was the zealous type, always prowling around in ditches or popping up unexpectedly from trees and once had been known to sleep for a week in a zoo enclosure with the facility's most ornery rhinoceros in order to prevent a cycling team from getting a haul of long underpants for free.  

"Don't worry about Duckett," Gorge said.  "This oaf would get hopelessly lost trying to find his own moustache."

"Is that so?" said one of the large men.  Rumpo noticed that he had looked less sturdy than the others, not more robust, but swaying and with a rubbery quality about him that Rumpo had assumed came from the diet of meats and tires that he must eat to keep up his mountainous physique.  But then his skin began to quiver and split.  A smaller man emerged as his bulk deflated and fell to the ground.  This wiry man slick with perspiration stood before them standing in front of what appeared to be a discarded rubber apparatus that made him look like a much larger fellow.  He ripped off a wig covering a bald head an then tore off a false mustache that had been concealing a smaller and more officious mustache.

"What appears to be going on here is a clear violation of NCAA trouser protocols," the man said.  It was the famous investigator Buck Duckett.  Moose stared at him and his mouth drooped open to resemble the approximate shape of a cave that Rumpo had been forced to enter at the behest of his aunt to study a bat habitat.  "I'm sorry Mr. Maszer.  I needed to do a spot of undercover work here as Caboose Cudlow in order to infiltrate your syndicate.  I assure that those tender things you said to me about your mother will remain in confidence."

Any thought that Gorge had of smiling at that remark retreated when Moose looked like he was about to crack his skull in between the folds of his brow.  

"Mr. Duckett, I believe you are misinformed," Gorge said.  My friend and I were simply coming by to show our chums the new style of trousers that we had purchased.  We were not going to hand them over.  As you can tell, these gentlemen are connoisseurs of the latest sartorial styles."

"If that is the case, let's see them on you," Duckett said.  Gorge and Rumpo looked at each other and began to put on the trousers.  They were enormous.  Each of them could probably fit entirely within a single leg with room for an umbrella.  The two of them stood desperately clinging to the enormous and garish garments scarcely able to move without causing them to fall down or allow an enterprising squirrel or forest pest to leap into them and rummage around for roughage.

"As you can see, the new style demands a bit of bagginess in the waist," Gorge said.  "Much like the Fabulous Five wore their short pants in their netball championships."

"The fact is there is nothing I can do for you ruffians," Duckett said.  "But this is all highly suspect.  Moose, I am afraid the NCAA is not going to allow you to play any football this season until we can get to the bottom of all of this."

Moose started to stomp towards Gorge and Rumpo.  It looked like he had been devising some rigorous new exercises that required the bending and stretching of human beings into new and anatomically impossible configurations.

"Well, if that's about it, I suppose we should be going. Moose, Mr. Duckett, good luck on the investigation and all of that," Gorge said as and Rumpo leaped into the automobile and sped away to get out of Michigan without any of their baggage.

At first when Rumpo returned to the club, he had been thankful to escape without his extremities used as an exercise apparatus, even if he had left all of his trousers behind and was forced to mince around in the gigantic footballer's slacks.  But his mood quickly darkened.  It appeared that the day after he had left, the athletic association had decided that football players like Moose and his prodigious ilk could accept all of the trousers they had liked as long as they were performing some sort of advertising.  This policy had been called name, image, and likeness or NIL He also got a cable from his aunt saying that she had called him to Michigan in order to give him a tidy some of monies she needed to dispose of for tax purposes that would have kept him in the black through the West Manglian Stakes, but due to his abrupt departure that had caused so much embarrassment in front of Professor Yorpling she had decided instead to donate it to a wolverine sanctuary.  His bank account was now close to nil as well.