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.