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.