Crimson Homecoming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POSSIBILITIES IN MICHIGAN

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

The most indelible image of the 2023 college football season

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

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

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

MICHIGAN STADIUM, ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fine Print Bowl

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

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

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

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

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

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

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

  

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

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

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

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

OHIO STADIUM, COLUMBUS OHIO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours,

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

The Quarterback of Monte Cristo

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

The Northwestern offense attempts to move the ball 10 yards

 

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

 

THE ROMANCE OF PURDUE

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

ROSS ADE STADIUM, WEST LAFEYETTE, INDIANA

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

What A Bad Idea!

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

I would like to see the Wisconsin Badgers beat Northwestern here

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

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

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

The most elegant summary of Northwestern's late half playcalling 

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

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

IOWA WEEK

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

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

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

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

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

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

KINNICK STADIUM, IOWA CITY, IOWA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 7
The Combinations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

College Parked

The Padres decided to go with Dylan Cease on three days rest. He had never pitched on short rest in his life, but it's the playoffs, the mustachioed righty was the best pitcher in the Padres' rotation, and they wanted to stick their boots on the necks of their bitter division-rival billion dollar superteam Dodgers up 2-1 at home with the backing of a braying mustard crowd. But Cease was not at his best.  He lasted less than two innings, gave up three runs, and the Dodgers were on their way to a devastating 8-0 win.  The result forced a winner-take-all Game 5 in Los Angeles but it had one more important consequence: the elimination game took up the slot on Fox television that was going to the Maryland-Northwestern game and moved it back to FS1.  If only the Padres had managed to hold on, the premier sporting event airing on network television that night would have been Northwestern unexpectedly mangling the hapless Terrapins; baseball superstars Shohei Ohtani and Fernando Tatis, Jr. could only watch as Maryland held onto the ball to no discernible end for quarters at a time and Northwestern crushed them in one of the strangest blowout wins I've ever seen.

Maryland, down only ten, had the ball for a large chunk of the second half.  During the third quarter, Northwestern's defense allowed Maryland a stately ten minute march down the field that yielded a Maryland field goal then the 'Cats got the ball back, punted, and immediately scored a touchdown on a fumble recovery before kicking the ball right back to the Maryland's offense to ineffectively gallumph around again.  Watching this game reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Homer discovers he has a layer of fluid around his brain that allows him to get pummeled in the head to no effect and he defeats a series of hobo boxers by allowing them to relentlessly punch him until they get tired and fall over.

I am still not sure what to make of Northwestern’s offense.  The 'Cats struggled running the ball, went three out of twelve on third down, and delegated the second half largely to the defense.  Taken in isolation, all of that looks like the recipe for offensive malaise that had plagued Northwestern this season except there was one play that was working and it was letting Jack Lausch launch bombs to Bryce Kirtz.  Lausch also chucked one to Kirtz in the Indiana game, and A.J. Henning came pretty close to another one in this game, and while I have no idea whether the Oops All Bombs playbook is going to be successful for the rest of the season, it is at least a different type of Northwestern offense than we are used to seeing which is usually a Chicago Bears-style offense that puts the scoring onus on linebackers. 

Taking a look at Zach Lujan's playbook

Maryland is a very funny opponent for Northwestern because, like many Big Ten teams, its fans assume they will always beat Northwestern because the Wildcats used to be very bad in the 1980s.  But the Terps joined the Big Ten in 2014; in ten years of conference play, they are 1-4 against Northwestern. Maryland joined the Big Ten, played Northwestern roughly every other year, and 80% of the time not only lost to them but got clobbered.  The cartoon villain Skeletor has a better success rate than that on his evil plans.  And yet every single time they lose to Northwestern it seems like a lot of their fans continue reacting with the sort of open-mouthed confusion and incredulity that Clayton Kershaw would display after serving up yet another massive playoff home run despite doing it regularly for the better part of a decade.

This is not the typical Maryland team that gets beaten by Northwestern.  For the past several years, Maryland has started strong and looked like they were actually going to compete in the Big Ten before suffering the fate of the Indiana Jones Sword Man against the powers of the Big Ten East.  The inevitable loss to Northwestern usually served as the death blow to whatever hopes they had of competing in the conference.  This year, Maryland just stinks.  They are winless in conference play.  Their remaining schedule is legitimately alarming. I don't know what this says about the trajectory of Maryland football, but then again I don't really know what Maryland's deal with football even is.  

What is Maryland football for? As a fan of the Big Ten West, I have an innate understanding of the purpose that mediocre Big Ten teams with no chance of winning a national championship serve in the greater college football ecosystem: fullbacks, punting, scoring as few points as possible, and in the case of the University of Iowa, Renaissance Italian city-state-style dynastic family politics.  The goal of Northwestern is to host an opportunity to visit the Chicago area in the fall and probably be mildly annoyed by the Wildcat Sound as your team wins or loses 17-10.  The purpose of Nebraska football is to wistfully cling to former glories.  Michigan football exists as a pretext for the writing of strong Letters to the Editor. Even Rutgers has a clear destiny which is to function as a cult dedicated to Greg Schiano; when he dies, the entire university will be buried with him in his funereal pyramid as specified in his writings.  But until Maryland finds a purpose in the Big Ten, they will be forced to wander the wastelands and ponder the hardship of having the worst record against Northwestern as a Big Ten team.

One important function for Maryland might be to pronounce the name of this baseball player in the Cubs minor league system

WISCONSIN WANTS TO TAKE THE LAKE

No group of people outside the Ryan family and their cohort of Northwestern money perverts enjoyed the destruction of Ryan Field more than Wisconsin fans.  For some reason that I have never been able to discern, the Badgers could not consistently win in Evanston.  It is more beguiling because there are few major conference football teams that consistently enjoy such an extraordinary advantage as Wisconsin fans who have routinely swarmed Ryan Field since time immemorial and can guarantee matching and in many cases overwhelming Northwestern fans in their own stadium. 

But now Ryan Field is gone. Wisconsin will have to see what is like to play the final game of this season at The Lake.  Here, I would expect Wisconsin fans to still manage to take over the stadium; there are so many of them in the Chicago area alone not to mention those willing to take the short drive down I-94 or arrive in a convoy of party boats.  Badger fans will be looking to see whether it is the city of Evanston and the overwhelming pressure of performing in front of their own fans or whether it was a quirk of Ryan Field and its intimidating dilapidation that caused the Badgers to routinely falter there.

The Badgers are still smarting and looking for revenge. Last year, a Northwestern team left for dead went up to Madison and destroyed Wisconsin to the point where fans sarcastically cheered a pointless last-second touchdown that saved the Badgers from tying an ignominious record for scoring futility at Camp Randall.  Wisconsin was in transition, in Luke Fickell's first year and in the process of installing a spread offense that is offensive to me and to be frank aesthetically disgusting when performed in a Wisconsin uniform.  Northwestern also started Luke Fickell's former Cincinnati quarterback, who did not follow his coach to Wisconsin and was therefore I believe fueled by Psychology to defeat him.  Whatever the reason, Badgers had no answer for Ben Bryant.  The shocking Northwestern loss was part of an uncharacteristically poor season that was jarring for Wisconsin fans used to metronomic consistency.  

I really appreciate the "ah, the hell with it" celebration from #6 up there after Wisconsin scores their last-second Touchdown of Futility

Wisconsin is coming off a rough early season where they had for some reason agreed to host Alabama and lost their starting quarterback to an injury in that game.  Usually getting utterly annihilated by Alabama is not anything that would discourage a team with a Big Ten West pedigree, but we have since learned that Alabama is capable of losing to Vanderbilt and wobbling against South Carolina ,and the entire nation of Alabama football fans is somehow calling into sports radio and making professional wrestling-style threats at new coach Kalen DeBoer, so the result is perhaps slightly more alarming to Badger fans.

Bama fans rationally explaining that they were betrayed by DeBoer and his flashy west-coast style football coaching and demand to challenge him and all of the DeBoer Boerniacs from coast to coast at the Rosemont Horizon

The Badgers also lost badly to USC but managed to right the ship last week and use the entire Rutgers football team as a squeegee to clean the field. Wisconsin fans certainly see Northwestern as another opportunity to get back into the Big Ten mix.  The Badgers are, as is custom, heavily favored.  But there is something strange that happens to the Wisconsin team when they cross the threshold of the Skokie Lagoons.  Perhaps they will manage to win easily, as everyone predicts. Or perhaps whatever force that causes Wisconsin to do the absolute stupidest things possible and throw away games to the Wildcats will rise again at the Lake, the 'Cats will get a bunch of turnovers, and Lausch will drop a 60 yard nuke to Bryce Kirtz that is so majestic that the demoralized Wisconsin team will leave the field and begin despondently rowing to Milwaukee.  There is one thing I know for certain about Wisconsin's consistent headaches trying to win at a stadium which their fans turn into virtual home games every time they play and it is that Northwestern's home record against Wisconsin is one of the funniest things that has ever happened in college football and no one knows about this but us.

CAMP RANDALL STADIUM, MADISON WISCONSIN

This season has been all about stadiums, so this year's fiction section is investigating the history of opponent stadiums.  This week, everyone knows that the University of Wisconsin has never considered naming rights for Camp Randall Stadium, but what these two letters that I have completely made up presupposes: what if they did?

In 1895, the Wisconsin Badgers began play at Camp Randall, a Civil War-era Union training camp located on the grounds of the University of Wisconsin.  In early 1894, the university sifted through competing offers to change the name of the stadium.  Neither was adopted. Here, reproduced for the first time through university archives, are these letters reproduced below:

Gentlemen,

I have recently learned that the State plans to use the former site of Camp Randall as a grounds for the University Foot-Ball team. I expect that the Grounds will attract much attention and excitement from the way the great public embrace of this new exhibition of vigorous Man-Sport as these youths smash and bash each other into smithered-reens on the muddy fields and pits of this former Wartime Trainings Ground.

I would like to propose a Lucrative and Satisfactory business arrangement that would both bring prosperity to the good State of Wisconsin and University. I am offering a large Sum that you could consider a donation and symbol of my Investment in the state of Wisconsin and in the boys you have trying to vigorously ram their Limbs and Skulls into each other’s spinal-columns. This can be used to spruce up the field and clear it of the thorns and animal droppings that often cover it and cause Injury and Pestilence to befall the athletes and spectators. Or it could be used to furnish equipments that would allow the lads to train their neck muscles against the Twistings and Wobblings inflicted by the most bludgeonous Opponents of the middle-west.

All I ask in return is some acknowledgement of the monies I have donated by allowing me to inform the intelligent and discerning Public who attend these spectacles of Health and Vigor of some Products that I offer. It would be a rather simple matter to change the name of the Field from Camp Randall to Dr. Manoxko’s Re-Vitalizing Elixir for the Conditions of Stupor, Lethargy, Reduction of Hair, Dyspepsia, Repepsia, Snoring, Excess of Mucous, Paucity of Mucuous, Bile, Mange, and Re-Invigoriation of Manful Activities, an Elixir suppressed by the Medical Authorities in order to continue to subject the Public to their various Surgeries and Medicines for their own Profit Field.

This is a winning Deal for all involved: the State and University, which receives a healthy sum to replace money that would be otherwise taken by from hard-working Tax-Payers of Wisconsin to carry the burden of the expense for the Foot-Ball squad’s bludgeoning sleds and bone-saws and surgical laudanum, and the people of Wisconsin who will have an opportunity to learn about an important and healthful Product that will ease their Ailments.

I am prepared to-day to ignore my complex business transaction appointments and travel to Madison at a moment’s notice to deliver a large and cumbersome display-sized Cheque that requires two or three strong men to hold it aloft and deliver it directly to the Bursar to deposit into the University’s coffers. I would also pay for the Signs and Banners informing people about my products and even be willing to stand upon an Apple Box or other sturdy platform and shout about the many benefits and improvements offered by my world-famous Elixir which I have given by the way as a gift to numerous Princes, Sheiks, Nizams, and other Royalty around the Globe who have sought out my aid with their medical problems as their quotations in my Pamphlets will attest. I expect I will be granted a warmer welcome than when I was a humbler peddler of Blood Serums and Wolf Urines and was man-handled and thrown from the Capitol steps by a gang of toughs hired no doubt by the Medical Doctors scheming with Legislators to prevent the public from getting my miraculous cure-alls.

I look forward to the grand opening of Dr. Manoxko’s Re-Vitalizing Elixir for the Conditions of Stupor, Lethargy, Reduction of Hair, Dyspepsia, Repepsia, Snoring, Excess of Mucous, Paucity of Mucuous, Bile, Mange, and Re-Invigoriation of Manful Activities, an Elixir suppressed by  the Medical Authorities in order to continue to subject the Public to their various Surgeries and Medicines for their own Profit Field.

Sincerely,

Dr. L.P.X. Manoxko, Surgeon, Esq.

-----------------------

To the Gentlemen of the University and the State Legislature.

It has come to my attention that you have received a most provocative communiqué from the so-called Dr. Minoxko offering a large payment in exchange for renaming the historic and hallowed university ball fields after his useless elixir. I urge you to reconsider this deal as I and anyone who has done business with this Minoxko fellow knows that his medical expertise is in fact the lowest form of quackery.

I have had many encounters with this ruffian, and I assure you he is no more a doctor than I am a cudgel-back for the university foot-ball team (I have enclosed an accurate portrait showing my feeble frame and hunched posture that would allow even the weakest foot-ball player to rearrange my skeleton on a basic scrimmage-brawl in order to illustrate my point). Instead he is a shameless scoundrel, an invidious swindler of the meanest type whose elixirs are actually concoctions of whatever substances he encounters in the wild including poisonous herbs, mill water, skunk spray, and even the various dungs of the animal kingdom that he and his assistants whom he recruits from the darkest realms of the criminal underworld mash up into a paste and stir into his swill.

Normally, one would offer a person who allows himself to be persuaded to buy and drink a concoction of axle grease and possum’s offal a hearty “caveat emptor,” but Minoxko is causing grievous injury to his gullible customers. In my travels, I have seen persons who have consumed his slop suffering from Draughtsman’s Bowels, Railroad Vision, the Spills, the Wobbles, Cattle Polyps, Reverse Gouts, and too many varieties of Diarrheas to mention in a letter that is being sent to the government. Mr. Minoxko represents a singular menace to the state of Wisconsin whose only business at the foot-ball field should be as a dummy for the players’ thrashing exercises.

I have reason to suspect that the man who claims to be “Dr. Minoxko” is actually the notorious swindler who has also gone by the names Ralph October, the Rev. Laurence Mint, Zubuz The Formidable, and many other aliases as he has traveled from territory to territory always one step ahead of the law with his various schemes including as a dealer of occult artifacts, a peddler of the most obscene types of pornographies, and as the proprietor as a bear circus whose cavalier restraint of the beasts nearly led to numerous maulings if the brave citizens did not possess a ceremonial cannon used for the purpose of solemn memorials. I assure you that the University of Wisconsin does not want to do business with this type of slippery reptile.

It is absurd to allow this man now going as “Dr. Minoxko” to purchase any right to name the stadium after his fraudulent skunk-mixtures. If anything, the stadium should be named for something wholesome. This is why I propose that the University should accept a large sum from me in order to name it Dr Jaed Jerenchki’s Full Body Health Serum: one sip of this Invigorating Serum will clear you of Vicious Bowels, eliminate pain from Joints, Muscles, and Organs, and give you the energy of a Bull Elephant in his Uncontrollable Musth Rage Stadium at Camp Randall.

Gentlemen, unlike Dr. Minoxko’s poisonous and foul-smelling concoction, my health serum has been proven by rigorous scientific experimentation on rodents and simians, with satisfied customers willing to trumpet its benefits to all who will listen. Many have written me personally to tell me they have been thrown out of dinners, pancake breakfasts, and other social events by people tired of hearing them once again expound upon the wonders of my health-ful serum. Moreover, my proposal, unlike the grotesque one made by Dr. Minoxko, preserves the historic and popular name of Camp Randall; the minor detail of my generous sponsorship would be noticed only by particularly sharp-eyed and discerning foot-ball patrons.

Dr. Minoxko says he will present the University with an enormous decorative cheque, but I would suggest researching the price of card-board beforehand as that will be the sum total of monies that you would ever be able to wring out of this slimy charlatan. I, on the other hand, am willing to make a payment purely in specie in coins or in ingots that could be delivered to the University accompanied by guards trained in the arts of horse, town, and train-combat.

Consider this a warning that any attempt to do business with the larcenous Dr. Minoxko who is a known criminal who has left a trail of ruined lives everywhere he travels will do nothing other than drag this august university into scandal and ill repute. That is why I consider my own suggested deal not only a sound investment for the future of foot-ball at this university but a demonstration that the underhanded tactics and disgusting thievesman-ship of the type practiced by this reptile Minoxko are unwelcome in the state of Wisconsin.

Gentlemen let us promote two important aspects of health and vigor together as we combine my whole-some serums with the brave and delightful displays of manful skull crushings that are synonymous with foot-ball in this great state.

Yours,

Dr. Jaed Jerenchki