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

Week 1: Bronco News Letter

The barricades are up on Lake Shore Drive, the helicopters are circling, and Ryan Field prepares for the annual pilgrimage of thousands of fans from Chicago hoping to catch a glimpse of their Big Ten team. Last year's Wildcats surged to an unexpected and delightful ten-win season for only the fourth time in school history based entirely on Body Clocks, and now they hope to take their assault on opponents' circadian rhythms to Indianapolis.

The 2015 Wildcats had a simple gameplan-- to smother the opposing offense, run Justin Jackson into the other team, and bury them beneath a merciless hail of punts.  When the strategy worked, the defense erased the other team and the running game wore down the clock in an excruciating exhibition of football brutality.  When that didn't work, they put their fist-claws in the hands of the insane gods of football-- they won a game on a botched two-point conversion, a last-second field goal gifted by incompetent clock management, and brain-disrupting satellites launched into low orbit that subjected the referees to space hypnosis and forced them to continue taking touchdowns away from Wisconsin until they were roused from their stupor by a hail of snowballs.

Alex Erickson's attempts to reason with a referee fall on deaf ears 

Will Northwestern be able to repeat their extraordinary feats of football derring-do?  Bah-humbug football experts say no, based on their fancy statistics, distrust of a football team that wins numerous games by opponents unveiling ludicrous Twilight Zone coaching tactics, and the tendency for Northwestern teams with preseason rankings to become grotesque, avant-garde parodies of football as part of someone's senior thesis. 

"M00N: 100 Yards of Sorrow" captured a jury prize in the Exhibition of Football Nihilism for 
demonstrating "an apt metaphor for the purposelessness of violence"

Yet there are some reasons for optimism.  The 'Cats return several key contributors to last year's dominant defense, including superstar linebacker Anthony Walker.  Quarterback Clayton Thorson has a year of experience under his belt and hopes to improve his passing game to complement his herky-jerky auto lot inflatable running style.  Former running back Solomon Vault and cornerback Marcus McShepard have switched positions to bolster the receiving corps and expose opposing defenses to the terrifying possibility of the forward pass, virtually unknown in the modern game of football.

There is no more pointless pursuit than predicting Northwestern football.  They have to play Ohio State and Michigan State on the road.  Their chief rival is no longer coached by a maniac who came out of a Joseph Conrad novel about football.  The difference between a Northwestern victory or loss usually comes down to a play so ridiculous that it turns into a Wes Anderson version of football where a blank-faced twelve-year-old coach with a false mustache calls a play out of John Dominic's Manual for Foot Ball Aptitude and players dressed in immaculate old-timey football costume are unable to catch a papier-mache football that goes through an intricate series of Rube Goldberg devices involving a hamster wheel, a 1960s style vibrating weight loss belt machine, and a tricycle before the ball crosses the line and a blank-faced referee played by Bill Murray unenthusiastically signals for a touchdown. 

By my statistical formula, devised on a vision quest through the mystical environs of the Greater Chicagloand Metrolitan Area, Northwestern is going to the Rose Bowl.

BRONCO NEWS

NFL analysts have spent the last two weeks with their corkboards and pushpins trying to piece together the beguiling series of events that have led to Trevor Siemian starting at quarterback for the defending Super Bowl Champion Denver Broncos.  Peyton Manning retired.  Backup Brock Osweiler left for Houston.  And the main competition for Siemian was journeyman quarterback Mark Sanchez, known mainly for attempting to run through another man's buttocks like he was Wile E. Coyote charging through a tunnel made of paint.

Mark Sanchez with the haunted expression of a man who sees butts every 
time he closes his eyes

Certain maniacs have suggested that Siemian may struggle in the NFL because he put up some of the worst statistics by a Northwestern quarterback in recent memory. These so-called football experts, who spend their summers sorting through index cards in their homes filled with arcane statistics, know nothing about Northwestern football. Do they know, for example, that Siemian spent most of his career as a change of pace co-starter who only came in when it was time to throw like one of those World War I cannons mounted to a railroad car? Or the psychological toll taken on him by the strain from coming in as the “passing quarterback,” which set off a whole series of diabolical mind games about whether he would actually pass or he'd run or he'd pretend to run but still pass or he'd pass anyway or he'd spend the entire offseason disguised as a Western Illinois player named A. Augustus Vermillion only to betray his new teammates in the second game and lead Northwestern to a 24-7 victory?

Siemian should, according to proprietary BYCTOM algorithms, immediately become the greatest quarterback in the NFL because of his expert kneel-down game, Super Bowl experience, and the time he led Northwestern to victory against Notre Dame and created a mass-hysterical event where thousands of Notre Dame football fans attempted citizen firings of Brian Kelly through their most unhinged message boards.  Expect Siemian to blithely swat down all challengers as he rampages through the futile professional defenses of the NFL.

Entertainment impresario Carl Denham cautions against allowing a 
rampaging Siemian to climb to mile high heights

The Trevor Siemian Era of Broncos football begins now.  I can't believe it either.

ADDITIONAL BRONCO NEWS

Northwestern faces the Western Michigan Broncos Saturday at Ryan Field.  Coach P.J. fleck, a wide-eyed football evangelist who has out-recruited the Big Ten basement, led the Broncos to an 8-5 record last year, knocking on the door of perennial MAC bullies Northern Illinois. SBNation's Bill Connelly graded them higher than Northwestern last season, using his mysterious S&P+ rankings.  Though Northwestern is favored, this is no easy contest to ease into the football season; the Broncos play in the Eastern time zone and have therefore fortified their body clocks against the dangerous football disruptions caused by Central Time.

P.J. Fleck will bring his exciting “Row The Boat” catchphrase back for yet another season. Sometimes I wonder whether Fleck ever gets tired of his performative rowboating, like he’s at a pep rally and the band’s about to break into Western Michigan’s disappointingly non-maritime fight song and Fleck is just staring at the crowd who are all wearing row the boat shirts and some are hoisting oars and maybe one or two students is dressed up like a Gorton’s Fisherman and they’re all waiting to explode into an orgy of rowboat pantomime and he just can’t do it anymore, he’s out of it, the boat in his mind just sitting dead still in the center of a pond, but then the booster comes in, a Colonel Tom Parker type, and he’s staring at him through dead, flinty eyes, and he says Jesus Christ Fleck these people paid their damn money to see you row the GODdamn boat so why don’t you just get some pep in your step and give ‘em a show, who the fuck do you think you are, Bear Bryant? are these folks here to watch you diagram a sumbitching OFFtackle play? no they aren’t, he says, and so Fleck goes out there and when the klieg lights hit him and the trombonists start waggling their instruments around you’d have no idea about any of this, the doubts, the desperation, the nights spent with a chalkboard where he’s written and erased “drive the car” and “pedal the bike” and even “hang the glide” and the smile is there and the jaw squares around that football chin, and the eyes sparkle with conviction. “Row the boat,” Fleck says, and the cheers engulf him and his team streaming out onto the stage in padless jerseys.

Or maybe he just really likes to say row the boat

Western Michigan, like most college football teams, holds a precarious spot in the football ecosystem.  Fleck's recruiting prowess has elevated them to a MAC championship contender. With each victory, though, Fleck becomes a more tempting target for a powerhouse team to poach in the offseason, wined and dined in the stately dining cars of the Power Five's suspender-thumbing boosterati.  Regardless of Fleck's future, the Broncos hope to make a statement by coming into the most intimidating stadium in the Big Ten and come away with a win.  The 'Cats have no choice but to row them to hell.

Western Michigan returns to Kalamazoo across the Lake Michigan

OPENING WEEKEND

The lines are painted, the field is green, the tarps are set, and the Northwestern Wildcats hope to prove that last season was not a fluke.  We have absolutely no idea.  It is a fool's errand to predict football, where a fraction of a second can change a triumphant march to Indianapolis into a desperate fight to qualify for the Amalgamated Anvil and Anvil Lubricants Bowl in some god-forsaken Rust Belt thunderdome.  Even the Alabamas, Ohio States, and Oklahomas will at some point this season have to hold onto their butts.  Northwestern will probably lose some game they should win and author a heroic upset that causes the cry of UNACCEPTABLE to echo across the college sports internet.

It is unlikely that Northwestern will benefit from as many weird bounces and space-hypnosis referee decisions as last year.  But they could also be better. They could somehow replace the rain of punts with a hail of airborne passes, discovered by offensive coordinator Mick McCall as an exotic punt that potentially allows you to retain possession.  Trevor Siemian is the starting quarterback for the defending Super Bowl champions.  Anything can happen.

A Stovepipe Showdown

It took all season, but Northwestern finally encountered a team more practiced in the art of the fourth-quarter fade.  Michigan State and Northwestern played a fraught battle, with both teams desperately keeping the jaws of victory at bay until finally the Spartans gave into their self-destructive tendencies and allowed Northwestern to hang on for their eighth win of the season.

The Wildcats won the Heston Bowl to determine which fanbase would 
end up walking out of the stadium cackling with demented incredulity

Ibrahim Campbell had a phenomenal game, as he was seemingly around every big play on defense.  Freshman Superback Dan Vitale rumbled around, over, and through hapless defenders.  Michigan State had the opportunity to tie, but came up short.  I can't imagine that most State fans even flinched.  Their team has lost every possible break, been victimized by every questionable call (including a generous pass interference that helped the 'Cats seal the game), and watched week in and week out as the lead has slipped from their grasp.  Now, they have to go to Minnesota to try to qualify for some bowl that no one wants to go to.   To call the Spartans snake-bitten at this point is a gross understatement; their football team has been bitten, swallowed, and partially digested by the type of snake that stalks Ice Cube or battles a fake-looking computer generated octopus for what we can assume is some reason.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats turn to a far graver matter than tying their best record of Pat Fitzgerald's tenure and improving their bowl position.  The Illini are coming bearing the Hat and now is the time to demand its return to rightful place on all of our metaphorical heads.

HAT WEEK IS UPON US

When Tim Beckman took the job at Illinois, he made a point to stoke the flames of college football's least intense rivalry.  "You'll never see me wearing purple," Beckman said, throttling a plush Willie the Wildcat doll.  He claimed that he would only refer to Northwestern as "that school up north," baffling his players who gathered and brainstormed dozens of Big Ten, MAC, FCS, and Canadian schools before remembering that Northwestern existed.  With the exception of the time that Northwestern lost more than thirty conesecutive games and cemented its place as the worst major-conference program in the history of college football and then the fans tore down the goalposts in mock celebration, Tim Beckman's War on Northwestern is the funniest thing that has ever happened to Northwestern football.

I have no idea how to react to Beckman.  Apparently no one told him how the Big Ten works.  Teams generally deign to play Northwestern and assume an automatic win.  Most fans  condescendingly cheer for the Wildcats in good years like you would for a toddler that has managed to successfully remain quiet for upwards of 15 minutes.  Northwestern has been more good than bad for the past dozen years, but no team other than the conference's most wretched programs expects to lose to them.  Every October road game is Homecoming, as Northwestern is inevitably trotted out like a Carl Denham ape show for win-starved alumni. 

Denham expected to make millions with his best-selling Broadway revue
entitled "Take a Look at This Gigantic Ape, People"

Do any Illini fans actually care about beating Northwestern more than Michigan or Ohio State or Wisconsin?  Do any Illini fans sit around talking about their program's big wins over Northwestern?  Will any Illini fan take any solace in a win on Saturday to salvage their miserable season because it was against the Wildcats and not Indiana or Purdue or Minnesota?  Would any deranged Illini fan attempt to destroy The Rock with rock poison and then call into a Big Ten radio show to confess to his deeds because he is so inflamed with hatred for Northwestern and also using football as an outlet to explore the darkest realms of his psyche?

GIVE US OUR HAT BACK, BECK MAN

Despite the Illini's rather disastrous attempts at playing Big Ten football, Pat Fitzgerald is not taking the game lightly.  Do you think that Fitz mentioned throwing records out for the rivalry game?  “You can throw the records out,” Fitzgerald said to the surprise of no one. “You can throw everything out when you get into rivalry games."  He then unleashed a fleet of dump trucks that carted off every desk, chair, Bednarik trophy, paperclip, and inspirational fist-pumping manual from the Athletic Office and began attempting to locate the nearest cliff.

This space reserved for hat

For those of you not up on your American history, the hat trophy comes from an obscure American hat enthusiast named Abraham Lincoln, whose life is finally being brought to the attention of the American people through a major motion picture.  Lincoln, who won the presidency based on his length, wingspan, and executive upside, battled a brief period of unpopularity in the South.  The Hat is the third iteration of the Northwestern-Illinois rivalry trophy, and the first that has to do with presidential rather than stereotypical Native American iconography.  It is a good thing that Lincoln came from Illinois and not some shitty president.  Imagine if the two programs battled for Chester A. Arthur's muttonchops, William Henry Harrison's overcoat, or Franklin Pierce's bo staff.

Pierce defeated Winfield Scott in the 1852 presidential election, somehow pulling together a 
campaign that was able to beat a man nicknamed "Old Fuss and Feathers."  Pierce's campaign 
team put together the winning slogan "We pierced you in 1848, we shall Pierce you in 1852"
because nineteenth-century voters In 1856, Congress abolished the Giant Bird Race as a cornerstone 
of national election campaigns.  

Beckman faces a tough test in his rookie Hat Week.  Pat Fitzgerald has had several years to hone his inspirational Lincoln quotes and to pace the locker room in full nineteenth-century regalia to fire up the 'Cats.  Beckman may find Ron Zook's fake beard in a utility closet.  I am, of course, assuming that both football coaches conduct their pre-game rituals while dressed as Abraham Lincoln, because otherwise what is the point?  I normally don't condone fan movements to fire a coach, but if Beckman is not taunting the Wildcat sideline by wearing a novelty stovepipe hat for the duration of the game, he deserves to have someone register firehatlesstimebeckman.com, because that is unforgivable.

Meanwhile, in Evanston, this game is about more than just a hat: it is about revenge.  The Illini ran over the Wildcats in Wrigley Field.  Then, last year, vowel-hoarding quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase and receiver A.J. Jenkins lit up the Northwestern secondary en route to a gut-wrenching comeback win.  After beating Indiana, they then lost every single game on their schedule except for the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.  The Hat has not been in Evanston for two long years, years that Pat Fitzgerald has spent plotting an elaborate scheme of revenge so complex and diabolical that it defies description-- it involves look-alikes, the heir to the throne of Monaco, a carriage swap on the banks of the Elba, and an elaborate cipher that can be solved only by manipulating a suit of armor at the Art Institute to mimic a fist-pump, but largely it involves scoring at least one more point than the fighting Illini in Saturday's football game.

CLOSING THE SEASON

I began the season with modest expectations.  Instead, the Wildcats are 8-3, poised to go to a bowl game, and arguably something like nine combined minutes from an undefeated season and a berth in the Big Ten Championship game.  Though the losses have been the result of disappointing come-backs, the Wildcats have been good enough to win every game on their schedule.  This season has seen the return of the running game led by Venric Mark and Kain Colter, and defensive standouts Chi Chi Ariguzo, Ibrahim Campbell, Tyler Scott, and David Nwabusie. 

There is still one thing missing, though, and that is The Hat.  Each win has been gratifying this season, but none has come with a ridiculous trophy and bragging rights in a comically tepid rivalry.  Nothing is more gratifying than an Illini coach who seems determined to imbue this rivalry with an actual amount of football hate and so BYCTOM salutes you, Tim Beckman, for burning your purple clothes with the zeal of Professor Plum hastily destroying the evidence, for denigrating Northwestern by replacing its name with a ludicrous directional euphemism, for hanging a "No Northwestern" sign in the Illini locker room, for desperately trying to make something out of this game other than a precious hat mounted to a base.  And in the spirit of this renewed rivalry, I hope the Wildcats run the Illini out of the stadium and down I-57, with no win, no hat, and embittered to demand vengeance for next year and for all eternity.