No Hat, No Problem

The Wildcats will be taking on Michigan under the lights at Ryan Field on Saturday with the goal of getting past last week's wrenching loss to the Illini in a contest of grave hat-related consequences.

The Northwestern football program is as bareheaded as this
mildly terrifying Lincoln model I found without context on the
internet, although thanks to BYCTOM it will now come up in
google image searches for "creepy Lincoln murder stare"

Though the Wildcats managed to bottle the fearsome Illinois rushing attack that treated the defensive line like a well-trodden welcome mat in Wrigley Field, they had no answer for vowel enthusiast Nathan Scheelhaase and his wartime consigliere AJ Jenkins who lit up the Northwestern secondary for 268 miserable yards.

It is pointless to linger on unpleasantness of watching a team you root for give up a big comeback, especially for Northwestern teams that have developed a propensity for squandering leads with the relish of a spendthrift eighteenth century aristocrat pumped full of brandy, snuff, and an inbred overconfidence in his own abilities to outsmart the Continent's most determined baccarat hustlers. That, I suppose, is the danger in doing something as foolhardy as allowing oneself to become emotionally attached to the fortunes of sports teams whose members occasionally have the impudence to do something as insensitive as lose, and lose when the stakes are unfathomably high-- in this case, the retention of a crappy hat trophy and apparently some sort of vague seigniorial rights over Chicagoland.

Zook's Illini make an advance in the never-ending battle to
determine who gets to be Chicago's Big Ten team

In two consecutive games the Wildcats have taken late leads only to give the opponents just enough time to come back [correction: as pointed out in the comments by jhodges, Northwestern never actually blew a lead at Army, but the Wildcats did tie the game on a quick drive that allowed Army to methodically move down the field for the go-ahead score, which was also crummy] There are many unpleasant ways for a team to lose a football game: getting completely run over from start to finish, losing on a diabolical trick play or dubious penalty, realizing that they were secretly working for the opposing team the entire time and thus scoring against themselves through some confounding act of treachery. But scoring too soon knowing that the Sword of Damocles is hanging over the defense in the form of AJ Jenkins scampering through the secondary with nary a care in the world is a not particularly enjoyable way to spend several minutes on a Saturday afternoon.

Nevertheless, fans should take heart knowing that the season is still young and there is still ample opportunity for this team to shower spectators with the glory of associating with them or give fans the opportunity to grow as human beings through experiencing pain, heartbreak, and agony with our purple-clad friends as we all learn that the only game that matters is the game of life

ON SECOND THOUGHT, I WANT MY HAT

MICHIGAN

One heartening thing to take from the Illinois game was the return and strong play of Dan Persa, who helped the 'Cats seemingly take over the game with a career-high four touchdown passes. Unfortunately, he left the game, leaving Kain Colter to lead the last drive, but all indications he will play against Michigan this week. Like most Northwestern fans, I've been excited about this game for awhile. The Illini game showed that Persa is still fun to watch as he deftly escapes from the enormous men repeatedly attempting to drive him into the ground. Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson is the most exciting player in college football. And given both teams' recent struggles on defense (Michigan's shutout of Minnesota notwithstanding), this could be a game with enough scoring to roil great Big Ten coaches of old disgruntled with the chicanery of the forward pass enough to possess the body of Jim Delany and run rampant through the Central Street business district.

I have it on good authority that Jim Delany's fist names are
Legend and Leader

The Wildcats will be starting a streak of three consecutive night games this Saturday. They'll be traveling to the friendly confines of Kinnick Stadium next week and then hosting Penn State. With a traditional ubiquitous Big Ten hatred of Michigan football, the recent enmity towards Iowa, and a desire to avenge last year's collapse against Penn State, there is the hope of gaining some momentum towards another bowl game.

BURGLARY BY RUSE AND ESCALADE

No Northwestern win would be as daring as a manuscript robbery at Mount Saint-Odile in Alsace. This article, sent to me by reader and self-described Central Asian enthusiast Asher, involves a man who would stop at nothing to liberate the monastery of valuable rare books. The culprit, one Stanislas Gosse, found a map of the monastery in a public archive that revealed that all he needed to do to gain access to the library was to climb the monastery's steep walls, ascend a scary monk staircase, and then trigger a secret door hidden in a cupboard. It is not certain whether or not the map has revealed any additional hidden passages to a deadly conservatory.

Mont Saint-Odile had generally been resistant to
thievery because of the whole precipice of a sheer
cliff thing. In keeping with the clumsy Clue
reference in the last paragraph, the part of the
game that always left me mystified was
determining the weapon that killed Mr. Boddy.
I'm relatively confident that even the bumbling
Inspector Gregson would be capable of assessing
whether someone was shot, stabbed, hanged, or
bludgeoned to death without extensive police scrutiny

Between 2000 to 2002, Gosse allegedly made off with more than 1,100 volumes in this madcap monk mischief. He was caught by cameras planted in the library as he picked through volumes by candle-light, showing an impressive dedication to medieval burgling tactics. Fortunately, the courts resisted the urge to throw the book at him, although I should almost certainly be detained for what just happened in this sentence. Gosse was fined 17,000 Euros, but instead of prison he was sentenced to helping the monks restore their books. He was charged with burglary by ruse and escalade, although that charge seems wasted in this instance and should only be leveled against crimes involving seduction, absconsion, and escape from the Bridge of Sighs.

THE BEARS ARE ALSO PLAYING FOOTBALL, SORT OF

The Bears will also play in a high profile night game as they travel to Detroit for a rare Monday Night Football appearance in the Motor City. They are coming off a less than convincing win over the Carolina Panthers, who deserve no sympathy after cutting Tyrell Sutton. Detroit's vaunted defensive line may get a boost from rookie sea monster Nick Fairley, who may make his debut against the Bears' injury-riddled and competence-averse offensive line. Given that the Bears stand a far greater chance of seeing Jay Cutler turned into a pinkish smear on the Ford Field turf than actually winning the game, I suggest that the Bears turn to a surrogate quarterback willing to Sydney Carton himself into a number six jersey while Cutler remains safely esconsed across the lake and free from the marauding likes of Suh, Fairley, and Vanden Bosch. Perhaps they can contact that Jay Cutler body builder guy who always unexpectedly turns up mid-flex in an otherwise innocent google image search for the Bears quarterback used to mock his peerless sideline dourness.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have
ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than
I have ever known. Flex.

TURN ON THE LIGHTS

Usually after four games, you have a pretty decent idea of what a team is like. Thanks to a Persa-less non-conference schedule that included a win over an increasingly unimpressive Boston College team, an FCS foe, a mind-boggling loss to Army, and the Illinois debacle, I admit I have absolutely no idea what is in store for the Wildcats this season other than it should be interesting. Nevertheless, I hope that the game against a ranked Michigan team is as exciting as billed. If the game is boring or disastrous, I'd like to encourage Wildcat fans to liberate university papers from the university's most inaccessible library in order to assuage another week of football grief.

Those Were The Things That Happend Then Part II

Like most Bears fans, I had assumed after the Bears preseason that they would scratch their way to maybe eight wins tops in front of an aging defense and a comically ineffective offensive line.

Bears plans for the offensive line went horribly awry early in the
2010 season

And, for the beginning of the season, that prediction looked solid, as Cutler darted for his life behind the group of matadors, turnstiles, and maitre d's that allowed him to be pummeled into a swollen-brained incoherence that interfered with his Rex Grossman-like desire to deliver the ball to the opposition. But football is a game that changes fluidly, governed by the whims of fate more than the whims of spittle-emitting fans calling for the heads of everyone even vaguely involved with the organization after every loss, and somehow the Bears became the top team in the NFC North by the end of the season. The defense regained its fierce Chicago pedigree that terrorized a wide assortment of third-string quarterbacks, the offensive line became at least functional, and Devin Hester began Devin Hestering people enough to demonstrate the comical ineptitude of my football prognostication skills.

Pretty much my only skill in prediction
games like fantasy football is picking up
Kyle Orton as my main quarterback and
then taunting the unfortunate people in
my league with endless digital reams of
Orton-related propaganda as I lose game
after game because my entire team is built
around Kyle Orton

IS THE KAISER INSANE?

One of the most exciting things I've come across in the past several months the fact that a book exists entitled Is the Kaiser Insane? A study of the great outlaw published in Britain in 1915 by Arnold White.

Perhaps if Wilhelm wanted to avoid an unceasing
string of Kaiser-bashing from ramshackle sports
blogs in the next century, he would have made more
of an effort to adorn himself with slightly more
restraint than other major world leaders such as
Victor Von Doom

I have not read the book yet, but according to one contemporary review, "the author has gathered no little evidence regarding the Kaiser’s genius, egotism, insensitiveness, obsessions, and cunning, and seeks to prove that he is a dangerous megalomaniac." I trust this reviewer's opinion implicitly because it comes from a 1915 edition of the spectacularly titled British Journal of Inebriety (which suffered an unfortunate series of name changes and exists now as Addiction).

I am taking this opportunity to launch my own
publication called the Journal of British Inebriety
featuring articles such as "Oi, the fuck you lookin' at:
a history of lookin' at me, 1931-1946" and "1984: A
Year in Headbutts"

The publication of a book like that is not at all surprising, considering that the British war effort focused on liberating the world from the Kaiser's brand of Teutonic tyranny and not the various ism-based causes of war found in AP history textbooks; White's book certainly seemed to have filled a void for British readers who found comfort in taking to the trenches against a cackling madman hell-bent on world domination.

IS JAY CUTLER A JERK?

Despite my enjoyment of the unexpected success of the Bears' season, it still ended on a sour note with a loss to the hated Packers in the NFC Championship game. The Packers were a particularly irritating team last season since they demonstrated intolerable amounts of pluck after most of their team went down with injuries. By far the most annoying subplot before the game, however, was the endless comparisons between Packers' likable happy-go-lucky quarterback Aaron Rodgers grinning and flaunting his Butte College merchandise, and the Bears' churlish, sour-faced signal caller Jay Cutler.

The images of a carefree Rodgers contrasted with Jay Cutler, here shown
wearing an expression comparable to this photo taken from an Onion article
with the headline "Whaler Sandwich 'Not Sitting To Good' With Area Man"

The Bears-Packers rivalry naturally raised the question of how players are portrayed in the media and whether or not I should care if evidently the quarterback for my favorite team is consistently presented as kind of a jerk. And obviously, I don't. Even if Cutler is as unpleasant in the comical 1980s fingerless glove enthusiast bully way that reporters allege (which reached its zenith with this Rick Reilly attack column that opens with the unmistakably groan-inducing zinger "For a man from Santa Claus, Ind., Jay Cutler is one of the least jolly people you've ever met."-- if anything Jay Cutler does momentarily angers Rick Reilly, then he should be immediately canonized by someone with lax canonization standards), it has zero effect on how I enjoy the Bears. In fact, it would not irritate me at all if Cutler decided to give in to his reputation and toured schools knocking lunch trays from the hands of impressionable students, stood around on street corners only to laugh in the faces of elderly women attempting to cross, and started an offseason game show entitled "Don't You Know Who I Am?" inviting various Chicagoland service industry personnel to test their knowledge of whether they know who Jay Cutler is, do they know how much money Jay Cutler makes compared to them, and what are they going to do to stop Jay Cutler from just walking into this club right now with like eight or nine other dudes.

(I'd like to pause for a moment here to recognize the guy responsible for the Lyttle Lytton writing contest who singled out probably the platonic ideal of a Rick Reilly shame on you-style column opener:
"Some things are so small, so miniscule, so atomically insignificant, they can be seen only from three feet away using the Hubble telescope. The heart of Jean Musgjerd is one of these things.")

Cutler fell further under fire by getting injured in the championship game, leading to thousands of Chicagoans to evidently take online courses to become amateur videographic orthopedists allowing them to question the severity of his injury and his willingness to play through pain. Some NFL players even joined in the fray, which implied a certain unpopularity among his peers.

Cutler was also targeted by a wide variety of sports columnists

With more access to athletes than ever before, modern sports fans have to decide the extent to which how they perceive athletes off the field colors their enjoyment of sports. As a football fan, I enjoy watching gigantic people smash into each other in an organized fashion for my amusement; I'll support anyone who helps the team I like smash the other team more effectively regardless of churlishness, smarm, sass, or blandness. On the other hand, I would prefer that none of these people does anything so unreasonably heinous that supporting them becomes uncomfortable-- unless they commit a crime so spectacularly grandiose that it falls into the category of heist, or involves doing something like stealing the Great Pyramid of Cheops and then attempting to ransom it back to the Egyptian Government with a series of opaque riddles designed to foil international police agencies. Unless that plan involves a dastardly attempt to crush Europe with the spike covered fist of megalomania.

Updates

It's been an eventful week in Chicago Sports. The Bears have traded BYCTOM favorite Kyle Orton and a bunch of draft picks for Denver QB Jay Cutler. Until he got hurt, Orton and Forte carried the Bears despite the awful defense. During this stretch of games, Orton was developing into the rich man's Jim Miller, who was the best quarterback the Bears had in decades. Unlike Miller, who sported a goatee that his chinstrap turned into the handlebar mustache of a man who would end up on the business end of a Seagal-wielded pool cue and Orton's legendary neckbeard, Cutler fits in much better with the Bears' groomin' standards.

Cutler offers no mustache for the Bears to have to police, lest their quarterbacks
look like a bunch of Elvises

The Bears' cavalier lack of attention to facial hair makes them a significantly less classy organization than the New York Yankees or the Russian Empire, where Peter the Great famously demanded that his courtiers shave their beads or face a ruinous 100 Ruble Beard Tax. His eventual successor Paul I was more worried about clothes, sending soldiers into the the streets of Moscow to rough up anyone caught wearing round hats, top boots, long pants, or shoes with laces.


Paul I's face contorted due to a
combination of Typhus and his intense
hatred of pants

Cutler, of course, comes from Vanderbilt, along with Hunter Hillenmeyer, Chris Williams, and Earl Bennett; Vandy is represented more than any other school on the current roster presumably related to Mike McCaskey's need for choo-choo time.

When the trains come out, Mike
McCaskey insists on his Vanderbilt
players, his frock, his muttonchops,
his string tie, and his knee puppets

THE CUBS: A FACIAL HAIR UPDATE

The Cubs have just gotten their first heartbreaking bullpen collapse out of the way in Houston. Just before Opening Day, the Cubs faced a pitching logjam. David Patton had a good spring and cannot get sent to the minors because he is a Rule 5 draft pickup (Rule 5 picks must remain on the 25-man roster the entire season) which left no room for Gaudin in theory. In reality, Reed Johnson demanded the removal of Gaudin, asserting that there can only be one on the team with a ridiculous chin beard, despite the fact that Gaudin's chin beard was the only thing stopping him from looking like an adult version of the fat kid from The Sandlot.

The illustrated version of the previous paragraph

The Cub bullpen looks vulnerable this season, but the bats should help. Expect a breakout season from Mike Fontenot, who put up a .909 OPS in 243 at-bats last year, and solid bench production from Micah Hoffpauir who will be a much better left-handed pinch hitter than Daryl Ward. The season comes down to whether Milton Bradley can stay healthy and compensate for Derrek Lee's declining power. Bradley is prone to both injury and comical fits (here he is memorably combining both for the San Diego Padres), so in the worst case scenario he'll play five games before spending the rest of the season in a custom made iron lung device that punches children. Of course, in the best case, he'll team up with Carlos Zambrano to fight crime.

SOMALIAN PIRACY UPDATE

BYCTOM favorite pirate reporter Jeff Gettleman is on the case once again, reporting that Somali pirates have reasserted themselves after luring authorities into a false sense of security into an unstoppable "pirate surge."

BYCTOM has already covered Somali pirates in depth as part of the natural territory of a Northwestern sports blog, but the pirates have this time seized five ships in 48 hours, sending Gettleman to once again marvel at the pirates' seeming invinceability on the Horn of Africa.

"The pirates, apparently, are back."

"Most of last year’s 120-plus pirate attacks were centered on the relatively narrow Gulf of Aden, a strategic waterway between Yemen and Somalia at the mouth of the Red Sea. That is where most of the navy patrols are, too, and several recent attacks on merchant vessels have been thwarted by helicopters and frigates speeding to the rescue...But the pirates are adapting, going farther out to sea."

"Lt. Nathan Christensen, a United States Navy spokesman, called the rash of attacks “unbelievable.”"

New York Times Africa bureau
chief Jeff Gettleman on his beat

RUSSIAN CAR FACTORY UPDATE

Today's New York Times also has an excellent story on the state of the Russian Auto industry, describing a government desperate to save what may be one of the world's least efficient car factories. As Andrew E. Kramer reports, the average worker in Avtovaz, which makes the Soviet icon Lada, turns out an average of eight cars per year, compared to 36 produced by a worker in a GM plant.

"The factory, a monument to Soviet gigantism in industrial design, is a panoramic sprawl of pipes and smokestacks on a bank of the Volga River, 460 miles southeast of Moscow. It employs 104,000 assembly line workers, many of whom still toil with hand-held wrenches."

Yet, the Russian government will pay billions to aid Avtovaz with no strings attached. Why?

"...[I]ndustrial discontent is stirring in the most hardscrabble Russian factory towns.

On March 11, 16 Russian steelworkers announced a hunger strike to protest wage cuts at a Ural Mountain mill. (The same week Severstal, one of Russia’s largest steel makers, announced it would lay off 9,000 to 9,500 workers.)

Here in Tolyatti, when a G.M. joint venture laid off 400 people in December, riot officers were called in to disperse an angry crowd that had gathered in the plant parking lot."

In addition, riot police were used in Vladivostok in order to silence protests against tariff barriers to foreign cars because the city has become a center for importing and servicing secondhand Japanese Cars.

The Ladas produced now, of course, are sleek modern machines, not the boxes we remember from the Andropov era.

The models unveil the Lada while simultaneously demonstrating
perfect conformity with Tsar Paul I's dress standards at the popular
Lada, Onion Dome Hat, Silver Age Superhero and Tron exhibit at
the Russian museum We Found Things in Warehouse

These are all of your crucial updates from the week in sports, grooming standards, piracy, and the effect of the global financial meltdown on Soviet-designed auto works.