Big Ten Update: The Division Names Are Still Risible

Northwestern has gotten to 7-2 on the year with a convincing victory over Iowa.  The win was never in doubt, or at least it was in slightly less doubt than usual, as the Hawkeyes ran out of time to overcome the Wildcats.  The 'Cats are still in contention for the divisional title, although Nebraska is driving the LEGENDS DIVISION bus.

This week, the Wildcats must go to the Big House to face a Michigan team equally determined to grab a berth to Indianapolis.  Northwestern has a chance to prove that it can finish a big game and live up to its #24 ranking, climb up that arbitrary bowl rank ladder, and, most importantly, ruin a Michigan home game. There are stakes!

They may take our ranking, they may take our path to the Big Ten 
Championship Game, but they will never take our CERTAIN BERTH IN A 
MID-TIER BOWL GAAAAAAAMMMMMME

With bowl-eligibility secured, with the Big Ten reduced to a pitiable rump conference, with the opportunity to win more games than any team in the Walker-Fitz era, it seems vaguely possible to reach for greater goals.  Northwestern has not only won enough games to make it to Pizza City, this may be the year to smash its gates, sap through its outer defenses, depose the government, seize the Pizza City treasury, and raise the Fitz Fist banner over the central Pizza City Plaza this is all an elaborate metaphor for winning a shitty bowl game by the way.

THE FOOT CLAN

Northwestern beat Iowa with another dominant performance on the ground.  Colter led the way with 166 yards on the ground and Mark followed with 162.  With three games to go, Mark has already rushed for 1,000 yards this season; he's the first Wildcat to do that since Tyrell Sutton.  Once again, the Northwestern passing attack remained a delightful tribute to the the interwar period, with 80 total yards.  The coaches showed that they are willing to let Colter air it out when defenses move in against the run.  One of his attempts was overthrown and intercepted, but the other landed perfectly for a 47-yard bomb to Christian Jones.  Colter and Mark should attract enough attention to get single coverage on Northwestern's vaunted group of receivers, and it's heartening to see some strikes downfield.  Otherwise, Fitz may see industrial action from the receivers, who will protest the option and begin burning blocking sleds.

Northwestern receivers have begun to subtly call for more passes.

The defense once again held firm even as Iowa dominated the time of possession.  They were aided in the fourth quarter when the Iowa coaches implemented a 25-minute offense where the Hawkeyes steadily meandered down the field with a variety of short passes, runs, and gentlemanly refusals to stop the clock.  Greg Davis seems to have borrowed the late-game plan of attack from Field Marshal Douglas Haig.

The win has made it five of the last seven for Northwestern in this burgeoning rivalry series with Iowa, but this one was not as frustrating for Iowa fans.  Iowa is having a down year, and losses to Iowa State and Central Michigan have taken the air from the Hawkeye sails and the proverbial ligaments from the Iowa running backs.  Iowa fans are only apoplectic when Northwestern unexpectedly ruins their season with an improbable last-minute victory and they get to leave Evanston like so many vanquished Mings the Merciless.  On the rare occasion when Northwestern has the better team on paper, Iowa fans relish the opportunity to turn the tables and leave a Northwestern season in shambles, like the disastrous 2000 game, which prevented a trip to Pasadena.

The Northwestern-Iowa rivalry only seems to have teeth when one of the teams has something at stake, like a trophy shaped like a hat.  The Illinois-Northwestern game is an inconsequential nothing, but I cannot stand to see the hat in Champaign-Urbana, and I hope Tim Beckman's office appreciates the numerous telegrams I send every day telling him that he is in for a cold, hatless winter.
 
Pat Fitzgerald seizes Bettendorf, Iowa, one of the Quad cities, as his prize for 
the annual Iowa-Northwestern football contest.  He then sacked Davenport, 
declaring "BYCTOM has one too many jokes about Pat Fitzgerald sacking 
cities this week"

MICHIGAN PEOPLE

Northwestern enters the game against Michigan in the midst of a quarterback mystery.  Denard Robinson is on the mend from an injured hand and his status is up in the air.  The quarterback depth behind backup Devin Gardener is uncertain.  Brady Hoke has not ruled out the possibility of entering the game at quarterback himself, while pretending to be a middle-aged walk-on named Harrison van Arbor IV and wearing a ridiculous leather helmet getup that would be anachronistic even for a man in his 50s.  Kain Colter may also suit up for the Wolverines as part of his widening positional purview; he'd be taking on the little-known "permanent quarterback" position from the NCAA handbook that allows for one guy to be quarterback all of the time, allows the replacement of endzone pylons with windbreakers, and permits games in the snow to degenerate into massive neighborhood snowball fights until one guy takes it way too seriously and hurts someone.

Michigan will be another strong test for Northwestern.  They have a tough defense and McCall will have to find a way to move the ball in the air.  Denard Robinson, if he plays, is an absolute nightmare for a defense, and Gardner had a lot of success against Minnesota.  On the other hand, Northwestern has not been soundly defeated yet.  The Wildcats led into the fourth quarter in both losses before yielding the lead in slow motion to horrified purple-clad onlookers.

WHY INDIANAPOLIS/WHY NOT INDIANAPOLIS?

The game is a must-win for both teams to have any chance at the Big Ten Championship and face some refugee from the LEADERS DIVISION.  This is because the two best LEADERS teams are ineligible for post-season play.  The Indiana Hoosiers, who have overtaken Northwestern as the standard-bearers of Big Ten cellar-dwelling wretchedness, have an outside shot at Indianapolis.  Big Ten fans are upset that the suspension of  two big programs will deny a more worthy team a shot at the championship.  Fitz has suggested that a selection committee should select a more worthy opponent for the LEGENDS champion if the LEADERS cannot supply a team with a winning record.

I think that Big Ten fans should embrace the absurdity.  This is what happens when you sign up for divisions: there is always the possibility that two powerhouse teams will be suspended from bowl play because of a horrifying administrative cover-up of unthinkable crimes and/or college students selling their pants, and then some crappy team gets to play in the championship game.  Also, nothing about the Big Ten Championship game can be more ridiculous than the fact that the two divisions are named "LEGENDS" and "LEADERS" because that forces any story about the Big Ten to sound like it is being written about a team-building exercise at a Mussolini corporate retreat.
 
Mussolini team building games involve brainstorming targets for invasion, 
free-associating cries for vengeance, marching on Rome, and scowling

The Big Ten is not very good at football this year.  The bowl ban circumstances are aberrant.  Let us all hope that Indiana can shock the midwest and sneak into the Big Ten Championship and bring Hoosiermania to Indianapolis.

A SEXUAL CONGRESS

In 1814, European forces had managed to tuck Napoleon away safely on Elba and tried to restore Europe to some sort of order.  Europe's most distinguished diplomats, kings, spies, and intriguers met in Vienna to determine the fate of Poland, Saxony, and even the continued existence of the slave trade.  They also met to drink, waltz, and carry on affairs.
 
The "Dancing Congress."  On the far left is Talleyrand, the French minister who 
had collaborated with Napoleon and then turned on him.  He became an expert 
at acquiring derisive nicknames: Baron Hardenburg referred to him as "Mr. Club 
Foot" and Napoleon called him "shit in silk stockings." 

David King's Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna, understands that it is not enough to explain the vexing problems of statecraft, but also necessary to pause and describe the absurdly lavish festivals that accompanied the Congress.  And with the delegations, came the hangers-on: "rogues, charlatans, courtesans, actors, and gamblers" as well as puppeteers, mechanical reproductions of Napoleonic battles, and a dubious shark act. 
 
Adam Zamoyski argues in his also-excellent Rites of Peace that the presence of so much royalty in 
Vienna fatally humanized the ridiculous aristocrats.  "The King of Würtemberg," Zamyoski explains, 
"had such a gross appearance, with his red snout and the cascading folds of his stomach, that one 
employee of the imperial household thought he had seen a pig drive by in one of the court carriages."  
Obviously, the court painter had done Friedrich a favor in the above painting; I've included a 
simulation of his likely appearance on the right
 
One of the main attractions involved the Carousel, a sort of nineteenth century Medieval Times where eminent nobles dressed as knights put on a mock tournament for the glittering nobility.  The highlights included a joust, as King relates: 

This was not like the tournaments of the Middle Ages, when soldiers could and indeed did die on the field, like the unfortunate tournament in 1240 that ended with some eighty knights dead.  The Carousel at the Congress, by contrast, was intended to be a highly stylized simulation.  The knights were to ride in a gallop and try to unseat their opponent, but the judges had urged that they show the utmost civility.  The event did, in fact, go well.  The only incident was when Prince Liechtenstein was unhorsed and carried off the field unconscious.

 There was also fancy horse-dancing.

King also notes that the Congress of Vienna was a hotbed of sexual intrigue.  He focuses on the intense rivalry between Klemens von Metternich and Tsar Alexander for the attentions of various women in Vienna in what can be characterized as a decathlon of fanciness.  Metternich distracted himself during crucial negotiations by penning depressive letters to the Duchess of Sagan; Alexander yelled a lot.

A BIG HOUSE

A Northwestern win can keep alive the dream of a 10-win season for the Wildcats and even the glimmer of hope for a chance at a berth in the Big Ten Championship game.  It will also give the young 'Cats a chance to prove they can close out a strong conference foe without a painful late-game collapse.  Northwestern has emerged as a formidable force during this topsy-turvy Big Ten season that will surely end with the return of Jim Tressel from Elba, making one last stand on the fields of Indianapolis.

Iowa Week

It's Iowa Week, and Wildcat fans are buzzing about the looming showdown with recent rivals from the Corn Capital coming in caravans and hoping to avenge Northwestern's consecutive upsets ending the Hawkeyes' Big Ten title hopes. It's been an interesting couple of weeks for Northwestern. Throughout the year, Northwestern has had trouble putting games away, really only beating ISU and Rice comfortably.

The game against Indiana naturally involved letting the Hoosiers back in when underrated Indiana QB Ben Chappell hit Duwyce Wilson to narrow the margin to three points. Of course, a Northwestern-Indiana close score is not a particular surprise to anyone paying attention to recent Northwestern/Indiana clashes, a section of the population limited to Northwestern fans, Indiana fans, and angry Big Ten Network subscribers who would ordinarily watch these teams play only if the game occurred on their front yard. These games always come down to the final moment, as if Northwestern and Indiana find themselves in a sort of football stalemate.

Experts on stalemate warfare: (left to right) Gen. Sir Douglas Haig, Field
Marshal Horatio Kitchener, the tyrant-Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Field Marshal
Paul von Hindenberg. In Britain, the war was frequently referred to in the
1920s and 1930s as the Great War, as a way of describing the mustaches of
all participants political and military. The exception, of course, was
Woodrow Wilson, whom I suspect remained clean-shaven to avoid association
with the greatest conflict of mustachioed persons in the history of humanity,
a tactic that certainly hurt his 1916 rival Charles Evans Hughes (far right)

With the victory over Indiana, Northwestern took its bowl eligibility swagger into Happy Valley and played 29 minutes of inspired football. Instead of discussing the Wildcats' painful collapse at the hands of the ageless Paterno, why not take a gander at this germane video presentation that essentially boils the second half of the game into less than four minutes.

Congratulations to Joe Paterno on his astounding 400th win and mastery of
gestures used solely to demonstrate an intense hatred of snakes. HE HATES THEM

FIST SHAKING

The official BYCTOM position on fist shaking in American political discourse is very clear: politicians should do everything they can to get rid of inferior, meeker, and more television-friendly gestures such as the Bill Clinton button thumb, and return to angrily shaking their fists in the direction of their opponent in order to demonstrate derision at their positions and the dire danger that opposition policies will rain down upon the nation. Note that I'm not advocating a Ukrainian-style legislative riot (kudos to the clever deployment of umbrellas into impromptu egg and debris shields); speakers' fists should abuse only air molecules or possibly comical effigies of political rivals.

Progressive Wisconsin Governor and later senator Robert LaFollette was a master at using his fists for political purposes. Though he earned the nickname "Fighting Bob" for his tenacious pursuit of reform and dogged anti-corruption efforts, it's also apt for his pugilistic speaking style.

The most impressive thing about LaFollette's fist-shaking is that in two
pictures to the right, including the impressive double-barreled action
at the end, LaFollette deploys his fists on the radio, the medium
traditionally most resistant to fist-shaking

LaFollette is an impressive figure in terms of being able to dish out a fist shaking as well as take one. I'll let the author of LaFollette's wikipedia page explain:

After the speech, Senators Frank B. Kellogg (Minn.), Joseph Taylor Robinson (Arkansas), and Albert B. Fall (N.M.) in turn attacked La Follette's position on the war. Senator Robinson was a combative and fiercely partisan defender of Wilson and the Democratic Party. His speech "synthesized the scattered attacks on La Follette that had been filtering in for seven months...as the speech progressed, he became more agitated and abusive. The virulence of Robinson's attack shocked the floor and galleries into complete silence." A United Press correspondent described Robinson's speech as "the most unrestrained language that ever has been heard in the Senate." La Follette sat motionless in his chair, even when Robinson began shaking his fist at him.

The attack came because of misconstrued reports of a LaFollette speech defending the sinking of the Lusitania. In onerous minutes of online searching, I have not successfully located a transcript of Robinson's comments, although evidently he insinuated that LaFollette harbored a loyalty to the hated Kaiser himself, an excellent tactic used to discredit so many American politicians that have used stump speeches as an opportunity to assure constituents of their unswerving dedication to hated foreign monarchs and pledged to work tirelessly to see voters crushed under said monarch's bootheels.

JOUSTING

I always support the inane movement to designate official state things (for example, Illinois's official state dance is the square dance, state fossil is the tully monster, and official type of municipal voter fraud is use of the deceased), so I've always been moderately fascinated that Maryland's official sport is jousting. One would think that the sport went back to some sort of colonial method of feud settlement as practiced by legendary Marylanders such as Lord Baltimore or Omar, eventually evolving in the nineteenth century and codified into a less lethal version much like how modern cockfights include full medical inspections and tiny beak guards. Instead, the joust became the official sport in 1962 encouraged by a group of equestrian enthusiasts enamored with the idea of crowns and pointy maiden hats and left in a helpless situation because Medieval Times had yet to be invented.

From the Maryland Jousting Tournament Association, a photo (left) of a the triumphant
announcement of the adoption of jousting as official state sport. (Right) A depiction of
the type of behind the scenes manipulation, and use of doubloons used to pass the motion
through the intrigue-inundated Maryland state legislature of the 1960s described by a
contemporary local reporter as:
"that nest of the damn'd/the vile reprobate/
A scoundrel's abode/where the rogues machinate/
I bet a few of them are commies"

Unfortunately, Maryland jousting is not a bloody spectacle of impalement. Instead, jousters use their lance-like poles to snare hanging rings, in much the same way that medieval knights would thunder through European countrysides ridding the land of tree-dwelling pests.

Unfortunately for famous joust victim Henry II of France, the
Lord Lorges did not abide by the Maryland Joust Association's
promise to "ENJOY WITH US THE MODERN TREND, WHERE
RINGS ARE SPEARED INSTEAD OF FRIENDS"

IOWA PREVIEW

Iowa comes into town looking for revenge from last year's BCS-busting loss to Northwestern in Iowa City, dropping a second consecutive home game to the 'Cats. Northwestern again represents a classic trap game for Iowa as they host Ohio State next week. But as ESPN's Adam Rittenberg reports, Iowa won't be looking past the Wildcats after recent trouble beating them. As Rittenberg points out, Fitz is 3-1 against the Hawkeyes, and since 2002, Northwestern has accounted for three of Iowa's ten home losses.

This decade, Northwestern and Iowa have split the series 4-4,
evidently as evenly-matched as these large-hatted women
squaring off in late nineteenth century Australia in a type of
fighting which I would like to coin as fancy-boxing. I think the
woman in white has the clearcorner advantage by looking at the
tale of the tape:

(source: The Powerhouse Museum, Haymarket New South Wales)

I like that there is some genuine passion in this rivalry, with Iowa fans reacting to each loss like a Gruber Brother being continually informed of John McClane's incessant survival as they climb to higher levels on the Heston Scale of incredulity (incidentally, the highest Heston scale rating I can find recently is in the trailer for the Russell Crow Robin Hood movie showcasing a blood-curdling "I DECLARE HIM TO BE AN OUTLAW" outburst. I haven't seen this movie, but I have a hard time believing anything else that happens in it can be better than that).

Traditionally, visitors to Ryan field view Northwestern as either a minor speed bump on the way to a showdown with a fellow title contender or a winnable game in the quest for bowl eligibility; it certainly is a change of pace for a team that actually wants to beat Northwestern for the sake of beating Northwestern, to direct a fist pump at Pat Fitzgerald rather be on the receiving end of it, to tear fans' fancy cummerbunds asunder and grind their monocles into dust. It should be an atmosphere approximating that of a Big Ten game in Evanston.

On paper, of course, Iowa has the edge. The Hawkeyes have an excellent defense, an underrated running game to test a vulnerable Northwestern run defense, and a quarterback in Ricky Stanzi having a spectacular year; Northwestern has looked very vulnerable against some very bad teams. On the other hand, I'm going to say throw out the record books. Go ahead and print out a list of every game Northwestern has ever played against Iowa starting with their first contest in 1897 when the rules of football included outmoded features such as pistol duels, knuckle dusters, and used cockfighting in lieu of a coin toss and then throw that stack of paper outside of the nearest window. The Wildcats have had no business beating Iowa most of the time in the Kirk Ferentz era, so hopefully Northwestern will finally be able to put a complete Big Ten game together and continue to inexplicably dominate in this underrated rivalry.