TicketCity Bowl

This Saturday, Northwestern takes on Texas Tech in the inaugural TicketCity Bowl at the Cotton Bowl in Texas. This is because the Cotton Bowl is now played at Jerry Jones's Ozymandius-like Texas Stadium while the Wildcats and Red Raiders now get to play under the watchful eye of Big Tex as the Texas State fairgrounds.

I prefer the original Big Tex from 1956
which showcases a look of wide-eyed
homicidal fanaticism that I prefer from
state fair gargantuans. Here, Tex's body
language can be best described as hastily
explaining to the authorities

Northwestern will be seeking to avenge two blowout losses to end the season and capture the team's first post-season victory since 1949. Texas Tech will be looking for a bowl win to cap its first season under Tommy Tuberville after the program's messy divorce from Mike Leach. In Tuberville, Tech found a name coach, by which I mean that he has a spectacular name that is wasted in college football coaching and should immediately be loaned out to the leader of a 1950s doo-wop revival group featuring matching garish blazers. Contrast Tuberville with Minnesota's hiring of Northern Illinois coach Jerry Kill, whose name is far more suited to the martial pretension of football, probably because there wasn't a qualified person available named Trench Bludgeoner.

Tech will be playing without former defensive coordinator James Willis, who left after Tuberville learned that he had clandestine talks with the University of Florida, according to the spectacularly named Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. The departure of Willis reiterates the ridiculous notion of coaching searches that occur during bowl season, with coaches hired, fired, departing under the dead of night, and inundating their rivals' residences with untraceable poisonous reptiles all before and during the preparation and playing of bowl games. This intrigue is one of the best parts of college football season as it involves fickle fans either braying for the head of an unfavored coach or shouting perfidy as a beloved coach leaves for greener pastures as well as the activities of cabals of shady boosters manipulating the purse strings and plotting in their festive team-logo festooned neckties.

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands is seen leaving a meeting
where he was rumored to call for the replacement of Mack Brown,
but when questioned by reporters replied "I am above that."

LEGENDS AND LEADERS

The Big Ten finally unveiled the names of the divisions to great fanfare and even greater derision. Northwestern will compete for the 2011 Legend Division Title. There is absolutely no reason why division titles should ever be anything other than cardinal directions-- the idea of striving for some sort of geographical accuracy is absurd when absolutely no one cares about the Dallas Cowboys being in the NFC East, the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks playing in the same building but competing in their league's Eastern and Western conferences respectively, or the Big Ten containing 20 percent more teams than advertised. Every other sport uses some sort of vague and inaccurate geographical signifier for divisions and there is no need to start breaking new ground by attempting to bring in abstract concepts. In that case, why not go with the Pop and Soda divisions based on what to call sugary fizz-water since, as any Midwesterner can attest, more people invest fierce ideological attachment to their regionalism than almost any other opinion they have ever held for no apparent reason instead of some more crucial issue such as the constitutional validity of the King-Byng controversy.

Major players in the King-Byng Canadian Constitutional Crisis of 1925 (l to r):
Mackenzie King, Lord Byng, Arthur Meighen. The controversy came about when
attempting to transpose a nineteenth century political crisis into the twentieth
without the aid of duels to sort things out properly. Instead, all Commonwealth
constitutional problems involving Governors-General ought to be settled by some
sort of stodge off, where a politician must endure 65 minutes of hectoring from a
crowd while attempting to respond in the most humorless and stiff possible manner,
while the winner is assessed from a scientific measurement of the crowd's dour
glumness

Of course, I'm predisposed to criticize Jim Delaney after my calls for renaming the conference the Enormous Ten have evidently fallen on deaf ears.

WIKILEAKS UPDATES

Like most of you, I've been fascinated by the leak of U.S. diplomatic cables free for our perusal because I've been desperate to catch up on diplomatic gossip, such as how many nightclubs Lola Karimova, daughter of Uzbekistan President Karimov, currently owns and favors with her late night disco dancing. Actually, the leaks are a font of Central Asian political discotheque intrigue, such as this depiction of Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov at Chocolat, described as Astana's trendiest nightclub from a cable entitled "Lifestyles of the Kazazhstani [sic] Leadership":

Masimov led his companions on to Chocolat's dance floor soon after their arrival. The dance floor holds approximately 100 people, and at the time perhaps 50 patrons were dancing. However, Masimov himself chose to dance on an empty stage above the dance floor. His companions quickly tired but Masimov remained, dancing alone and animatedly on the stage for another 15-20 minutes.

Massimov (center) with Belorussian Premier Sergei Sidorski
(right) and beloved Russian crooner Vladimir Putin

Another revelation is the rollicking Duke of York, who charmed a gathering of British and Commonwealth business leaders and officials in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan by assailing Kyrgyz corruption, comparing it to France and anorexia, respectively. The American Ambassador described the Duke as being an "equal opportunity Great Game player" and soliciting cries of "hear, hear" which makes me worried about him spontaneously growing mutton-chops.

The most troubling revelation comes from stories published side-by-side at the New York Times web site about Russia and Canada. See if you can spot the pattern:

A trove of diplomatic cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of publications, disclose a perception by American diplomats that Canadians “always carry a chip on their shoulder” in part because of a feeling that their country “is condemned to always play ‘Robin’ to the U.S. ‘Batman.’ ”

Asked about a cable that described President Dmitri A. Medvedev as “playing Robin to Putin’s Batman,” he said the author had “aimed to slander one of us.”

The State Department cables also reveal which countries'
economies move at a penguin-like pace, which are riddled by
corruption, and raise troubling questions about United States
relations with Egypt

DALLAS BOWLING

Although this time of year is when college football comes under assault for the nonsensical bowl system with prestige-bereft bowls such as the TicketCity Bowl used as prime examples of the inscrutable nature of the FBS post-season, Northwestern fans are clamoring to see Fitz finally hoisting a bowl game trophy. With the basketball team looking like a potential threat to finally breach the NCAA tournament, this could potentially be the year for Northwestern athletics in getting over the hump to mediocrity outside of the field of women's field hockey and most Big Ten equestrian sports.

Almost 50 years ago, President Kennedy asked why Rice plays Texas when pledging to put on a man on the moon stressing its difficulty, emphasizing perseverance, and tactfully not mentioning the possibility of igniting a terrifying war with subterranean Moon-Men that would certainly side with Khrushchev. Today, we ask why does Northwestern play Texas Tech and the answer is so that a bunch of corporations make money. Having said that, and politely ignoring what the hell just happened in those last couple of sentences, let us hope that Evan Watkins can lead the Wildcats to a 21st century bowl victory. And if anyone around you disparages the necessity of winning the Inaugural TicketCity Bowl in the grand scheme of things, you punch them right in the face and say "I am above that."

Michigan State Preview

The Wildcats are looking for redemption after a loss to a gutty, injury-ravaged Purdue squad, the Spartans are looking to remain undefeated and looking toward a Big Ten championship run, Coach Fitz is looking for a sixth win, bowl birth, and an upset, Coach Dantonio is looking for a return to the sidelines after recovering from a heart attack, orphan Timmy is looking for a father figure he never knew, wealthy industrialist R. Pickering Fossbottle is looking for the child he never knew he wanted, young Maude Fossbottle is looking for love in all of the wrong places, and everyone is looking for priceless artifacts from the Orient before it's stolen by a Peter Lorre type.

A lot is at stake.

Fitz makes the long hitchhike from Ryan Field after the gutting
loss to Purdue

The Wildcats have not won convincingly against an FBS team with the exception of Rice. On the other hand, the Spartans have beaten Notre Dame, Wisconsin, a resurgent Michigan team, and frisky Illinois. Of course, it would be foolhardy to assume a Michigan State win; Northwestern tends to surprise teams and it's hard to count out an offense led by Dan Persa. This has the makings of a potential trap game for Michigan State as they look forward to a big game in Iowa City.

The Wildcats prefer getting a drop on unsuspecting
opponents, as demonstrated by these Hessian reenactors
expertly recreating a drop-gotten-on scenario

Northwestern will have to repel an overwhelming force, much like the Syracusians attempting to hold off the Romans in the Siege of Syracuse. The Romans came by sea with the sambuca, which was not a polite gift of occasionally flaming liqueur, but the less polite siege machine used to quickly enable soldiers to climb from ships onto fortress walls and begin stabbing everyone in sight. Syracuse was famously defended by mathematician Archimedes with mirror-driven heat rays of dubious historical authenticity and the Archimedes Claw, the result of an experiment gone wrong resulting in him growing a giant claw instead of a left arm that he used to shake menacingly at the advancing Roman soldiers and snap at anyone that attempted to interfere with his circles.

Attempts to replicate the effect of the Archimedes heat ray have had mixed results on
models of Roman ships, but have elsewhere proven to be devastating

RETURN OF REX

Bears fans will get to see Rex Grossman make an emotional return to Soldier Field with the Redskins this weekend. According to this Tribune article, Grossman expects to be booed should he manage to get into the game, get shown on the JumboTron, or attempt to fling his clipboard downfield after getting confused and thinking that he saw Bernard Berrian running straight ahead wide open. But why would Bears fans boo Rex, the only quarterback to take the Bears to the Superbowl without the aid of flashy message-bearing headbands? I can understand the enmity of Bears fans against Grossman if he had walked around the city scattering citizens with a cane in the haughty Hohenzollern manner of Frederick William I, or bulldozed "Rex Rules OK" into the Meigs Field runways, or pillaged the Field Museum of priceless Egyptian artifacts so he could walk around dressed like Batman villain King Tut with impunity, but he did none of those things as far as I am aware. Instead he merely fit into the Bears tradition of underwhelming quarterbacks, albeit with a particular flair for ineptitude.

In order to properly give Rex his due, here's eight sincere minutes of Rex Grossman highlights set to "Eye of the Tiger."

Bears fans should celebrate both the highs of the Grossman era and the myriad comical
ways that opponents relieved him of the ball

BEGIN THE QUADE ERA

The after months of uncertainty, politicking, intrigue, and the interference of the House of Bourbon, the Cubs have picked a successor to Lou Piniella. The new manager, chosen to trade fame and fortune for a Job-like existence at the helm of a team destined for eternal failure while enduring the jibes of angry fans and a vicious media is Mike Quade. Quade, who spent most of his career in the minor leagues, is best described by the phrase "grizzled baseball lifer" and that is not merely a cliche; expect Quade to erect his own thatch dugout, make his own tobacco juice, and trump all comers in locker room scar-sharing exhibitions.

The Cubs will be less fun to follow without Lou Piniella. Stats-minded baseball fans have raised questions about the importance of managers, many of whom can be argued to do more harm than good by putting hitters unable to get on base in the leadoff position because they are fast, call for unnecessary bunts, make curious pitching decisions, bench promising young players in favor of underperforming veterans, and engage in futile micromanagement for the sake of micromanagement. Of course, that does not take into consideration important motivational ploys such as walking around naked and creating provocative posters of any former showgirl owners. Piniella, of course, excelled at getting angry at umpires, developing the optimal body shape for bellying up to them and taking advantage of having a profession allowing him to scream at people three inches from their face and throw things with impunity. Lou's managerial rapping skills, however, are more dubious.

Lou makes an impassioned demand about either the strike zone
or free silver coinage

TOSSERS

If there's one thing that careful study of European history has demonstrated, it is that aristocrats default to two behaviors: leading armies of musket-wielding infantry against each other and killing animals for their amusement. It was not enough to hunt animals; instead they decided to fling them about their courtyards in the brutal sport of fox tossing. Foxes or other small animals would scurry around a fox tossing arena while hopeful tossers stood about with cloth bands draped on the ground. When the animal found itself on top of a band, the participants would stretch it, catapulting animals into the air and competing for the highest toss. Noted fox tossing enthusiast Augustus the Strong (also apparently nicknamed as "Iron Hand" and "The Saxon Hercules" by an early modern Bruce Buffer equivalent) would toss with a only a single finger.

A gleeful tossing from 1719. Augustus II of Saxony (right) managed his impressive
feats of strength before the invention of the single-strap unitard

The fox tossing wikipedia page is full of helpful notes about this cultured practice, such as "The Swedish envoy Esaias Pufendorf, witnessing a fox-tossing contest held in Vienna in March 1672, noted in his diary his surprise at seeing the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold Icourt dwarfs and boys in clubbing to death the injured animals...". Boars were apparently more hazardous "to the great delectation of the cavaliers, but to the terror of the noble ladies, among whose hoop-skirts the wild boars committed great havoc, to the endless mirth of the assembled illustrious company."

Dog days of summer

The Wildcats are in Kenosha firming up the depth chart and preparing for the fearsome Tigers of Towson. As the 'Cats shape up for the season by running through tires, hitting blocking sleds, doing that running in place really fast and changing direction drill, and coming together through the ageless magic of Motown sing-alongs, why not get in the spirit by heading over to Nusports.com and reading Skip Myslenski's colorful dispatches? Myslenski, who worked previously for the Tribune until he could no longer handle the fact that being a reporter with a colorful nickname like "Skip" generally entails being targeted by inept mobsters who enjoy punching people in the stomach and ineffectually throwing their guns at Superman, has been completely unleashed by the freedom gained by writing about the 'Cats to break out his most appropriately purple prose. For example, in this piece, entitled "The Passion of the Trenches," Skip whips out alliteration and dance metaphors frenzied enough to serve as copy for the late John Facenda:

They toil always in a world called The Trenches. But there, in a maelstrom of mean-spirited behemoths, they must perform with the precision of a prima ballerina...

Little, of course, is easy in The Trenches, where far more than brute strength is needed to thrive and survive. This is often lost in the crescendo of the crashing bodies, in the cacophony of the grunts and groans. But the work done here in the midst of mayhem is choreographed carefully and constantly the lineman must perform a complex dance, a dance that demands constant adaptation, a dance that must be presented with the hot breath of the enemy blowing in his face...

Sixty, 70, 80 times in an afternoon they dance their disco of destruction, their minuet of mayhem, and each time they pit their bodies, their minds, their wills against those toiling across from them. The hand out jolts, accept jolts, trade jolts and, in the midst of this all, they are adjusting, adjusting their hands and their feet and their steps and their angles in a desperate search for an advantage.

The judges, the measurers, the surveyors, focusing on their fervent
foxtrot on the field, a chaotic conga line careening on course to close
calls. These men become the Fates of football, determining plays, games,
seasons, not by the spin of the thread, but by the link of the chain.
Teams are delayed, delivered, delighted, destroyed, damned as downs
are dialed, dialed into corybantic conquest, dialed into cruel capitulation.
I crunch into a peanut shell, dispatching the innards into a moribund
Morris dance across the teeth and tongue to the terrible pulsing
peristalsis that awaits.

HOME ADVANTAGE

A week ago, the United States predictably lost again at Mexico's doom fortress and national stadium Estadio Azteca. The elevation, smog, and crowds that react like Eastern European villagers to the threat of another unholy symbol of man's hubris in the eyes of nature rampaging through the countryside before turning harmlessly into Lon Chaney have all been well-chronicled.

Model of Estadio Azteca. Incidentally, the best Temple of Doom character is the random
Chinese guy with the Tommy Gun at the beginning who cackles with a lunatic glee as he
fires helplessly at a gong shielding Indiana Jones, as if he is discovering for the first
time the joy of uselessly firing automatic weapons at Harrison Ford.

El Tri's astounding home advantage naturally leads to Northwestern and its somewhat tamer environment, where the stands are inundated alternately with belligerent visiting fans during Big Ten games and tumbleweed for the Towsons and directional state opponents. This excellent article by David Ranciman examines the changing nature of home field advantage in the age of professional sports. Naturally, being a British source, the article focuses on soccer, although it also touches on football, hockey (surprisingly little home field/ice advantage), basketball, and baseball (where home field advantage evidently counts the least despite the fact that baseball fields allow for far more variation in their size and shape than in any other major sport). More importantly, he lists his "fortresses of sport" at the end: Old Trafford Stadium, Eden Park (home of the All Blacks), Pakistan National Stadium (a 45 year unbeaten streak in test cricket), and inexplicably Greece Olympic Stadium. This was frankly a disappointment as I was hoping to know Australia's most hostile Aussie Rules oval or where one might as well pack up their hurling sticks or slamballs.

The streets of the Running Man, however, proved an
insufficient home advantage for Dynamo, the Electric Rapist

In college football, the most hostile environments have traditionally been down South where fans allow their blood to be properly angried up by rivalry and pageantry. The mighty information power of the internet, despite providing some speed bumps, reveals that Miami holds the record for consecutive home wins with 58 from 1985 to 1994, taking the crown from Alabama who managed 57 from 1963 to 1982.

Home team advantage in college football is real, as home teams win approximately 59% of home games. I would actually expect a larger advantage looking at FBS schools, not because college football stadiums are more likely than any other sport to house nearly six figures worth of braying drunken maniacs, but because power conference teams traditionally schedule most of their cupcake non-conference games at home. For Northwestern, home field advantage is more palpable than one might think. Take a look at this data set:

Northwestern road wins 1979-1982: 0
Northwestern home wins 1979-1982: 1

With an increase of infinity percent, perhaps I've misjudged Ryan Field's home advantage.

MURDERING THE 2009 CUBS: YOU'LL NEVER CATCH ME, COPPER

The Cubs seem to be out of the NL Central at six games back and only three left to play against division-leading St. Louis. The difference between the NL and the AL is that the National League clubs spending ludicrous amounts money have apparently been doing so on less talented players, although the Mets have the excuse of suffering through the baseball version of the Battle of Ypres during the course of the season. At least Lou has had the good sense to bench Kevin Gregg, who is either part of an elaborate double cross engineered by rival baseball teams hoping to sabotage the Cubs in a conflagration that will end in a Viennese sewer or a lousy pitcher in the glamor role on a terrible bullpen. Few of the Cub relievers have decent nicknames, so I've decided to pitch in by turning to the colorful world of Chicago's most brutal mobsters. Why not bring in Kevin "The Scourge" Gregg, named for the murdered Capone consigliere Antonio "The Scourge" Lombardo as he allows a veritable tommy gun spray of baseballs launched by opposing hitters into unsuspecting grandstands?

Ozzie Guillen vowed retaliation earlier this month for
hit batsmen, claiming, "If I see somebody hitting my
players and I know it's on purpose, two guys are going
down," Guillen said. "I don't care if I get suspended,"
which demonstrates a thorough understanding of the
Connery Doctrine of the Chicago Way.

Chicago gangster nicknames are pretty much the pinnacle of human nickname innovation. Of course, not all are winners; for every "Scourge," there was a "Momo" or a "Big Jim" or the almost disastrously banal "Milwaukee Phil" which is possibly the least chilling gangster nickname of all time, unless you are dealing with a gangster with a pathological fear of mullets, bratwurst, or people who pronounce the letter O in a comical fashion. I like evocative gangster nicknames that let you guess their role such as "Jackie The Lackie" Cerone or Frank "Tight Lips" Gusenberg, which is like being "The Whammer" of the gangster world. Unfortunately for Gusenberg, he had an unpleasant Valentine's Day in 1929. My favorite of these is Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci who sounds less like a Jazz Age mobster and more like a lesser Batman Villain.

The Schemer would fit right in with Batman's redundant battles against the Riddler
and the Puzzler. The best of the Adam West Batman villains is definitely King Tut,
a fat guy dressed approximately like a Pharaoh whose special ability seemed to
mainly consist of doing the Egyptian walk over to the fridge to see if there were
any more eclairs

Probably the greatest gangster nickname belongs to Murray "The Camel" Humphreys. Humphreys was an adept political fixer who was allegedly able to put the screws to Harry Truman, a feat that few others could claim at the time including Joseph Stalin. He pressured Truman by threatening to reveal the role played by gangsters in elevating Truman through the Kansas City political ranks. Born Llewellyn Morris Humphreys, the Camel is possibly the second most powerful Welsh gangster of all time.

Humphreys was also known as "The Hump." The gangster-looking photo of Lloyd
George and Churchill is one of my favorite photos of anything

The connection of gangster nicknames to sports does not have to be limited to shaky Cubs relief pitchers. What about Pat "The Fitst" Fitzgerald, Ron "The Piece" Santo, Kevin "The Mantis" Coble (that's not really a gangster nickname but it's a reminder that a random mention of "The Mantis" as a nickname for Kevin Coble is going to remain coiled up like a cobra at the bottom of a burlap sack ready to pop out at inconvenient and unpredictable times) and "Brian Urlacher." Of course, other nicknames already have a Chicago sporting legacy.

Paul "the waiter" Ricca and his prodigal, nicknamigal son