Let's just lead off with it: the Northwestern Wildcats have won the Big Ten West. There are two games left; Northwestern could spend its road trip in Minnesota lounging on hammocks and its Hat Game against Illinois in a beach resort, zinc-nosed and sun-addled, and they can be 6-6, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop them from showing up in Indianapolis to represent the entire Big Ten West. Football analysts, burning out their BCS computers and going through cartons of green accounting visors have all stared at their Johnny Mnemonic virtual reality devices and come to the same conclusion: this is incredibly funny. College Football analysts try to deal with their computer models that keep showing that Northwestern won the Big Ten West This is not to take anything away from the Wildcats, who have had a simultaneously disastrous and heroic season. It is to say that Northwestern has managed to win an entire division championship to the point where they get to wear special hats and get a trophy that I had no idea even existed until Saturday by what has been very close to the absolute minimum number points required. Northwestern will be the first major conference team to win a division without defeating a single out of conference opponent-- this includes Akron, a profoundly shitty MAC team whose win over Northwestern was its first over a Big Ten opponent ever in a football history that stretches to the nineteenth century. Northwestern won the West by racing to an enormous lead against Purdue then failing to score a point in the second half, by beating an at-the-time winless Nebraska team in the throes of its worst season in recorded history by scoring ten points in less than three minutes including a 99-yard touchdown drive to send the game to an overtime period won by a backup kicker playing in his first game, by somehow needing to come back against a Rutgers team so putrid that they had been trying to consolidate their turnovers with an agency so they just owed the entire Big Ten a few interceptions on weekly installments. When you're coaching Rutgers The Wildcats have confounded predictions, statistics, numbers, gamblers, logic, and reason. They have won the Big Ten West through what appears to be the absolute minimum amount of success. For three months, the Big Ten West has been told to get its act together and, with minimum competence, seize the division but no one has; Northwestern's stand is like the terrifying and insidious effects of climate change. And so the Wildcats go into their next two games in the perfect position. They cannot lose. Yes, they should beat Minnesota, a team that is currently thrashing about every week while deciding whether or not to turn into a werewolf. And yes, they should beat the flailing Illini, who remain under a tailspin under Lovie Smith who has just decided to cope by getting grizzled, even with the prized Hat at stake. But consider this: what if they lose? What if they get rowed by the Gophers or the Illini sneak by while Northwestern follows their patented just sort of hang out and see whatever happens is good with me gameplan and then they lose? They can't get taken out of Indianapolis at this point. Jim Delany can't deploy a cardboard Yosemite Sam that says "you must win this number of games against the Illini to play in the Big Ten Championship." And while the Big Ten would prefer to set up road blocks between Evanston and Indianapolis for this game than let a 6-6 Northwestern team play there, there is nothing stopping them. Of course, it would be a giant bummer for Northwestern to lose the next two. But it would also be extraordinarily funny, and the Wildcats have seized the mantle of America's Funniest Power Five Division Winner as an avatar of chaos that will easily carry them over whatever unlucky chump gets served to them in the Big Ten Championship that they are actually playing in (you can look it up) and then head to the Rose Bowl to attempt to win their first out of conference game. RIVALRY It has the sorry lot of Iowa fans to wake up in the middle of the night over the last decade and realize they have a rivalry with Northwestern. They would, like most Big Ten fans, like to have a rivalry with a traditional Big Ten Power like Ohio State or Michigan or even Wisconsin, the type of rivalry where you have a Farm Implement Trophy and songs about how you hate each other and the Big Ten Power actually does despise them back but instead they are forced to deal with Northwestern every year. The Iowa-Northwestern rivalry is not a traditional football rivalry where fans taunt each other and letter jacket guys kidnap the mascot and perform sporting japes worthy of stories that will last for generations at the Grim Waterfowl Club; their rivalry is more like the one between homeowners and termites. Northwestern has now beaten Iowa three years in a row. Each victory has been a disgusting affront to football. Last year, in the midst of a howling southern gale at Ryan Field, both teams refused to score until Northwestern lured them into overtime. This year, they battled to a putrid 3-0 half and basically refused to play offense until Bennett Skowronek made one of the greatest catches I've ever seen from a Northwestern player almost at random and then Iowa decided to close the game by bashing themselves in the head with large, comical props. My sources on Iowa message boards inform me that Northwestern got away with numerous Uncalled Holding Penalties. This is what life is like now, for the Hawkeyes. Their fans do not want to give in and debase themselves to admit they have a rivalry with Northwestern; every year, Northwestern comes in and the teams blow raspberries at each other until the Wildcats ruin their season. In 2000, the Wildcats took on an abysmal Iowa team with an outright Big Ten Championship and trip to the Rose Bowl on the line and they lost one of the most devastating games in Northwestern history. It was bitterly cold, and on the way out of the stadium, Iowa fans gleefully taunted anyone in purple to enjoy San Antonio, taking it as a given that the Citrus Bowl would pass up Northwestern for the more lucrative Michigan fanbase even though Northwestern had beaten the Wolverines head to head in one of the greatest games ever played. Those vengeful Hawkstrodamuses were proven right. This time, though, Northwestern's win, combined with just an absolute Rube Goldberg Machine of Big Ten shittiness propelled them to a Division Championship to celebrate upon Kinnick Stadium in front of disgusted Iowa fans who had, along with every other Western team, squandered an opportunity to win this wretched division. Last week, Northwestern took on Notre Dame in another sort of quasi-rivalry game. There is no way that Notre Dame considers Northwestern a rival: all of Notre Dame's rivalry is with the past itself, a sepia-toned succession of leather helmet mustache guys gouging the eyes of Army or valiantly battling the Spanish Flu; Notre Dame's current rivalries seem to mostly be with the entire sport of college football as everyone else has grown sick of the men's hats of the Associated Press constantly vaulting them into title games based on a stale, ghostly aura only to see them humiliated by a never-ending succession of JaMarcuses Russell. This is how Notre Dame exists now, its pugilist cartoon mascot now squaring off at every fanbase in the world waiting for them to lose. It is fitting that Notre Dame will play today in Yankee Stadium as their football program is the closest thing to every Boomer anecdote about Mickey Mantle made flesh. A middling Big Ten program that resurfaces every dozen years when Notre Dame deigns to play them until they lose and mysteriously vanish off the Irish schedule cannot compete with History. A 1991 image of "Mickey Mantle," a fictional baseball player invented in the late 1980s by Bob Costas and Ken Burns has created a cottage industry of fake Boomer Baseball Anecdotes and must be exposed by courageous people not afraid to put the truth on Blogspot.com College football rivalry fits within the sport's completely discursive tradition in that the biggest marker of a rivalry are fans talking about whether or not a fanbase is or is not their rival. Conferences and schools try to cement these with annual games on the schedule, "rivalry week" showdowns, and trophies, but the concept of rivalry belongs entirely to the fans. The greatest moment in the history of college football rivalry was Bob Diacco's laudably insane quest to build a trophy from scratch and instigate a Big Game with UCF and UCF's hostile indifference to the Civil ConFLiCt. No one has seen the trophy since it was abandoned somewhere on a sideline, ignored by UCF who would not even deign to parade it around. In an ideal world, the complete rejection of this Rivalry Overture would eventually twist its way into a real rivalry, with UCONN coaches bringing larger and more elaborate rivalry trophies to the stadium every year while UCF makes more pointed shows of ignoring it until the Huskies roll up with a semi full of life-sized Dog-Knights while UCF has hired a crew of backhoes to immediately bury them. The other great rivalry moment of the twenty-first century is this: The accepted, Branded Rivalries are the most boring in college sports. Instead, it's the ones at the margins, the ones that are constant sources of bickering about whether the teams are actually rivals, whether one team cares as much as the other about a rivalry, ones where there very nature of the concept of rivalry is contested in a way that would make an absolutely unreadable and dreadful paper called like "'Little Brother' or 'Big' Time Rival: College Football 'Rivalry' and the Discourses of Disparagement in American Society 1978-2012" in PAAAWWWWLLL Quarterly.
The sole exception remains America's greatest rivalry game, the Battle for The Hat and I'm concerned because Lovie would look tremendous sporting that thing with his silver beard.
It is February, we've subjected ourselves to ritualistic rodent-bothering, and Northwestern athletics have sunk into a pit of despair. The innovative camera-tophat gives viewers a livestream of groundhog manhandling On New Year's Day, Northwestern took its 10-2 record and dominant defense to the Outback Bowl and got mercilessly trampled by Tennessee. I've spent the last several weeks painstakingly editing the Outback Bowl footage to show exactly where the 'Cats went wrong with an in-depth look at Northwestern's football strategy: In the end, Northwestern's defeat at the hands of the Volunteers looked identical to its previous two losses. A tight defensive game gave way to a complete dismantling in the second half as the offense sputtered to a halt and turned the ball over repeatedly. The 'Cats were unable to pull off another upset, and their bowl streak halted at one. Despite the sour ending, this has been one of the greatest seasons in the history of Northwestern football. The Wildcats, predicted to spend the season scrapping with with the likes of Purdue and Illinois in the dustbin of the Big Ten West, went 10-2, tortured opponents with a legitimately great defense, and, in classic Northwestern fashion, attempted to kill fans with a series of cliff-hanging wins. These victories included an opening-day upset against one of the best teams in college football that involved turning Stanford's own body clocks against them, which, if you think of it, is the greatest defense of them all. They also saw the return of Big Kick Jack Mitchell, a Legitimate Victory granted when referees disallowed an apparent game-winning Wisconsin touchdown catch because a catch is now an indefinable abstract concept determined only by communion with unholy forces beyond our comprehension, and a reclamation of the Hat from a listing Illini team in front of what appeared to be a dozen people at Soldier Field. This is a glorious season. Not every team gets to go home a happy bowl winner; in fact, a recent study shows that nearly half of all bowl participants lose their bowl games. Next season, the Wildcats face Big Ten East powers Michigan State and Ohio State. Their perfect record in close games will likely not repeat. Pat Fitzgerald and the coaching staff will have to figure out how to replace Dean Lowry, Nick VanHoose, Deonte Gibson, Superback Dan Vitale, and other senior standouts. At some point, Fitzgerald and Mick McCall will have to devise an offense besides Justin Jackson The Ball Carrier and his Merry Punting Brigade. The playbook will hopefully expand as Clayton Thorson enters his second year under center; the Wildcats have enough talent returning on defense that even a mediocre offense could put a good scare into Big Ten opponents beyond the possibility of the deployment of a Spooky Tarp. Northwestern should just lean into the gothic uniform and put unsettling images on the tarp so an opposing wide receivers will be startled and chilled in the crucial seconds before making a catch Northwestern does not win ten games often. It has happened only three other times. Next year, The Wildcats will come into the season with higher expectations. Hopefully, next season the 'Cats can keep the momentum going, securing the Hat, making a bowl game, and claiming adding another city to its expanding list of cities Northwestern is the Big Ten Team of. NORTHWESTERN BASKETBALL IS AN EDVARD MUNCH PAINTING This was supposed to be the year until it wasn't. Everything had set up for Northwestern to make a run at the NCAA Tournament with an emerging young team and old Carmody stalwarts Tre Demps and Alex Olah. Instead, the Dance dream ended before the season began with Vic Law's injury. The 'Cats still flew out of the gate with a 12-1 record to enter Big Ten play, losing only to basketball superpower North Carolina. The record, however, was deceptive in that many of the Wildcat's famous victories came against obscure teams that materialized at Welsh-Ryan arena, lost, then vanished into the night never to be heard from again. Both big men, Olah and The Flying Dutchman Joey Van Zegeren, injured their feet and literally limped into Big Ten play. Then, as the season threatened to fall apart entirely, Chris Collins unleashed The Pardoning on Nebraska. In only his second college game, freshman Dererk Pardon, who had been slated to sit out the entire year, burned Lincoln to the ground with a 28-point 12-rebound performance. Nebraska is mercilessly Pardoned Northwestern basketball inspired dreams of a long-awaited tournament berth that were quickly dashed by the Big Ten. The Wildcats faced an unprecedented gauntlet of top-ranked teams who formed themselves into a single gigantic forward that dunked furiously on the entire city of Evanston. Though they annihilated Minnesota and beat a rebuilding Wisconsin team, the 'Cats have also been unceremoniously blown out by Maryland, Iowa, Indiana, and Michigan State in home and away venues. At the very least, Northwestern is coming precariously close to developing a mini-rivalry with Maryland. Though the Terps blew Northwestern off the court in Evanston, the 'Cats managed to take them to overtime in their College Park rematch. In this second game, NU played strong defense and destroyed Maryland on the glass in order to drag them into a miserably unwatchable early-twenty-first-century Big Ten slopfest. Last year, only a ridiculous tip-in buzzer beater from Dez Wells with no time remaining prevented the Wildcat upset. I think we can work with this. As the old college sports rivalry saying goes: "Nearly lose to Northwestern once, shame on you, nearly lose to Northwestern twice I will send away for an ACME Bob Diaco Rivalry-Starting Kit." UCONN's Bob Diaco spent most of 2015 in a truly remarkable attempt to unilaterally create a rivalry with Central Florida by making his own trophy, creating a Beckman Clock, and persevering in the face of UCF not wanting to have anything to do with it before winning his own trophy back. "They [UCF] don't get to say whether they are our rival or not," Diaco said, inadvertantly creating the first postmodern college football rivalry Northwestern's already-gossamer tournament hopes are completely gone. The chances for NIT qualification are vanishing with every clanged jumper. On the other hand, the most terrifying stretch of the schedule has passed. A few wins against teams that are not already tournament locks could give them enough momentum to sneak into the NIT or one of those sub-NIT tournaments where entry is granted only by reciting the password through a slotted door should Collins and the Wildcat brass deign to participate. SUPER BOWL ANALYSIS The Super Bowl arrives this Sunday and the entire beer-guzzling, nacho-hoovering, going on websites to see the unrated version of the commercial population of these United States is focusing on Denver's superstar quarterback. And, with the lights on him, Chicago's Big Ten Quarterback Trevor Siemian is going to turn Super Bowl L into Super Bowl "El." Siemian, who made his stunning debut against the Pittsburgh Steelers, has been described as the "Bronco's secret weapon" and "the linchpin of the Super Bowl" by Outlandish Pullquote magazine. Siemian calmly rallying the troops before organizing a critical half-ending kneeldown Siemian had success as part of a two-quarterback system at Northwestern with Kain Colter. Colter handled the option and the it's third and long and everyone in the solar system knows he is going to take off right here no one can stop it and he got the the fourth down against Ohio State I have several hinged videos about this on Youtube offense while Siemian threw passes. Now, though, Siemian is in the NFL where two-quarterback systems are laughable anachronisms. Instead, he is part of an innovative three-quarterback system. Peyton Manning's job is to gesticulate for 39 seconds like a frustrated middle manager hell-bent on promotion before wobbling passes into the void. Osweiler's job is to stand on the sidelines and use his height to shield manning from the sun. Siemian's job is to instruct Manning on when to switch from Omaha to another Midwestern city in a move that will paralyze the Carolina defense in the same way that Rocky switched from right to left-handed against Apollo Creed in Rocky II. Imagine the look on Luke Kuechly's face when Manning paces behind the line of scrimmage with his face scrunched up, pointing to the mike and key popcorn vendors with an unusual cadence that can screw up the snap count before looking Kuechly right in the eye and yelling ROLLA or DAVENPORT or OCONOMOWOC and then handing off to a running back with the Panthers on their heels. Here's ace CBS analyst Phil Simms's breakdown of Siemian's game from his NFL debut:
"WELL I KNOW THEY LIKE 'EEM," Simms says, "WELL OF COURSE THEY LIKE 'EEM THAT'S WHY HE'S THE BACKUP QUARTERBACK. BUT WE'VE BEEN OUT TO A FEW BRONCOS GAMES, I'VE WATCHED HIM PRACTICE, HE THROWS THE FOOTBALL VERY WELL." As you can see Football Expert Phil Simms is pointing out that Siemian's got all the tools to succeed in the National Football League. First of all, he's on the team, and, as Trent Dilfer has said "YOU HAVE TO MAKE THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM TO SUCCEED IN THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE EITHER THROUGH THE DRAFT OR THE FREE AGENCY PROCESS IN THE [glances quickly down to his palm where he has discreetly written in marker] NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE." Second, he throws the football. There's some controversy over this lately, but according to advanced numbers, a quarterback has to throw the ball to help his team in this League that is National and Football. Otherwise, quarterback is left with few options: to run and risk fumbles and injury, to lateral the ball to a nearby running back or offensive lineman while screaming "AAAAHHH YOU THROW IT" before scampering in the direction of the sideline, or to propel himself across the line of scrimmage by rigging up an illegal slingshot mechanism in the dead of night. No, my misinformed friend, the quarterback needs to be able to the throw the ball and according to Phil Simms, Siemian throws it, and this is a direct quote from his months of painstaking Siemian analysis "very well." Expect the Broncos to sign Colter this off-season and rig up an offense that will propel them into an NFL dynasty. BATTLE OF THE DUDES Nineteenth-century America was a rough-and-tumble time when an ordinary dude could not walk down the street without being forced to change into dandyish costume at a moment's notice. At least, this is what happened in the "Battle of the Dudes" between Evander Berry Wall and Bob Hilliard. The nineteenth-century dude differed from his contemporary counterpart; it referred to clotheshorses with elaborate costume, sartorial flourish, and, it goes without saying, impeccable mustaches. Evander Berry Wall (l) and Robert Hilliard, whose ferocious dude battles terrorized New Yorkers who lived in constant fear of getting hit by a stray greatcoat flourish Berry, who had already been crowned King of the Dudes in 1883, defended his title in 1888 in a newspaper-sponsored Battle of the Dudes. I'll let a 2005 article from the New York Sun that unfortunately does not have any further sources that would let me fall down a dude rabbit hole explain:
Wall became famous after meeting Blakely Hall, a reporter hungry for
good copy. Thereafter, every week or so, Hall's articles publicizing
Wall's adventures in clothing appeared in newspapers across the country.
Then one of Hall's competitors set up a rival, actor Robert "Bob"
Hilliard, another flashy dresser. Thus began the Battle of the Dudes, in
which each sought to eclipse the other in sartorial extremes. According
to the Times, Wall finally won when, during the Great Blizzard of 1888,
he strode into the Hoffman House bar clad in gleaming boots of black
patent leather that went to his hips. (Nonetheless, some social
historians claim Hilliard won with the high boots, supposedly part of
his Western gambler's costume from a play in which he was then
appearing).
Yet, some dispute this result, explained in this glorious Wikipedia sentence that I want as my epitaph: "Nevertheless, some historians still consider it was Hilliard who won that dude battle." Wall, however, would not let his Dude Crown rest upon his head. As the Sun article elaborates:
Wall won another contest in Saratoga when daredevil financier John
"Bet-A-Million" Gates wagered that he could not wear 40 changes of
clothes between breakfast and dinner. On the appointed day, Wall
repeatedly appeared at the racetrack in one flashy ensemble after
another until, exhausted but victorious, he at last entered the ballroom
of the United States Hotel in faultless evening attire to wild
applause.
The visual on this is astounding: Wall, flying to and from the racetrack changing his clothes like a panting off-stage Daffy Duck before crushing Bet-A-Million Gates with his splendor of his tuxedo. Gates made his initial fortune in barbed wire, where, according once again to a brilliantly stilted Wikipedia editor, he "provoked cattle into charging into a barbed wire fence which did not break." WALL: You mean I need forty combinations, each unique, each mesmerizing, each perfectly-tailored, tip-top-fashion, elegant, graceful, beguiling, all in the course of the single day my man? GATES: That is our concern, dude. CHEER UP, DUDES Northwestern football ended its glorious season on a sour note. Northwestern basketball has suffered a string of blowout losses during a brutal stretch of games against some of the best teams in the country. Nevertheless, there is reason for optimism. The basketball team is still very young and may have discovered an inside force with Pardon. It is still possible for the 'Cats to catch fire at the end of the season, steal a tourney game or two, and make an unlikely run at the NIT. The football team just received a bunch of faxes from teenagers who want to smash into people for Northwestern. Trevor Siemian has a chance to win a Super Bowl ring. And, should all else fail, and should the Wildcats fall short this spring and next fall, they can still win in the way that counts more than any other: by changing into 40 nineteenth-century gentleman's outfits in the course of a single day climaxing, of course, in the donning of a wearable Hat trophy, together we can do this.
