Week 10: Streaks

Northwestern headed into Ohio State with an overwhelming losing streak in Columbus.  The last time the Wildcats won in Columbus was 1971, when Woody Hayes was at the height of his terrifying powers, able to infiltrate his players' subconscious and force them to do hamburger drills in their dreams.  Since then, Ohio State has remained on a more or less continuous rampage through the Big Ten while Northwestern's football team spent the late 70s and 80s aerating their and their opponents' fields by getting repeatedly pile-driven through them.

Northwestern's success in 1971 came from the 
unorthodox tactic of punting enormous, blimp-sized 
footballs at opponents and then tackling them in the 
ensuing confusion

The Wildcats came into the game as heavy underdogs, but this is not the same team that got the Fatal Doink from Illinois State.  Clayton Thorson seems to grow by leaps and bounds each week.  Justin Jackson remains one of the Big Ten's best backs, and what we get to see each week from Austin Carr is nothing short of astonishing.  They gave the Buckeyes all they could handle and managed to pull level.  Unfortunately, they could not topple Ohio State.  A holding penalty took away an opportunity to tie the game and Fitz settled for a field goal.  I did not watch the game live, so instead I followed the end of the game on the ESPN GameCenter website where I then watched little arrows representing JT Barrett gallivant across my phone over Northwestern's digital defenders while the clock ran down to nothing on every clumsy refresh.  It was an impressive effort, but it was not enough.  The streak was not broken.

A loss is a loss to Ohio State by four or by forty; that’s what it goes by in the books no matter how close the Wildcats came to unleashing a dejected Horseshoe full of Buckeyes unable to fathom what has just happened and a million unhinged message board demands to fire at least one coordinator and send photographic breakdowns of uncalled holding penalties on the next Pioneer satellite so that aliens would have clear understanding of how illegal it is for the guy to have his hand right up in that jersey jesus christ throw the goddamn flag.

FORTRESS WILDCAT

The Wisconsin Badgers have not won in Evanston since 1999.  They have not.  They have they have won Big Ten Championships, they have sent waves of running backs and beefy tackles over the prone bodies of Big Ten opponents and they have garlanded themselves in roses and every single time this this century that they have come to Ryan Field they have lost the football game and this is the funniest and strangest streak in all of college sports.

The streak is misleading because Northwestern and Wisconsin have only played four games in Evanston since 1999.  Still, pretty much every year they've played the Badgers have come in ranked higher than Northwestern and with a retinue of red-clad fans streaming in from the city and down I-94 to take over the stadium and with AP rankings and they still manage to lose close games and it is way more fun to crow about sparsely-played win streaks such as a two-game streak over Notre Dame that dates back to 1995 or a dominant streak over the University of Chicago that dates to 1926 although that was the last time they played and since then Chicago disbanded their football program and left the Big Ten and then revived it as a DIII program. You never know if there is an aged Maroon football player so incensed at Northwestern's Chicago's Big Ten Team billboards that he launches a coup against the Chicago administration and secretly brings the team back to Big Ten contention with an army of cloned Maroon greats like Andy "Polyphemus" Wyatt.

"Polyphemus" Wyatt Mk. VII, his mustache now even 
larger and more resplendent, burrows up from the 
earth outside Ryan Field with an army of leather-helmeted 
clones and a crew of painters stationed at key billboard 
locations on the Tri-State Tollway

Wisconsin comes in ranked eight in the country and desperate for revenge after last year's insane game where the Wildcats benefited from delightfully ludicrous officiating.  Paul Chryst, I am sure, would like to win decisively enough where a referee that accidentally ingests psilocybin mushrooms and then fancies himself Crimson Ump, the Taker of Touchdowns will have minimal effect.

Northwestern is somehow a far better team than they were at the beginning of the season. Though Wisconsin is favored, they will still have to figure out how to deal with Thorson and Austin Carr. Still, Wisconsin is an excellent team with designs still on the Western Division. The home win streak, as delightfully bizarre as it is, can't hold out forever, especially now that they play in Evanston every other year.  But, the Wildcats certainly have the team to upset Wisconsin again, and one more win is more than enough to declare some sort of contrived bullshit curse over the whole enterprise.

THE CUBS WON THE DANGED WORLD SERIES

It is fitting that last night’s game took place under the watch of Joe Buck, baseball’s Grim Reaper, determined to remind everyone about the cavalcade of people these flailing teams had seen to the grave during their long championship droughts. A robed Joe Buck presided over Fox’s organ music, over graphics about milk prices and historical events, over an army of grasping, rotted skeletons as his face melted into a flaming skull, his unearthly cackling interrupted only by a quick primer on Jon Lester’s inability to throw to first.

Fox loads another jittering newsreel from Olden Times as Joe Buck cackles 
maniacally over B-roll of coffins, crypts, and cemeteries 

The Cubs had spent the entire playoffs manhandled by Cleveland’s pitching, particularly Corey Kluber, Cody Allen, and Andrew Miller, the loose-limbed lefty who had been so unhittable in the playoffs that the announcers had begun to allude to him like he was some dread scourge from over the hills even though he looks like a scruffy human muppet. Miller and Allen lurked in every game like the monsters from medieval maps, and every team knew that as soon as the Indians had the lead, their bullpen arms would come in and slowly squeeze the outs out of them in the most demoralizing way possible.

The Map of Cubs Playoff Baseball Pitching Creatures includes Kluber, Miller, Allen, Bumgarner, 
Matt Moore, Rich Hall, and Theoretically Clayton Kershaw 

In Game Seven, the Cubs finally got to them: they hammered Kluber, and when the Dread Scourge Andrew Miller came in, the Cubs’ grizzled Mendoza Line catcher who had been violently head-bonked by an errant Lester cutter in the top half of the inning launched a dinger to straight away center. There's something about playoff baseball that does not only involve hitting, pitching, and bullying a nebbishy fan into going into witness protection; if it does not, as we as rational people know, involve communion with some sort of unholy forces, the pressure packed games do everything they can to simulate that feeling. And with these two miserable, exhausted catastrophist fanbases, the forces swirling over Progressive Field appeared to be the baseball equivalent of the green mist from the DeMille Ten Commandments. 

The Cubs, who had seized control of the game from the Cleveland Arm Hydra, seemed about to cruise to victory. Then, things took a turn.  Joe Posnanski once referred to Tony La Russa as "the Mozart of overmanagers," but Maddon's bullpen theatrics rated at least a Salieri.  He quickly pulled Kyle Hendricks for Lester and then put an overworked Aroldis Chapman on the mound.  Chapman,  shaky and gumby-armed, gave up a dramatic two-run homer to that base-stealing slap hitter Rajai Davis that flew over the fence in left field and then split into subatomic baseball particles to lodge themselves in the panic center of Cubs fans' guts. This was it. The Pandora's Box of Cub Playoff Failures had opened and there were goats and cats and Alex S. Gonzalezes rampaging all over the field preparing to drag the greatest Cubs team we are likely to ever see down out of Progressive Field and into Fox Baseball Tragedy B Roll for future playoff appearances. 

And then it was Cleveland's turn to knot their stomachs and clutch at their Omar Vizquel autobiography, The Institgation of Vigilante Beanballism, and watch the Cubs snag two more runs in the inning. But it was World Series Hero Rajai Davis coming up with another RBI to halve the lead, and the giant rat mascot from the 1908 World Series burrowed up from center field, spitting poison on the thousands of Cubs fans in the stands. Finally, Mike Montgomery induced a ground ball, the Contrived Curse of Someone Named Rocky Covalito We're Really Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel Here roared and the Cubs won the goddamned World Series in an amazing game designed to kill remaining fans of the Cubs and Indians that had not already died of natural causes during their championship droughts.

I can't believe it either 

The result of this ludicrous baseball ordeal is that the Cubs finally won a World Series. Whatever miserable mumbo-jumboism fueled the hysterical Cubs pessimism is gone, the dread accompanying every playoff appearance no longer exists, and the morbid misery accompanying every strikeout and double play grounder and awful only the Cubs could do this error has been banished for at least the next 25 years. Now they are merely a wealthy, well-run team set up to contend for the near future and almost certainly become widely loathed in the process. Thank goodness.

Invincible Fortress Evanston

As the clock approached midnight on December 31, 1999, there were three types of people: those celebrating the end of the twentieth century, those huffily refusing to celebrate for another year making a brave stand for joy-killing pedantry, and those who sat huddled with rifles waiting for our dial-up modems to rise up and tie us to railroad tracks.  All three of those types are now joining us in the twenty-first century, when we can illegally stream football from other continents, when we wait for our cable modems to murder us all, where Wisconsin has failed to win a football game at Ryan Field.

Chaos Week, certified by thousands of hash-tag notaries, was here!  A college football Carnival where top-ranked teams lost, unranked teams ruled the day, and goalposts were pillaged.  A day where, somehow, Northwestern sits atop the Big Ten West, with dreams of a crappy bowl game now dancing through our minds.
 
Current Big Ten West standings

After sputtering through two losses, Northwestern is now in the driver's seat in their division.  They will face off against Minnesota for first place this Saturday.  And, this week, they revealed they will be playing a homecoming night game against Nebraska while dressed like the Castle of Otranto.
 
Here's a Wikipedia Sentence that describes the plot of Horace Walpole's gothic novel: 
"Shortly before the wedding, however, Conrad is crushed to death by a gigantic 
helmet that falls on him from above."  In case you were wondering what makes 
this a Wikipedia Sentence rather than a regular sentence, it is the specific detail 
that the helmet falls on him from above instead of crushing him from below or 
from the sides, from the other other gigantic helmets you didn't even know were there

It's been an exciting week for Wildcat football.

NO ESCAPE FROM RYAN FIELD

Ryan Field is a picturesque place to watch a football game.  It has grass and towers and a tarp.  It is located near Chicago's Big Ten public transportation.  It is probably the worst home field advantage in the country.  Opposing fans invariably swarm the stadium, debase the stands with their reds and yellows and maizes and oranges, and occasionally force the offense to use a silent snap count.  Yet, for whatever reason, Wisconsin has lost its last four games against Northwestern in Evanston.  A rational person would note that the Wildcats notched three close victories (including the spectacular 51-48 Tyrell Sutton breakout game in 2005 where both teams refused to play defense) while getting blown out repeatedly in Madison.  But if you were a rational person, you would certainly not be wasting your time reading this blog, so it's clear that Wisconsin players are intimidated by fist claws, by the yow yow wildcat sound they play over the PA system, by the Foster-Walker complex.

Everyone expected the Badgers to run all over the Wildcat defense.  Wisconsin coaches climb beanstalks to recruit their offensive linemen, and Melvin Gordon is a human locomotive.  He rushed for a career-high 259 yards and seemed poised to explode for a 50-yard gain every time he touched the ball.  Yet, it was the Northwestern defense that carried the day by seizing four interceptions, including three by freshman safety Godwin Igwebuike in his first start.  It was the second consecutive breakout game from a freshman defender after Anthony Walker's debut against Penn State.  Badger fans, however, remain baffled at their coaching staff's decision to call passing plays late in the game while Gordon remained their most dangerous offensive threat.
 
Wisconsin coaches instruct their evil ninjas to circle Black Belt Jones and attack 
him one at a time.  It's called playing the percentages

Northwestern's offense seems to improve every week.  Freshman running back Justin Jackson, had an impressive game in his own right with 162 yards.  Tony Jones and Dan Vitale have given Siemian steady options to move the chains; Kyle Prater is finally healthy and Pratering people. 

But something more important happened last Saturday.  Northwestern entered the fourth quarter with a lead.  Northwestern entered the fourth quarter with the lead against a ranked opponent.  Northwestern entered the fourth quarter with the lead and instead of fumbling nine consecutive times or throwing fifteen interceptions or committing personal fouls with overly-extravagant timeout gestures or the heavens opening up and a ray of light shining down upon Joel Stave who then turns into a many-armed Russell Wilson/Jim Sorgi/Scott Tolzien avatar of Wisconsin quarterbacking which makes him really good at handing off and also occasionally completing passes and then throwing five consecutive hail marys to Melvin Gordon, nothing happened.  The Badgers approached the endzone.  Igwebuike picked off the pass.  The Wildcats held on.
 
Godwin Igwebuike's Law: As a Wisconsin game grows longer, the 
probability of a ridiculous Wisconsin interception on a pass play 
when Melvin Gordon is literally in the backfield approaches 1

LOOKING DOWN AT THE BIG TEN FROM A LOFTY PERCH

Minnesota and Northwestern sit atop the Big Ten West.  The Gophers are 4-1 this season, with their only loss to TCU.  Their signature win this season was at Michigan, where they waxed a Wolverine team in complete and utter disarray and reclaimed their jug trophy.  Minnesota plays rivalry games for a jug, a pig, and an axe as they try to complete the Triple Crown of Hillbilly Accoutrements.  There's no trophy at stake this week other than control of the division as the Big Ten and college football continues to eat itself in an upset ouroboros.

Conference play has come, and Big Ten teams can safely retreat to their thunderdomes to clobber each other in peace, insulated from the braying mockery of the national media.  There is still upheaval.  Michigan has fallen apart.  Dave Brandon and Brady Hoke have been confined to the Touliers Palace. 
 
Hoke and Brandon attempt to flee to Windsor, Ontario, but are captured when 
Brandon's face is recognized from a Domino's coupon

At the bottom of the conference, Illinois fell to lowly Purdue at home.  The loss casts a pall over the Beckman Era.  Illinois supporters have grown restless with their coach, who has managed a single conference victory.  A rogue Wikipedia editor has added a section to his page entitled "Public Outcry."  There are vultures circling the Castle Beckman.  He may not last the season.  All of us can only hope that he turns it around and wins a few because nothing in college football has brought me greater joy Tim Beckman's War on Northwestern.  

GOOD GRAVY, NORTHWESTERN IS A DECENT TEAM BY BIG TEN STANDARDS

What are we to make of this Wildcat team?  They went from encouraging to despair to looking like a bowl team.  They only need three more wins, and Big Ten victories apparently come more easily than to Pac-12 and MAC opponents.  They have decisive home and road victories over Big Ten title hopefuls. 

Minnesota is in the same position, hoping to take the pole position in the topsy-turvy West.  They don't feature any superstars like Penn State's Hackenberg or Wisconsin's Gordon, but they also don't have a glaring achilles heel like Penn State's self-blocking linemen or Wisconsin's nineteenth-century passing attack.  We're in a dangerous place as Northwestern fans, with our expectations raised just enough to be dashed.  But this team's steadfast refusal to Northwestern itself in Big Ten play has gone from puzzling to exciting.  Regardless of what happens in Minneapolis, Nebraska will have to come into the Invincible Fortress Evanston where they face the impossible pressure of not embarrassing themselves in front of the stands full of Husker fans. 

Fist pump.