Northwestern has assembled its greatest NIT team ever

Another Selection Sunday has passed and Northwestern is still not in the NCAA tournament. This is a tradition. No Northwestern fan has ever filled out an optimistic NCAA bracket, no camera crew has ever shown the Northwestern team happily leaping about after their name was called, no one has ever been delighted to see the Wildcats sneaking in or upset at a snub. Northwestern's absence from the tournament is a unifying constant throughout human history-- even some plague-speckled, scurvy-ridden peasant painfully scything his way through unending rows of crops, before the invention of the NCAA or basketball or Northwestern or the United States or a heliocentric universe, shared with everyone before and after a world bereft of Wildcat appearances in the Big Dance.

Norwegian painter Christian Krohg depicts Viking explorer Leif
Erikson's journey to North America, where Northwestern will
still not be in the NCAA Tournament

The end of Northwestern's bubble hopes came at the hands of a short-handed Minnesota team with nothing to lose. This loss avenged the 2003 Big Ten Tournament, when a tenth-seeded Northwestern team knocked the Gophers off the bubble. Somewhere, Rick Rickert is laughing through an unruly beard as he splits logs because I'd like to think that Rick Rickert is now living as a nineteenth century lumberjack near the violently contested Canadian border, away from the pressure of professional basketball and safely out of Kevin Garnett's face-punching radius.

The Minnesota game has become emblematic of every crushing Northwestern defeat this decade as the basketball and football teams seem to get closer and closer to winning something only to get flung back by some sort of unseen manifestation of the schools' unrelenting historical futility. This year's basketball team missed making the tournament with ease by a difference of maybe ten total points over the course of the season. And these losses pile up in decidedly modest pursuits. Other teams ruefully recall painful championship losses; Northwestern teams have come up short trying to be the 35th best football team or qualify for a 68-team basketball bracket.

Watching a favorite team lose a significant game always raises some troubling questions about the nature of sports fandom. On the one hand, sharing the teams' triumphs and failures without contributing beyond maybe showing up and yelling is the reason why we bother to care about a team-- there are few opportunities to exult in victory or failure within tidy three hour windows. On the other hand, the performance of the Northwestern basketball team has essentially no effect on anything meaningful in my life other than causing me to question why I actually care that they didn't make some goofy tournament which then causes me to question why I waste time worrying about sports at all which then causes the whole ridiculous edifice of sports fandom to come crashing down around me as I curse the hours thrown away watching men I don't know chase balls around and then I end up kneeling in a pile of accumulated sports apparel screaming towards the heavens at the meaninglessness of everything.

Why did I purchase that Kosuke Fukudome t-shirt jersey?

Some day, a Northwestern team will break through that seemingly impenetrable barrier and hoist up the garish potato-shaped trophy of a godforsaken bowl game, will hear its name called on Selection Sunday, will bask in the glory of achievements so miniscule that most college sports fans accept them sheepishly. It just won't be this year. For the Northwestern Wildcat Basketball men have not finished their toil as they prepare to shake off their disappointment to compete for the ultimate prize in college hoops that is not the one anyone cares about.

THE NIT IS A SWANKY TOURNAMENT FOR COOL DUDES

This time in recent years, the Wildcats had to scrape and scratch and claw their way into the NIT with crucial Big Ten Tournament wins. They had to watch as their short-lived NCAA tournament hopes fell away into hoping for a group of top-hatted, diamond-caned, NIT bigwigs toyed with them, threatening to end their post-season dreams or leave them to the dust-bin of any number of sub-NIT tournaments and net-ball championships.

"The NIT is prepared to offer you a
home game," the NIT official said,
as he lit his pipe with one hand and
throttled an insolent man-servant
with the other. "What my friends
and I would like to know is what you
are prepared to offer the NIT"

This year, Northwestern's inevitable NIT berth is not a slightly embarrassing triumph, but the result of the most disappointing loss in program history. It is time to put away the NCAA bubble angst and prepare to watch the Wildcats destroy all comers in the NIT. Yes, the continued failure to make it to the NCAA tournament stings, but why not embrace an alternative form of March Madness? The NIT is not a booby prize, but an opportunity to win a post-season tournament and hold the most obnoxious NIT victory celebration ever dreamed up by man which will also be the only NIT championship celebration ever attempted.

For all of the hand-wringing about the NCAA Tourney drought, Northwestern has also never won the NIT. It is not too late for John Shurna to go out without a trophy. It is not too late for Bill Carmody to try to salvage the season. It is not too late for Pat Fitzgerald to get on the horn with his plush monkey man to provide diverting sideline props as the Wildcats attempt to smash a barrier that absolutely no one cares about. Instead, it is time to embrace the NIT for what it is: a legitimate basketball tournament without the shine of the NCAA but also at least not one of those other tournaments that I suspect is cover for an illegal badger-baiting operation. Should Northwestern make it all the way to the Garden, fans should parade that banner down Sheridan Road, mocking all of the other programs that has never won an NIT crown although it is worth mentioning that that is because they were probably good enough to never be in the NIT in the first place.

A Northwestern NIT Championship may even elicit a rare smile from the
perpetually sour-faced Bill Carmody, although according to this simulation a
Carmody smile may render him a grotesque abomination

Northwestern fans can celebrate the fact that they get to see this team at Welsh-Ryan arena one more time and, for the very last time, fill it with a terrifying array of gigantic reproductions of John Shurna's head to intimidate and cow the opposition.

I expect to see Shurna head balloons floating
above Evanston before the opening round of the
NIT

And should the 'Cats fail to hoist the NIT hardware, then we should just fake it. No one would ever know.

The NCAA Tournament is a Dumb Tournament for Jerks Anyway

The Northwestern basketball team is close, tantalizingly close, an overly-long fingernail's grip close to the very outer edge of the possibility of making it to the NCAA tournament. Northwestern fans have gone into NCAA Bubble Crisis mode, hanging their faith on RPI numerology and the false bracketology shamans making a living rearranging the names on a bracket like the map of Europe at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

Negotiating the status of Fiume and the seed number
of Siena

The Wildcats are on the bubble longer than they've ever been on the bubble and because of this they want you to die. That is hyperbole. There are few things of less overall cosmic significance than which post-season basketball tournament deigns to accept the Northwestern Wildcats because in the long run you will die, and all of humanity will wilt (potentially destroyed at the hands of a race of super-intelligent apes, let's just lay all of our cards on the table), and the sun will eventually explode and destroy the entire galaxy in a brilliant conflagration leaving an eternal void unmoved by the consequences of a goal-bound chest jumper.

Then again, another loss like this past one to Ohio State may cause Bill Carmody to literally explode on the court-- you can just see it now, as he makes that how could this possibly happen to me expression that he makes for an unjust foul call or a careless turnover or a poorly selected shot or (presumably) a spontaneous combustion upon the floor of Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The sound of a whistle causes Bill Carmody to contemplate the
Big Bang, the billions of years it took for simple one-celled
creatures to evolve slowly into plant and animal life and
dinosaurs and mammals and the beginnings of man as a tree
dwelling creature and the thousands of years of mankind
spreading across the globe, creating complex cultures and
civilizations, and his own ancestors that brought him to this
very spot, where he can't believe that Curletti committed a foul
with five fucking seconds left on the shot clock are you kidding me?

This evening's game was yet another close, heart-breaking and possibly bracket-breaking loss for the Wildcats, who I think may yet remain alive. As far as I can tell, a final Big Ten win and a decent showing in the conference tourney may convince some NCAA honcho to look upon the Wildcats and rotate his thumb up. Then again, I will leave the bracket prognostications to others with the patience to follow the hectic NCAA Tournament stock market, shouting frantically into a telephone with every bubble team basket. Come March 11, the only important prediction is whether I foolishly fill out a hundred brackets putting NU in the Final Four or the city of Evanston starts loading up on ticker tape for an NIT championship parade.

BUBBLE

The NCAA tournament is designed to use complex formulas, rankings, and no small amount of intrigue to determine an approximation of the 68 best college basketball teams in the country to play each other for our amusement and to swell the coffers of illegal gambling operations. Northwestern has never been one of those teams. Every year, Northwestern fans sit down to watch March Madness like other college basketball fans, dutifully filling out a bracket, cheering on upsets, rooting for the implosion of hated Big Ten rivals, seeing a guy play two or three games and then forming strong opinions on him before the NBA draft, enjoying the spectacle but not really having a horse in the race. It's sort of like being Jewish on Christmas Day.

Northwestern itself is sort of an athletic program on the bubble of college sports. The football team may shed its reputation as the worst in the history of the sport, win some Big Ten games, maybe even a conference championship, but never win a bowl game outside some sepia tinged Rose Bowl during the Truman administration. The basketball team may win some preseason tournament, knock a Big Ten team out of the tourney, make some noise in the NIT, but remain completely irrelevant away from the NCAA promised land. Casual college basketball fans will not get to turn on CBS and hear commentators yammer about the Princeton Offense; a horrified nation will not be exposed to John Shurna's hideously effective jump shot.

John Shuna's shooting form continues to baffle opponents

Making the NCAA tournament gives fans a chance to see the program in the rarefied air of March Madness, a spotlight that eludes the Wildcats no matter how well they do in the NIT or how many times they claw their way to the Pizza City Bowl and command the fleeting attention of people sort of watching the game while they wait for the takeout guy to fetch their order of cheesy bread. Admittedly, this is sort of a stupid thing for college sports fans to get hung up about. Then again, caring about the outcomes of sporting events at any level is pretty stupid to begin with, though understandable considering this country's draconian laws on bear-baiting. Nevertheless, it explains why making the NCAA tournament means far more to Northwestern than any other team in the country, except for maybe fans of Army, St. Francis, William and Mary, The Citadel, the Washington Generals, and every man who has attempted to punch Steven Seagal in a Steven Seagal movie.

No henchperson has ever connected with Seagal's face
in a classic Seagal film, I'm guessing his assailants
punch him in order to give him more time to squint
quizzically an offscreen pun cue card before
breaking their elbows

WILL NORTHWESTERN MAKE THE STUPID NCAA TOURNAMENT? WHO THE HELL KNOWS

Northwestern rides into Iowa pushed by the collective angst of desperate fans, a snakebitten coach, and players determined to cement their legacy as the team that brought the 'Cats to the Dance. A loss essentially ends the their already gossamer tourney hopes in front of a taunting Iowa crowd. This will be one of Northwestern's most important games, although let's refrain from calling it that because every time Northwestern has a must-win game, they've managed to fall short by the most painfully narrow of margins.

Shurna's loading up his fine-point pens, his blue books, his TI-83
graphing calculator, maybe a protractor, got a mechanical pencil
with a couple of extra lead inserts, he's going to war

And should the Wildcats falter, should the dream season of snaring an at-large bid and low seed in a basketball tournament that they can't possibly win evaporate in Iowa City, Northwestern fans can at least look forward to wreaking havoc in the NIT. For there is nothing more Northwestern than winning the NIT and hoisting that banner to the rafters of the drafty old Welsh-Ryan Arena, dispatching the also-rans, kings of the afterthought.

If Northwestern does not get into the NCAA tournament this year, Northwestern basketball won't end. There will be another stream of eager Wildcats pursuing that elusive tourney berth next year and the year after until the NCAA tournament no longer exists, or college basketball no longer exists and is replaced by something more exciting like a worldwide university slamball challenge with a 10,000 team tournament that Northwestern fans can desperately hope to make or some sort of sport using genetically modified apes that inadvertently leads to an inevitable ape-led apocalypse. But that is for the future. Northwestern can make the tournament right now, they can fulfill fans' wild hopes of transforming from a historically bad program that has never made the tournament to a historically bad program that has made the tournament once, they can taunt alumni of certain liberal arts colleges and army officers about basketball with impunity. Which is important because I'm pretty sure there's no way Northwestern would not have the world's shittiest slamball team.

Another Bowl Loss

After a roller-coaster football year that looked lost, Northwestern's tenacity, determination, and the rather lax standards of bowl game selection committees ensured a triumphant return to the post-season. But once again, the Wildcats faltered in bowl play. Pat Fitzgerald attempted to use the bowl drought as motivation in a traditional way by using a plush monkey as a literal manifestation of the proverbial monkey on the program's back, but even this elaborate psychological ploy was unable to overcome the Wildcats' struggles on defense this season.

Niko Mafuli urges the Wildcats to win the Meineke Car
Care Bowl any which way they can

The Northwestern defense remained vulnerable to long passes as the Aggies took advantage of the Wildcats' depleted secondary. Like last year's bowl game, they managed a late rally. Like last year, they also could not get the stop they needed for one more shot to tie the game. A bowl loss puts a cap on what was a disappointing season for Northwestern that started with an ill-fated Heisman campaign, crushing losses to Army and Illinois, and an inability to close out games in the second half. Nevertheless, Northwestern at least had a signature upset against Nebraska that helped catapult them towards bowl glory.

Perhaps the saving grace of the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas was the fact that the ESPN broadcast seemed to have a single camera focused exclusively on Pat Fitzgerald. This practice, which I'm calling "Pump-vision" captured every flying fist, chest bump, and expression of utter incredulity worn by Fitz on the sidelines. My favorite moment was when Fitz suspected an Aggie player of faking an injury in an attempt to slow down Northwestern's whirlwind offense in which he used the two handed "get out of town" gesture about six times in rapid succession. If Northwestern is going to lose a bowl game, I can take at least small comfort in the fact that the coach seems to be unwilling to believe that such a disastrous turn of events can possibly take place as he appeals to the heavens to grant him clarity on why he must suffer the misfortune of a defensive pass interference call.

THE CAROUSEL OF COACHES

The end of college football season has gone out with a flurry of clandestine hirings and furious sackings. An already maligned bowl season has been rife with interim head coaches overseeing benighted programs decapitated of their leadership. Northwestern fans, for example, saw future A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin overseeing the chaos from a swanky luxury box while departing Aggie interim coach Tim De Ruyter dried off his gatorade bath and hopped in a moving van to Fresno State. The Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco featured no head coaches. Meanwhile, eager alumni of these programs have flooded the internet with rumors about impending hires, which leads to an increased amount of perceived betrayal and double-dealing. This process gives college football fanatics the bearing of medieval tyrants forever executing their hapless ministers.

Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the
Ming Dynasty, consolidated his power
through bloody purges of his officials
in the late fourteenth century whereas
today university athletic departments
consolidate power by firing Rick
Neuheisel

Fortunately, fired coaches rarely stay fired unless they did something dastardly such as breaking into science labs to stage illegal bacteria devouring contest gambling rings. Therefore, rumors are swirling that former Illini head coach Ron Zook has been linked to several prominent defensive coordinator jobs. Unfortunately, hiring him would rob the people of Earth of an opportunity to see what Ron Zook would do with a life outside the game of football.

A return to coaching would scuttle plans
for new PBS television series "Ron Can Zook"

NBA

In the midst of college's bowl crisis and the NFL playoffs, the NBA has returned from an owner-mandated hibernation to bring us 66 action packed games that dozens of people will care about before the beginning of the eight month long NBA playoffs. The Bulls chose to stay to course this year by only rescuing shooting guard Rip Hamilton from exile in Detroit. Most importantly, the start of an NBA season means that it is time to check in on where NBA journeyman Drew Gooden is currently playing.

The Drew Gooden Relocation Guide shows an unexpectedly clean-shaven Gooden
in Milwaukee. Note that the faded line indicates that the Mavericks traded
Gooden to the Wizards, but he lasted all of four days in DC and never suited up.
I recommend perusing the map while listening to the
theme song from the Jeffersons, although I would be thrilled if an enterprising
BYCTOM reader was willing to create an Indiana Jones-style map tracking
Drew Gooden movement

WHO WAS THE GREATEST OUTLAW CANNIBAL MOUNTAIN MAN OF THE AMERICAN WEST?

During the mid-nineteenth century, westward-drifting Americans came into conflict with harsh natural barriers, the Native American tribes upon whose territory they encroached, and, of course, the other desperate, quixotic, or otherwise deranged fellow settlers on their path. It was inevitable that these conflicts would breed tall tales, bushy beards, and the almost certain turn towards disturbing acts of cannibalism.

According to Wikipedia, both legendary mountain man and murderer Liver-Eating Johnson and robber, murderer, and cannibal Boone Helm are associated with the same almost certainly apocryphal story of kidnap, escape, survival, and eating people. The story alleges that either Johnson or Helm had been kidnapped by Blackfoot to be sold to the Crow. Instead, one of these men (although probably neither) escaped and then killed and chopped off the sentry's foot for nourishment for a 200 mile journey. An important part of the historical process to figure out which of these men may have been the one most accurately tied to this story involves discovering frontier sources, arduously investigating records, and cross-checking the legends with available data and how stories about each man were constructed. On BYCTOM, however, I am dedicated to being as irresponsible as humanly possible with these stories and shall attempt to use an arduous 25 second google search to determine who ate that guy by examining such important criteria as:

NAME: While the Liver-Eating moniker is a good get for a mountain man, Johnson's actual name is fairly unremarkable. He may have been born John Garrison and changed his name to John Johnston. On the other hand, someone named Boone Helm was essentially born in buckskin. Even better, he was apparently associated with someone named "Littlebury Shoot." Boone Helm, in fact, not only sounds like the likely name of someone involved in an apocryphal nineteenth century cannibal scenario, it also could equally serve as a hat worn as part of a nineteenth century cannibal ritual as in "Won't be startin' the cannibalizin' 'til I put on my Boone Helm."

Robert Carlyle could very well be wearing a Boone Helm in the
1999 nineteenth century western cannibal movie "Ravenous,"
which I remember mainly for the bizarrely jaunty soundtrack
during a desperate cannibal chase scene

BEARD: I can't find an actual photo of Helm, so unless his beard was so glorious that he eschewed clothing in favor of covering himself in beard, I will assume that Johnson's more grizzled look increased his likelihood of being a part of this story.

Liver-Eating Johnson

CANNIBALISM: Both Johnson and Helm were no strangers to acts of cannibalism. Helm is one of the most notorious serial-killing cannibals in the history of the United States. According to Nathaniel P. Langford's 1912 Vigilante days and ways, Helm was "one of those hideous monsters of depravity whom neither precept nor example could have savred from a life of crime." Helm killed his cousin (the aforementioned Littlebury Shoot), but escaped from an asylum to blaze his trail of murder. Langford relates one example of a murder from an encounter in a saloon between Helm and a man known only as "Dutch Fred." According to Langford, Helm taunted the Dutch Fred with "many oaths and epithets and flourishes of his revolver." To what extent is Langford a trusted source with regard to Helm? I have no idea, but the chapter ends with an anecdote about Helm's brother named "Old Tex" who made a close friend by threatening to shoot him on sight and then offering to let his erstwhile enemy shoot him. That section closes with the helpful note that "Tex was killed by being thrown from a horse, in Walla Walla, in the year 1865," and there is nothing about that sentence that sentence that is not impossibly grizzled.

Liver-eating Johnson earned his nickname by supposedly eating the livers of the Crow men that he killed in his blood feud. As his Wikipedia entry elegantly describes: "There were three Johnsons, nicknames were commonplace, and with Johnson's show of eating the liver, he received his name." Most of what we know about Johnson, however, comes from a long tradition of genuine frontier mularky, and therefore his liver-eating may have sprung from his own attempt to intimidate people or the drunken campfire of a whiskey-fueled cowpoke. The fact that Johnson lived until 1900 and was apparently content to be known as a consumer of human liver without even the decency to whip up some fava beans makes me more inclined to believe that he was less likely to sustain himself on a leg.

MONKEY REMOVAL

Northwestern's bowl loss has only magnified the other major embarrassment on its athletic record by failing to qualify for the NCAA basketball tournament. Like the football team, the Wildcats came up short in two crucial Big Ten games against Illinois and Michigan and seem unlikely to make a tournament run this year. Carmody, however, has no stuffed monkeys for his basketball team. Instead, the Wildcats must hope to catch fire in the second half of the season or win the Big Ten Tournament outright for the dream of an NCAA berth. Or wait for the inevitable distortion of history that will pile the 2012 Northwestern athletic teams with either unearned accolades or unsubstantiated stories about Fitz consuming a plush monkey on the sidelines of a bowl game while protesting a penalty.

The Texas Bowl

Since the last post, the Northwestern football team lost its final game against Michigan State, leaving it in a precarious bowl position with a 6-6 record. Fortunately, bowl berths are not determined by precise formula, rationality, or by a giant wheel of non-BCS bowl games as I would prefer; instead it is through the much more entertaining process of intrigue, betrayal, and payola.

"It is he who has the most RVs that travels to the sunniest bowls," is something that
Machiavelli may have said if he was in the feudal position of NCAA President Mark
Emmert (shown at right demonstrating how to crush his enemies)

The chaos of the Big Ten season left several teams scheming against each other for the plum prize of mediocre bowl games played in barren stadiums to meager television audiences consisting of airport denizens and barflies. Northwestern took advantage of its network of international operatives and no doubt a sordid dabbling in horse-trading, bribery, and subtle threats scrawled on wax-sealed parchments to ensure that the Wildcat football team will once again return to its winter home in Texas. Since the 2000 season, the 'Cats have played all but two bowls in the Lone Star State.

APPROACHING A TEXAS UTOPIA

Texas is known for its fierce independent spirit, its frontier lineage, and its prominence in pickup truck commercials that air constantly during NFL games. My favorite Texas residents, however, were a colony of French and Belgian followers of Charles Fourier. Fourier was a major French socialist thinker in the early nineteenth century but, according to historian Rondel Davidson in an article on the colony, the "tedious, ambiguous, and often preposterous nature of his writings" prevented them from catching on until after his death in 1837. His ideas centered on the creation of communal societies as a reaction to the social ills of early industrialization, but his plans for these societies contained the sort of hyper-specific mathematical precision of an delightfully off-the-rails social alchemist.

Fourier is commonly mocked for his grand pronouncements that, once society had been perfected, the natural world would respond by turning the seas into an ocean of lemonade. This reductionist view on Fourier as a mad lemonade prophet is understandably irresistible, especially considering his influence on utopian communities throughout the nineteenth century. Fourier scholars, however, would add that there is far more to his theories, for example his hatred of saltwater ecosystems as he wrote in his 1808 Theory of the Four Movements:

This breaking down of the sea water by the boreal liquid is a necessary preliminary to the development of new sea creatures, which will provide a host of amphibious servants to pull ships and help in fisheries, replacing the ghastly leions of sea-monsters which will be annihilated by the admixture of boreal fluid and the consequent changes in the sea's structure. The sudden death of all of them will rid the Ocean of these vile creatures , images of the intensity of our passions which are represented by the bloodthirsty battles of so many monsters.

Fourier (l) shared with other important philosophers an intense hatred of sea
creatures

The Texas colony at La Réunion was founded by a Fourier disciple named Victor Considerant. As Davidson relates in "Victor Considerant and the Failure of La Réunion" from the Jan 1973 edition of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Considerant found in Fourier's communal societies the solution to the social problems of mid-nineteenth century industrialization. He headed the Fourier Society and did far more to promote Fourierism than Fourier himself. His visions of social order saw a more gradual transition to communal society through government reform. In 1849, Considerant became involved in a plot to overthrow the newly-crowned Louis Napoleon and found himself in Belgian exile. Considerant could handle Belgium for less than three years; the American Fourierist Albert Brisbane invited him to America to plan a community in 1852.

Considerant's first preparation to
colonize Texas involved growing this
mustache

Considerant became quite taken with the climate of Texas and the spirit of the American frontier. By 1854, he had published two works outlining his plans for a colony called La Réunion outside of Dallas and began to raise subscribers in Europe. Colonists arrived in the summer of 1855, but it quickly fell apart. Davidson identifies several major causes for the failure of the community. For one, Texas land became a hot commodity while Consdierant was off raising funds, and the colonists were left with considerably worse land with a far greater price tag. He also had problems with his settlers, having failed to construct a Venn diagram showing the yawning chasm between hardy frontier people and people interested in the ideas of Fourier. Instead, he found that the main group of settlers were intellectuals almost completely bereft of the skills needed to survive in the wilderness. In addition, these settlers faced nativist anger from other settlers not particularly keen on an influx of European socialists, and beside that, the settlers found their French mostly useless. Even the winters were unusually severe. Considerant found the situation increasingly hopeless and grew despondent. He left for Europe in 1858 and, by the time he returned in 1859, La Réunion had become Le Abandon as colonists melted into Dallas or elsewhere.

Today, the frontier settlements of La Réunion have been swallowed up by downtown Dallas, its floundering farms and inept smiths and barren general stores entombed by shopping malls and interstates. And now, the idea of a French utopian socialist colony in Dallas seems as unlikely as a Northwestern bowl win after a decade of bowl results akin to the colonists' miserable crops.

TRIUMPH IN THE MUFFLER BOWL

Northwestern fans have come to Houston elated at securing a bowl berth from a disappointing season. Texas A&M started the season with grander ambitions and fell into the Texas Bowl after a comically disastrous string of second-half collapses. This season saw several bitter ends for the Aggies. They lost an opportunity to leave the Big 12 with a victory over arch-rival Texas on a last second field goal. Head coach Mike Sherman was fired, and interim coach Tim DeRuyter will leave for Fresno State. The Aggies and their paramilitary fanbase will make the short trip down the road hoping to end the season on a more positive note.

Mike Sherman Judd Nelsons his way
out of College Station

Despite these pressures, there is no doubt that a bowl victory means more to the Wildcats. Anyone reading this already knows and is sick of being reminded that they have yet to hoist a postseason trophy since 1949. Winning a bowl game, along with making the NCAA tournament, are the twin bogeys preventing Northwestern from fully ascending from its reputation as the worst athletic major college athletic program in the history of college sports to the comfort of mediocrity.

Nevertheless, the Wildcats face a tall task. A&M has an excellent passing attack led by quarterback Ryan Tannehill, and the Wildcats have struggled to stop big plays in the air all season. On the other side, Northwestern fans hope a recovered Dan Persa and the dynamic playmakers on the offense can keep up with their counterparts.

A lot of people grouse about the meaningless outcome of bowl games, but why scoff at more college football? I guarantee that no fan base has ever wanted to win the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas more than Northwestern wants a win tomorrow, even if all it means is that Northwestern was slightly better at football this year. And I'm sure that when the final whistle blows and the Wildcats pump their fists in victory in homage to their fist-pumping coach, they won't be celebrating being number 50. They'll know in their hearts that they are number 49.

VICTORY IN TEXAS

The idea of French intellectuals flailing helplessly about the Texan countryside while spending evenings consulting their sea creature removal manuals is fairly amusing, but the nineteenth century utopian commune movement also demonstrates an admirable confrontation with the monumental task of finding ways to create a just and equitable society. And though some of their philosophers had loony passages in their works, or their communities may have failed to account for the logistics of actually creating a colony, we should take the mantle of Considerant and declare that it is Texas where the impossible shall become reality, the oceans shall turn to lemonade, and Northwestern will win a bowl game.

Bowl Eligible

Northwestern defeated Minnesota in a tense LEGENDS DIVISION showdown with Minnesota, smashing the six win barrier, and securing a golden ticket that can potentially lead to a phenomenally crappy bowl game in the desolate outer reaches of the bowl landscape.

Far-flung Bowl officials were on hand to scout Northwestern in
their 28-13 victory over the Golden Gophers

But six wins is not enough to guarantee a bowl berth, especially in the topsy-turvy mediocrity of the Big Ten this season. At six wins, the 'Cats can be left out in the cold. In 2004, the Wildcats' 6-6 record was not enough for them to get to a bowl game after faltering against Timmy Chang's Hawaiian Juggernaut. This year, it seems the football team can still squeak their way to the type of bowl game mocked by people inexplicably angered by the presence of more college football, but nothing is certain.

Northwestern got to their sixth win thanks to a seemingly improving defense. Minnesota effectively moved the ball, but had trouble scoring-- one threat was neutralized by a Brian Peters interception despite the fact that his broken left hand is swaddled in a club cast reminiscent of the tail end of an anklyosaurus.

The stopping power of an ankylosaurus is accurately modeled
in this scholarly comic from something called lesdinosaures.net

DINOSAURIA

The discovery of dinosaur bones in the nineteenth century led to a predictable amount of scientific intrigue, back-biting, and accusation that occurs in the volatile confluence of a nascent scientific discipline, rough exploration, and Cretaceous grave-robbing. The enmity between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh has been well chronicled (most entertainingly in Bill Bryson's wonderful A Short History of Nearly Everything) as a reliable source of comical dinosaur rivalry, as their competition to extract and identify dinosaur species fueled an incredible advancement of both dinosaur knowledge and academic pettiness.

The relationship between Cope and Marsh contained spectacular examples of skullduggery in the name of science. Marsh outclassed his rival at dinosaur-based espionage. At an early collaboration in New Jersey in the 1860s, Marsh apparently stabbed Cope in the back by bribing site workers to send fossils only to him. A Cope expedition in the 1870s included two men in Marsh's employ; one of them apparently claimed that he planned to lead Cope away from fossil sites in a classic act of dinosaur perfidy. Marsh, however, suffered a reversal of fortune when one of his men sent some fossils to Cope.

Dino-rivals Cope (l) and Marsh. Marsh is the bearded man in the top center of
the photo at right, shown with his phalanx of armed assistants no doubt
wielding rifles should they meet a rival fossil-collecting gang or should they
dig deep enough to uncover less deceased dinosaurs

The two sniped at each other in newspapers and scholarly journals, disagreeing over taxonomy and other scientific concerns. Throughout the 1870s, they struggled to keep major fossil finds from each other, going as far as using hush money, accepting tips from pseudonymous fossil hunters, and keeping tabs on each others' fossil collecting henchmen. This secrecy was encouraged by their increasing reluctance to travel to fossil sites themselves, instead funding teams of mercenary diggers and "dinosaur rustlers" that attempted to steal fossils from rival camps. I like to imagine that they also sent telegrams to each other gloating over their ruthless thefts, threatening each other, and using the word "bones" as often as possible such as "When you awaken tomorrow, you will find that it is I who controls the greatest sum of bones," or "I shall never forgive this treacherous act of bone-thieving and you should hope that you do not live to see how I avenge my bones," or ""I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I will break your bones. A bone for a bone, that is how I account for my bones."

An 1896 Marsh illustration of a Stegosaurus that in the best of
possible worlds would have been mailed to Cope with the phrase
"Feast your eyes upon these glorious bones" scrawled triumphantly
underneath

Marsh held the upper hand throughout the 1870s and 1880s. He ascended to the presidency of the National Academy of Sciences in 1883 and secured a position with the U.S. geological survey. Cope struck back when he began attacking Marsh and John Wesley Powell, the head of the Survey. The rivalry continued to their death, when Cope ordered his skull preserved and measured against Marsh's in order to prove that he literally had the largest brain. Marsh did not accept this phrenological challenge. Their legacy lives on, however, in my new publication called The Smallest Stakes: A Journal of Comical Academic Arguments featuring articles such as "I'm laughing at your use of the term 'trope': a catalog of my colleagues' bumbling ontology, 1991-present," and "I am bringing my burliest graduate students to our next conference."

THE CHAMPIONS OF CHARLESTON

Not only has Northwestern attained bowl eligibility, but the brave Wildcat basketball team has managed to win a pre-season basketball tourney of dubious prestige. Northwestern avenged an NIT loss against Tulsa, beat LSU, and downed Seton Hall in the championship game to win the Charleston Classic.

The Wildcats, resplendent in their new uniforms, jubilantly
hoist the hardware

The tournament win augers well for a veteran team. They will struggle to fill the shoes of Northwestern basketball legend Juice Thompson. John Shurna will attempt to lead the 'Cats to the promised land with a familiar cast of characters such as tournament MVP Drew Crawford, Alex Marcotullio, JerShon Cobb, and the unstoppable lumbering of Luka Mirkovic. Northwestern also returns last years successful formula of a high-scoring variant of the Princeton Offense and the disruptive 1-3-1 zone defense. The team is 4-0 after the tournament and a win over inexplicable perennial season-opener Texas Pan-American with whom the Wildcats must have some sort of intense bone feud.

PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

The Chicago Bears collected another convincing win against San Diego last week. But they also lost Jay Cutler for the season, just as he began engineering an effective passing game fueled by his cannon arm and elusive mobility honed by running for his life. The offense will instead turn to relatively unknown backup Caleb Hanie. The Bears came close to reuniting with Chicago fan favorite Kyle Orton, who seemed poised to ride into town and help the squad Bears their way to victory with his array of acceptable mediocre professional passing after being unceremoniously dumped by a Denver Broncos team enthralled by their 1940s quarterback play.

"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?" Kyle Orton wins the crowd
with another 6 yard out

Instead, Orton was snapped up by the Kansas City Chiefs through the arcane waiver process that reportedly saw the Dallas Cowboys attempt to claim him specifically to prevent him from helping potential NFC playoff rivals in a move that Jerry Jones learned from the treacherous Cardinal Richelieu. As a final indignity, the Bears signed one of the McCown brothers. Though they can still make the playoffs by thrashing a weak AFC west slate, the odds of seeing Cutler triumphantly return for a Bears playoff game and sulk the squad to victory seem as remote as they did after their early season losses.

THE MICHIGAN STATE OF THINGS TO COME DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE WITH THAT STATE PUN

Meanwhile, Northwestern's football squad faces off Saturday against a Michigan State team with essentially nothing to play for. This is an unexpected result given the apparent reluctance for any team to win the Big Ten this year, suggesting that the divisions should have been named Chaos and Entropy (in all seriousness, that would still be less dumb than Legends and Leaders). Instead, the new Big Ten Championship game has unexpectedly taken the drama out of the last week of the season. The Spartans have already clinched a spot in the game and are unlikely to position themselves for a BCS spot unless they win the inaugural Big Ten Championship game. State, therefore, has little to gain by beating Northwestern. Mark Dantonio claims the Spartans will go all out to win, though it would be surprising to see him risking injury to some of his more important or most battered players.

For Northwestern, a victory guarantees an elusive bowl spot and moves them up the rank to a more prestigious game in the vague hierarchy of crappy bowls. They'll also be playing an emotional last home game for the seniors and attempt to wipe away the disastrous five game losing streak with a five triumphant victories, a point that Fitz will not publicly make, although I suspect he feeds his monotonous "one game at a time" nonsense to the press while secretly filling his players' heads with odes to their greatness and portraits of himself leading them to glory across the Alps while perched on an elephant that is stomping rival Big Ten mascots like so much Alp detritus.

SENIOR DAY TUSSLE

Northwestern's program has entered another spectacular year with a bowl eligible football team and a Charleston Champion basketball squad. For some other programs, these accomplishments are risible but given the historical performance of both teams, these are titanic victories. Northwestern can make this a historical year by winning a bowl game and (dare I dream it) making the NCAA tournament on the back of Shurna's deadly chest heave. There is nothing to stop them, accept for jealous rivals who attack them in academic journals of sporting success and try to get their hands on their precious bones.

Minneosta

The Wildcats took care of business against Rice last weekend and head into a crucial showdown with Minnesota for bowl eligibility at Ryan Field on Saturday. The Wildcat defense contained Rice, the offense rolled as Persa connected with Ebert for a 90 yard score, and Northwestern managed to win a game it was supposed to win without causing spectators any undue heart palpitations.

A Northwestern fan prepares for a game
against a plucky non-conference opponent

The seemingly-revitalized Wildcat defense held Rice scoreless for most of the game. Their resolve will be tested against Minnesota, who gamely stepped into Northwestern's traditional role of upsetting Iowa, and retained possession of their hideous pig-trophy. The Gophers also hung in against Michigan State, but fell apart against a Wisconsin team that decided that the best way to avoid losing on a fluky hail mary was to completely annihilate their opponent. Minnesota QB Marqueis Gray has battled through injuries this season as well as some seemingly inexplicable benchings in favor of his freshman colleague Max Shortell, but looks to be at full strength against Northwestern.

The Wildcats are favored this weekend, but beating Minnesota has rarely been easy, even as their program has veered comically off the rails since the end of the Glen Mason era. The 'Cats suffered a defeat to the Gophers in 2009, and have found victory by the narrowest of margins; they squeaked by last year and in 2007 by a single point, and needed a near walk-off interception return in order to secure victory in 2008. No one on either side is taking anyone for granted.

Minnesota's first-year head coach Jerry
Kill relies on the ancient motivational art
of bellowing to ensure excellence from his
players

PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL UPDATE

The Chicago Bears have been surprisingly decent. Like last year, the Bears spent the early season on a quest to punish quarterback Jay Cutler by subjecting him to an unending series of sackings. And again like last year, the offensive line has found some semblance of cohesion and Mike Martz has either been convinced or cajoled at the point of a bayonet into calling more rushing plays and short passes in his Greatest Show on Sludge offensive attack. In short, we've seen the Bears return to winning in spite of themselves with good defense, a great running back, and phenomenal special teams.

For most of their existence, the Bears have had the same identity, and it is amazing how, no matter what players or coaches end up on the team, the Bears remain the Bears. My favorite Bears season was probably the 2001 season, where a mediocre Bears team careened into the playoffs thanks to two consecutive Mike Brown overtime interceptions. The most Bears victory of all time, however, probably was this 2004 game against the Tennessee Titans. Chicago quarterback Craig Krenzel passed for 116 yards and two interceptions, and the Bears scored in regulation on an interception return by defensive end Michael Haynes, an R.W. McQuarters punt return, and a field goal. They won in overtime with a safety.

Announcers enjoyed reminding viewers that Krenzel
majored in molecular genetics at Ohio State. In this photo,
a number of Dallas Cowboys science enthusiasts happily
indulge his wish to get a closer look at Cowboys Stadium
grass ecosystem

Last Saturday's game against the Lions was another classic Bears win, as they scored touchdowns on two interception returns, a Devin Hester punt return, and a Forte run set up by a Detroit fumble. The game was also notable for a comical brawl ignited by a Matt Stafford tackle on an interception return, which emptied both benches.

The Lions are lucky that Martz coaches from the
press box and is not allowed to bring his
gladiatorial implements to Soldier Field

Though the Bears are unlikely to win the North unless Aaron Rodgers decides to spite Packer fans by inexplicably retiring mid-season, purchasing a large tract of land in Mississippi, and contentedly drive a lawn mower around its premises for several months, they remain in the mix for a Wild Card berth.

THE WHITE SMOKE SAYS THE CUBS HAVE A NEW MANAGER

Theo Epstein has emerged from his Wrigleyville lair to proclaim that Dale Sveum will be the Cubs' new manager. He will replace Mike Quade, who lost favor with the organization because he refused to intimidate the opposition with an array of false eyebrows patterned on historical figures.

Quade models the "Eyebrows of Yalta" collection

The exact impact that a manager has on a baseball team is not completely certain. Unlike football head coaches, who spend a week devising their team's overall strategy, or basketball head coaches who expertly use timeouts to slow the last minute of a close game to a crawl and contort comically along the bench for our amusement, baseball managers affect a game mainly through setting lineups, devising pitching changes, foolishly calling for bunts despite concrete evidence that sacrificing outs is more often than not detrimental to a team, and occasionally berating umpires in a manner that compromises the dignity of everyone involved. It seems in the modern game, the manager's job largely involves controlling the clubhouse and eating shit from the media, especially in Chicago, where pundits blast managers for not leading their teams to play better. On a team bereft of major league talent like the Cubs, this means that the media expects the managers to emit baseball improvement rays in order to force his players to hit and field better.

I don't know anything about Sveum. I'm working on making sure I pronounce his name correctly so I can most accurately hurl epithets at my television when he does something order a hit and run with Alfonso Soriano batting or call Jeff Samardzija to pitch, or any of the million other minor decisions a manager will make during the course of the endless season as the Cubs inevitably sputter through a rebuilding year. I mostly know him as the third base coach of the Red Sox who was often criticized for his ambition in sending runners home.

Sveum (l) performs the vital third base coach role of congratulating a player
hitting a home run. Reed Sox fans' venom for the occasional out at the plate
was matched at the time for Cubs fans' consternation with then-third base
coach Wendell Kim. Kim earned two derogatory nicknames: "Wavin' Wendell"
and "Send 'em in Kim"

Sveum joins a long line of Cubs managers dating back to Albert Spalding in in 1876. The position of manager was in flux in the nineteenth and early twentieth century with managers who were either active players or retired players more akin to modern managers. The Cubs' nineteenth and early twentieth-century squads used a mixture of player-managers such as Cap Anson, Frank Chance, Silver Flint, and the dashing Bob Ferguson, who had not only one of the most swashbuckling middle names in baseball history (Vavasour), but also one of its best nicknames ("Death to Flying Things"). In the years between Anson and Chance, Cubs managers did not play, but directed their teams from the bench, content to spit, smoke, and encourage their players' general baseballmanship.

Cubs managers from 1878-1905 (clockwise from top left) Bob
Ferguson, Cap Anson, Silver Flint, Tom Burns, Tom Loftus,
and Frank Selee. The clean-shaven Frank Chance took over in
1905, shattering baseball's mustache ceiling

BOWL ELIGIBILITY ON THE LINE

Northwestern has looked greatly improved on defense the last two weeks and will be looking to prove that their defense is not merely the result of an inadequate Nebraska coaching scheme and playing Rice. Otherwise, they will have to rely on a traditional Northwestern game plan to outscore the opposition. Minnesota fans certainly see this as a winnable game for their reeling squad after a slate of disappointing early losses.

A win here puts the Wildcats into technical bowl eligibility. Unfortunately, with the rest of the Big Ten likely to fill its berths, the 'Cats will need some teams on the precipice of eligibility to fall apart and hope that the bowl fatcats come a-callin' with their wads of cash, their silver topped canes, and their promises to do their stadium up all pretty. Otherwise, the Wildcats will be ineffectually waiting by the phone in the cold before challenging the University of Chicago to some sort of Quiz Bowl in order to satisfy bowl-starved Northwestern students and alumni. Yet all of this prognostication is for naught without a win against the plucky Gophers and perhaps even an upset against Michigan State to ensure a place at some miserable bowl and turn fans' frowns upside down.

Husked Corn and Other Staple Crops

Northwestern beat Nebraska. Northwestern beat Nebraska. Northwestern went into Lincoln, Nebraska, beat the #10 team in the country, and has begun an inexorable march to a Pizza City bowl to wreak havoc against another middling team that has also slunk into the postseason, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Pat Fitzgerald can smile again after a rough stretch for his Wildcat football squad

The Northwestern offense once again rallied around jack-of-all-trades Kain Colter after Dan Persa's injury in the second quarter. Colter hit Jeremy Ebert on an 81 yard pass and led the 'Cats on a game-clinching seven minute drive against Nebraska's fearsome "Blackshirt" defense that got its name from Husker football coach Bob Devaney's hatred of former Italian Prime Minister Luigi Facta.

Luigi Facta is best known for stepping down during Mussolini's March on Rome in
1922. He initially gained power for a perceived positive attitude due to his perennially
smiling mustache, among the most spectacular of Europe's interwar mustaches. I
found the logo on the right on Nebraska's official page and not an ill-fated Nebraska
video game for the Atari Jaguar where the Husker defenders were forced to prove they
were bad enough dudes to rescue the president

More importantly, Northwestern's defense played its best game of the season. Though they allowed a career day in the air for Husker QB Tyler Martinez, they kept the Nebraska running game in check, even though they have a running back named "Rex Burkhead," a running back name that would only be topped by something like Truck Shoveler. The Wildcat defense stopped Martinez, Wrench Lunchhandler, and the Husker offensive line repeatedly and caused two key fumbles as the Nebraska coaches stubbornly stuck to the their run game against a stout Northwestern front that I now know would make these Wildcats unstoppable in 1904.

RICE

Northwestern must hold steady as Rice comes to Evanston to avenge last years 30-13 loss in Houston. Though Rice has had a tough year at 3-6 and sports one of the most porous defenses in college football, Northwestern fans know first-hand the danger of taking an opponent for granted. A home loss to Rice after last week's monumental victory in Lincoln would be a profound reversal of fortune that could end Northwestern's bowl hopes.

Rice is itself coming off a momentum-swinging victory over Conference USA foes UTEP. Rice quarterback Nick Fanuzzi came off the bench to lead the Owls with 405 yards passing and three touchdowns, as noted in this article from the Rice Thresher student newspaper that is now making me mildly disappointed that their football team is not also named The Threshers with a correspondingly violent Texas football hand gesture. The Owls have also managed a Big Ten upset this season as they defeated Purdue and helped move the Danny Hope regime to "embattled" status.

Purdue Coach Danny Hope has become more haggard with every
loss

Dan Persa will return as quarterback for the Wildcats after suffering a shoulder injury that forced him out of the Nebraska game. Persa will add that to his growing list of ailments that he has shrugged off like a nineteenth century strongman who plays through injury because science has yet to diagnose them properly, for example shrugging off a hernia induced by excess triangular weight lifting as a bowel malady cured only by snorting lizard powders and applying electrodes to his person.

GOING TO THE MOON

Rice Stadium was the famous venue of President Kennedy's 1960 Moon Mission Speech, where he likened space travel to the difficult feats of climbing the highest mountain, flying across the Atlantic, and attempting to defeat the University of Texas at football. Northwestern has unfortunately as far as I'm aware been the site for any presidential moon grandstanding.

Kennedy returned to Rice a year later for his lesser
known follow-up speech entitled "I Hate the Moon,"
where Kennedy got tough on the moon, characterizing
its alteration of American tides as suspiciously
communist in nature, casting suspicion upon the 1961
lunar eclipse, and earning a rousing ovation for claiming
that "if the man in the moon were to come into this
stadium right now, I would punch him his smug lunar
face"

Kennedy wanted to send astronauts to the moon as quickly as possible, but space travel created complicated legal issues over moon sovereignty. In 1967, United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union signed the Outer Space Treaty to regulate acceptable uses for outer space. The Treaty banned launching nuclear missiles from space or storing them on the moon or other celestial bodies. It also banned setting up lunar military installations. The Treaty's provisions unfortunately served as a direct provocation for Bond villains who spent the remainder of the century constructing moon bases and threatening the Earth with all manner of space-borne attacks such as missiles, weather disruptions, and, in up to 65% of Bond movies, some sort of space laser.

The Treaty was in part a reaction to American meddling in space for defense purposes. The 1967 West Ford project launched 480 million cooper diodes into orbit in order to construct an artificial ionosphere in order to facilitate global radio communications. The project was created as an alternative to conventional cable or radio communications that the government feared were vulnerable to Soviet disruption. British and Soviet scientists protested, with Pravda chipping in with a headline reading "USA Dirties Space." The project inspired a clause in the treaty to provide for international consultation to alert other nations to space experiments. Satellite technology quickly rendered the West Ford project obsolete, although remnant diodes remain in orbit.

A 1979 Moon Treaty attempted to subject space and all celestial bodies to international control. The treaty banned exploration of celestial bodies without notifying other nations or consulting the UN Secretary General and forbid claiming sovereignty over other planets, moons, and the like. This treaty has been approved by Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, and Uruguay, none of which have managed to successfully put a person in position to either peacefully explore the heavens or exploit space for nefarious means or tell other to stay the hell away from Ganymede.

An important array of laws governing the use of outer space exist
specifically to prevent this from happening

CAN NORTHWESTERN GO BOWLING

Last Friday, the Northwestern football season appeared over. Now, the Wildcats have renewed hope. A victory over Rice and either Minnesota or Michigan State will make Northwestern eligible for spectacularly awful bowl game/tractor expo and I can't possibly be more excited. Of course, at 6-6, Northwestern can go to a bowl only if other conferences cannot fill their allotments or the teams bow out of the bowl from shame or some sort of ridiculous NCAA infraction such as punishing players for high-fiving too vigorously for the NCAA's liking. Winning out will guarantee a bowl berth in some god-forsaken wind-swept land. Northwestern fans like the team's chances more against Rice and Minnesota, although the Gophers have been dangerously scrappy lately. Michigan State remains the toughest game on the schedule, though one can never underestimate the Spartans' predilection for unexpected localized ineptitude.

After being mired in the doom and gloom of a losing season, Northwestern has hope again. And if we can play a basketball game on an aircraft carrier, why can't Northwestern play a shitty bowl game on the moon? We do these things not because they're easy, but because they're hard.