Tyrell Sutton is The Real Deal.

Yes, much of NU history is before my time, but I'm still familiar with this photo:Anyway, another NU running back made his way into the pages of America's favorite sorta outdated sports mag (which will hopefully ignore that thing I said about them being outdated if I ever apply for a job there), as Tyrell Sutton managed to work his way into the vaunted Pop Culture Grid in last week's issue. Check it out here. 

The lower gas prices comment was confusing at best, and the John Mayer thing is a little bit embarrassing. Other than that, Tyrell's responses were your run-of-the-mill pop culture grid answers, and the real confusing thing in the grid was Juan Diaz picking The Joker as his example of a mad man, with the reasoning being "for trying to mess with Batman." Because, I mean, that movie was out like, a year ago, and because he seems to be ignoring the whole thing about the Joker being a psychopathic killing machine who enjoys diabolically laughing, pathologically lying about his past, and forcing people to discover the darker sides of human morality by subjecting them to sadistic tests. Because I'd consider that the #1 reason he's a mad man, and the whole "messing with Batman" thing would be secondary to me. But Tyrell managed to get out of the whole process relatively unblemished. 

Anyway, it's good to see that Tyrell is becoming a legit enough NFL player that he's getting into SI. He keeps on doing good things for the Packers - he didn't have as many rushing yards this week, but got into the receiving game and was the Packers' primary kickoff returner. He's definitely having the best preseason of any ex-Wildcat, so, good for Tyrell. 

And by the way, the comments section has been rocking recently. I like that. Keep it up. 

Trifecta of Doom: Towson, the Big Ten Network, and Northwestern being Northwestern.

Title ominous enough for you?

Anyway, I know it's messed up to complain about Northwestern's television situation: I'd think I lost the right to do so after watching the NU-UC Riverside game on an airplane. (I also once watched an inning of NU softball on a plane.) But today, I gotta gripe.

Basically, a perfect storm of Northwestern being Northwestern events are conspiring to make it really, really difficult for me to watch Saturday's game vs. Towson.

The first, and simplest reason, is that college football starts September 5th, and Northwestern, unlike most schools in the country, is on the quarter system, meaning we start about 3-4 weeks after every other school in the country, and well into the swing of the football season. The problem here is that I live about 800 miles away in New York City, meaning I won't be going to this game or the EMU game. This is just one of those sort of annoying things about NU football: we get 2-3 games every year with essentially no student section, which means our attendence isa bout 3-4000 lower than it should be. 

But how to watch the game in New York? If you're not living in the states that contain Big Ten schools, it's already sort of hard to get the Big Ten Network - you have to pay to get that station, plus a bunch of other channels you don't particularly care about - and the cost of this and the fact that it will come in handy for maybe two games a year make this an unappealing option. 

However, even if I did have the network, a quick glance at the TV schedule for next Saturday on Time Warner Cable shows that with a ridiculous 7 Big Ten games beginning at noon ET, NU gets the short end of the stick: Ohio State and Minnesota will be getting the ESPN and ESPN2 slots, while MSU, Purdue, Iowa, and Penn State get the Big Ten Network and three overflow channels, while the Towson vs. Northwestern game doesn't air live, instead getting shown at 6 PM the next day. If this information is incorrect, somebody tell me, but my cable box and the Time Warner website appear to verify this. I wouldn't be surprised: last year, NU vs. Duke was the only football game containing a Big Ten team that didn't get televised. I presume watching the game is easier in Big Ten country, but that's the problem with going to a school 800 miles from home.

It certainly doesn't help that a) we're Northwestern, the school with the smallest fanbase and the least regionally centered one, thus making airing the game anywhere unappealing and b) the fact that we're playing Towson, a team that struggles against FCS opponents, thus making the game completely unwatchable for anyone who isn't an NU fan. 

Also, the fact that NU's fanbase is so diluted makes it difficult to make a large gathering of NU fans anywhere. Therefore, while the Buckeyes and every other college in the world has a well-established NYC bar, I've only heard rumors that there's a place like that in New York, and I've never actually met anybody who's been there. (If any of you can give word on whether that place is, in fact, an actual place, please, I'm desperate over here.)

Personally, I plan on gathering the NYC NU crew together at a sports bar where I watched the SIU game last year, but any suggestions about places to watch the game in New York are appreciated. 

Long story short, the fact that we're Northwestern and we're playing Towson makes it sort of difficult to find Saturday's game for a large percentage of our already small fanbase. And that's not good for anybody. 

There won't be any game thread - first off, if you live within two hours of the school or so, you should be at the game. Second off, I see no way I can bring a computer to wherever I watch the game, and third, blogger isn't to conducive to game threads. 

However, hypothetically, if, let's say, I don't know, my blog gets picked up by a large sports blog network that currently has a blog for every Big Ten team besides Northwestern about 2-3 weeks from now (COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH), I'll post a game thread for every game, and I'll need you guys to help make them actually interesting. So, hypothetically, be prepared. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Five Days.

A different Youtube video every day, just to get you sufficiently pumped.


Not NU-related, but, as someone who followed the NBA in the 90's that song instinctively causes some combination of goosebumps, spine chills, and loss of bowel control.

Expect at least two more posts today. What can I say, I'm bored, excited for football season, and wishing everybody else hadn't left for college already.

Six Days.

A different Youtube video every day, just to get you sufficiently pumped. 

My favorite part of this video - and there's a lot of good parts - is how Jordan Mabin and I had the exact same reaction, which is a sort of jumpy fist-pump thing. The difference is that I was still lying in bed, not having left my room all morning, and Mabin laid a hardcore block on a wide receiver less than four seconds later. 

The ESPN call findable in other youtube clips is louder, but you can't beat the atonal yelling of "WE OWN THIS BUILDING, DAVE". It doesn't get any better than that. 

The Two-Deep is out.

Well, for those of you who read my "One Less Day Till Football Season" posts all summer long, now's your opportunity to see how wrong my predictions were. The two-deep is out.

I'd say the main things to note are Arby Fields being our backup running back, which now seems like a foregone conclusion but would've been very surprising to hear back at the beginning of camp, and Scott Concannon, who has yet to touch the ball in a game, being our starting kick returner in a job that seeme destined for either Stephan Simmons or Jeravin Matthews. 

Other discrepancies between this two deep and my 1LDTFS posts - at the time I did the posts, I didn't know anything about Zeke Markshausen, but he's really emerged since then as a guy destined to be a part of the rotation. The backup wide receivers I didn't even attempt to predict, so, no surprises there.

I predicted Keegan Grant would be our starting left guard, but it'll be Desmond Taylor with Patrick Ward backing him up - although I'd still be sort of surprised to see us de-redshirt him just for mop-up situations as a backup guard. He's a top-notch left tackle, so we'll want him to play there for four years if possible.

Stefan Demos appears to be kicking everything, no ifs, ands, or buts. I guess Budzien will sit out the year.

I was surprised to see Ricky Weina listed as backup corner instead of Mike Bolden, but, like, not blown out of my seat, because, come on, it's backup cornerbacks. (update: according to an anonymous commenter, Bolden's apparently injured, making me nerdy enough to have written a post predicting he would play but not nerdy enough to actually check  up on his health frequently. Either way, I just outed my way of writing this post as reading all my previous posts and checking them against the two-deep for any differences whatsoever. Anyway, good for Weina, who is a walk-on.)

Personal favorite players Stone Pinckney and David Nwabuisi made the two-deep, which is awesome, but not something I had predicted, but it makes sense, because guys I did discuss - Aaron Nagel and Chris Jeske - are not in playing condition. Nagel is injured, and Jeske has called college football quits, and will be coaching this year.

But other than that, pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. It looks like all them second-stringers might get significant tick vs. Towson, so, maybe the whole two-deep isn't just for show this times.

7 Days.

A different Youtube video every day, just to get you sufficiently pumped.

If you'll excuse me, I have a brick wall to go and run through now. 

Get Rich or Play Towson

I'm not a betting man. (Medill folk: are sports journalists even allowed to? Seems like that would be sorta unethical, right?) My last foray into betting was a monthlong NBA centsports addiction that saw my worth rocket to $1.38, then collapse, ending with my betting my last 16 cents on the national soccer team of the extremely tiny nation of San Marino, hoping they could beat a six-goal spread against Poland. (They ended up losing 10-0. SAN MARINOOOO!!!!!!) 

But I was tempted to check out NU's line for the Towson game. How much, I wondered, are we expected to win by?

I looked everywhere, found nothing. No spreads, no odds. 

I jumped to three separate conclusions.

1) Vegas oddsmakers don't deem the game as likely to draw much betting, since NU and Towson don't have big fanbases, therefore, there are no lines.

2) The game will be a blowout. There's no money line big enough to be worth the casino's time, since NU will clearly win, and a spread that big would be pointless.

3) There probably aren't any spreads for any games featuring I-AA opponents.

Turns out, the correct answer was #3: there's no betting on games between FBS and FCS opponents, generally, although the guy from USA Today had a little bit of fun predicting that Florida should have a 63 point spread against Charleston Southern, and people went around reporting that he actually had said they'd win by 73. 

But still, all this should give us pause about our game against Towson. Playing I-AA opponents is a definite lose-lose situation. First off, it's a lose-lose because there's actually no way to win money off it if you're the betting type. But think about it: Towson shouldn't be able to compete with us. We were in the Top 25 last year, they probably weren't in the top 3/4 of I-AA teams. If we win, it's expected. We should win. If we lose, chaos ensues. If we win only by a little bit, people will start wondering if we're not legit. As Joshua astutely put in the comments section a few posts back, pretty much anything besides a blowout isn't good. And when you think about it, a blowout is kind of bad, because it means we're those guys who pay schools too much money to hammer them senseless. 

It's reasons like this I've started viewing our September 5th game less as something I need to be worried about and more as an organized practice and a chance to see how we run our offense and to gauge the skills of our players. Yes, score will be kept, unlike the spring game, and yes, if we do cool things, I'll gloat about it. I'll probably watch the highlight reel of the game multiple times. But when the game is so lopsided that Vegas is essentially pretending it doesn't exist, there's really no positives. 

Yo.

Just got back after two days out of town, felt like it would be a good time to remind you that there are only nine days left until college football season. 

I also feel like pointing out that Craig Moore has a blog, and that it's better than mine. Dude could probably be an observational stand-up comic. For some reason, I always picture guys who are really, really good shooters as being devoid of personality, due to the inherent practice it takes to become that good at shooting, but, Craig proves me wrong, because he's really, really funny. (On the other hand, Kyle Korver is still a farmboy from Nebraska who enjoys playing in Utah, so, I guess I'm half-right.)

In Northwestern news, Will Hampton, a Texan defensive tackle, decommitted from Stanford to choose between Northwestern and Notre Dame, and chose Northwestern because we have a better  football team.  That immense crushing sound is either the oncoming apocalypse or the toilet flushing in Jim Harbaugh's $50,000 bathroom. (Fifty g's can buy you some serious water pressure.) 

(And, yes, I know, you read this at LTP already. But man, I was out of town. Cut me some slack. I'll have new, interesting posts from now til the season opener, plus maybe one later to make up for not having one yesterday.)

Explain yourselves.

So, 42 of you sick people have voted in the poll over on the right. If you haven't yet, go.

But here's the point of this post: 26 of those people, like me, think Syracuse is the team to fear off the out of conference bunch. I can see why. They're a Big East team, they've got a top recruit, if you can call him that, starting under center, and we'll be on the road.

Four other people voted for that last choice, the "I'm not scared of anybody" choice.

But the other 12 of y'all? Two each for Towson and Eastern Michigan, and a whopping eight for Miami (OH). I'm confused. I could see the "we lost to them in 1995" thing affecting some of your thought processes re: Miami, and if that's true, say so, but, still, folks, I want explanations, because I'm not quite sure why those schools might seem frightening.

Folks, we have a comments section below. Use it. If I don't get a comment from anybody, I'll assume the 12 people who voted for those schools are operatives sent from MAC athletic departments to destroy us.

I'm Thinking RB's.

So NU had its annual fall scrimmage Saturday, which means there's only twelve more days left until football season. I, as someone who lives in New York, didn't make the trek to Kenosha, Wisconsin, so my main sources of information were an article on NUsports.com (with the headline "NU holds successful scrimmage" which makes me wonder if they would've called it an "unsuccessful scrimmage" if everybody had been really bad), various rivals.com posts (is it a bad sign that this blog has forced me to start routinely checking that site?) and a highlight video also on NUsports.com. 

The consensus I'm getting is thus: Mike Kafka really, really, really, really needs to stop throwing into the flat without at least pump-faking the guy who is right there out of the way, John Placensia actually is the world's greatest, and our running back situation is now officially up for grabs. 

I've tried my hand at predicting our RB situation before on this blog. And every time I try, it gets more and more confusing. 

When last year ended, I assumed this year would feature Stephen Simmons as a feature back. When I covered spring football, I asked coach Fitz and various other coaches, and they each gave me variants on "well, it's spring ball, and nothing's certain... but Stephen's the most experienced." I started to see Simmons as the more prominent back in a field which would have a lot of specialization with guys coming in on different downs. After the spring game, I became convinced that we would be looking at a RB by committee approach with Simmons, Jeravin Matthews, and Alex Daniel.

Now, I don't know what to think. In the spring game, Simmons and Matthews rushed a combined six times for two yards. Meanwhile, Arby Fields is the toast of the online Northwestern community, and looks like he'll play this season, whereas in my running backs post linked to above, I pictured him redshirting and didn't discuss him until I'd already discussed every other NU running back. 

Fields is sentimental being painted as Tyrell Sutton's predecessor due to his similar build and his being assigned the same number. Now, who knows if he'll be that great - he certainly doesn't have the high school pedigree Sutton had - but NU definitely appears to be counting on Arby in some role this fall.

To complicate matters, people are also saying good things about Scott Concannon, and Jacob Schmidt led all rushers in the scrimmage with 45 yards and a touchdown. So every running back on the roster is getting some sort of praise. 

I officially would not be surprised if any combination of Simmons, Fields, Matthews, and Daniel play this fall. They all have different skill sets, and none of them is clearly a better solution than the others. If I had to guess, I'd say they'd get carries in the order I listed directly above - I think it would be silly to make Arby lose his redshirt so he can be our third-string running back, although I guess Matthews did it last year - but, to be honest, I have no idea, and neither does anybody who isn't a member of the Northwestern coaching staff. We'll have to wait and see how they get used against Towson, which, in my head quickly turning into less of a game and more of an opportunity to find out about who's actually going to play.

Others Receiving.... a single vote.

So the other day I had a diatribe about how silly it was that we were ranked so low in the AP poll. 

Well, guess what folks - it gets worse!

There's a site called pollspeak.com that allows you to track all the ballots in all the AP polls. You can see who voted for who, and you can sort by either team or voter.

Anyway, NU had five votes in the AP poll, which led me to assume that somewhere in the range of 3-5 people placed us on their poll in the 23-25 spots or so. A conspiracy theory, of sorts.

However, pollspeak allows us to see that our ranking isn't based on some cabal of multiple people thinking NU is a good team: we've got ourselves a lone gunman.

Kevin Gorman, who, some research shows, is the recruiting columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is the one voter out of the 60 in the AP poll who thought it would be a good idea to put us in the top 25. And he put us 21st. Which is crazy. Because, I mean, really? Of course we're not the 21st best team in the country.

However, Gorman has a little bit of an iffy ballot. First off, he's one of the two human beings in the poll who thinks Florida isn't the #1 team in the country, which, quite frankly, is bonkers. He also has Tennessee ranked 16th, which is seven spots higher than anybody else. His ballot is ranked as the third most extreme in the poll, and in a sort of meta-poll on the site, asking whether Gorman's ballot was good or bad, only 27 responders thought it was good, with a whopping 113 saying it was bad. 

So basically, the conventional wisdom is that we're not very good. 59 of 60 voters think that, and the 60th guy has some issues. Which basically leaves just us NU fans on the Wildcat bandwagon. Do well this year... maybe next year we'll get, like, actual votes in these polls that people can take seriously.

Others Receiving Votes

ERRRRRRRRRRRRRR?

Look, I know we ain't top 25, and we shouldn't be top 25, and we shouldn't be top 25 even if we go 6-1 or something against the Magnolia Bakery portion of our schedule. 

I wouldn't say we should be.

And I know last year's team that ended up 9-4 started the season not even being an other receiving votes, and that progress is progress.

But yo! Let's be real here!  We're probably better than Arizona and NC State. And we are definitely not 100 votes worse than Illinois.

And Central Michigan? Central Michigan? Really, Central Michigan?

Wow. 

Summer's Over.

It doesn't seem like it. It's 90 degrees outside, will be for some more time. And while essentially every other college in the country is starting in the coming week or so, it's still about three weeks until new freshmen arrive in Evanston for the time-honored tradition of assembling in packs of 20 or 30 kids and awkwardly wandering around town trying to find Noyes St.

But on the NU sports calendar, summer ends today. A women's soccer game wouldn't normally be the cause for much hype around here, but, today, there's a women's soccer game against Milwaukee. And that, my friends, signifies that the fall sports schedule has officially commenced. According to sports schedules, it's fall, and fall means college, and college means college sports, and college sports means college football. 

So to all the NU students out there, saying goodbye to their friends leaving town for their colleges, reading college-related facebook status updates, and the like - well, we're one day closer, people. 

Quick Hits

• New poll, new opportunity to make it look like I have readers. I voted for Syracuse. I'm a little concerned about winning in the dome, to be honest. In our last poll, as you can still see, Patty Fitz won 25-16 over Bill Carmody. An astute, anonymous commenter brought up the very good point that if Fitz coached basketball at NU, the football team would probably drop in quality as he'd have to split his time. As someone who cares more about basketball than many other things in life, I could live with that, if it attracted a higher level of recruit - I could see Fitz as a Calipari-esque coach without the skeeziness and abandoned wins, someone who might know less about basketball than Carmody forgot yesterday but could get higher-caliber recruits, and keep someone who actually knows how to coach on the payroll, and win a few more games than under Carmody. Obviously, the poll was sarcastic - but think about it: The program might actually be better off. 
• Kyle Rowley's enormous left foot is fractured. Feet aren't meant to support seven-footers, regardless of their size, and Kyle is big, even for someone his height. I hope this isn't the type of thing which nags at him throughout his career, because he could turn out nicely. I've said this once, I'll say it a thousand times, Rowley needs work on his basic fundamentals. Give him a red tee, let him fully recuperate, practice with the team when he's ready, and just focus on school and basketball without the extra worry of being a Big Ten center. I'm sure the work ethic is there, but he needs time, and even if next year is now for NU basketball, Rowley will contribute to the team more in three years than he will this year, so, hand Mirkovic the starting spot and let Rowley recover. The worst thing would be for Rowley to think he's okay and then refracture the thing and need whatever surgery Yao got this offseason while he's still under 20 years old, costing NU a potential prospect.
• Football's 16 days away. I checked up on Coach Fitz's twitter again, to see how his usage of the exclamation point is going, and in doing so, gain valuable insight into the mindframe of the world's most intense human. It turns out, it's actually decreased: over his last 20 posts, he's used 20 exclamation points, a perfect one !pp (exclamation point per post) thanks to my apple+f research abilities. I credit the slight downslide to two different reasons: 

First, Fitz has learned to lean on the caps lock much more than he used to. I theorize that this has led to a decrease in exclamation point usage without signifying a decrease in Coach Fitz's actual intensity, as he's just using a different method of portraying the same intensity. Where that post might have read "Just had an extremely productive team meeting" it now reads "Just had an EXTREMELY productive staff meeting".

Next, it's important to note that Fitz's exclamation point usage has become limited to fewer posts. Of his last 20, only 11 feature exclamation points. This means that Fitz's use of the single exclamation point has virtually died out - when he's using exclamation points, he's using multiple. 

My psychological analysis of this evidence is this: With football season fast approaching, Coach Fitz's intensity has given way to to a calmer, focused state. However, when he receives stimuli from the outside world that prompt his intensity to surface, it surfaces in a higher magnitude than when Fitz is at his normal state. 

• So that's it for now. Vote in the poll, and give a reason if you're voting for a team other than Syracuse in the comments section - I'm genuinely curious as to why you'd pick, let's say, Eastern Michigan. 

Some Out-of-Conference Tidbits

Yesterday I touched on how bad our out-of-conference opponents this year are. I mentioned how none had winning records last year, and how all have new head coaches, who have never been college head coaches before. 

That doesn't even capture how bad they are. I didn't really realize how horrible the teams we play this year are, as a group, and I gathered some stats here, just so we can get this straight: all four games are must win. We have to win them. If we can't beat them, I'm not sure who we can beat. 

• It was noted that none of our opponents had winning records. But these teams didn't just go 5-7 - every team on our out-of-conference schedule finished last in their respective division. Towson's 1-7 record was last in the CAA Southern division, EMU's 2-6 was tied for last in the MAC West with Toledo, Syracuse's 1-7 record was good for last in the Big East, and Miami (OH) 1-7 was last in the MAC East. That's some shameful stuff right there.
• NU, with our no returning starting skill players, is a beacon of stability compared to these guys Each school, as noted, has a new head coach with no head coaching experience. To add to that, Towson and Syracuse each have new starting quarterbacks, one of whom, as you may have heard, is good at basketball. 
• NU won nine games last year. Our four out-of-conference opponents last year won 11, combined, an average of 2.75 per team. Sound horrible? It gets worse when you add context. Let's recap every victory one of those four schools had last year.

August 28: Eastern Michigan, 52, Indiana State, 0. Indiana State's team is apparently quarterbacked by a 52-year old Larry Bird.

September 6: Towson, 21, Morgan State, 16. 

September 13: Miami (OH) 38, Charleston Southern, 27. Unlike the College of Charleston or, um, Coastal Carolina, I have never heard of Charleston Southern, and, like Morgan State, I have no jokes about it.

September 20: Syracuse, 30, Northeastern, 21. You might remember Northeastern from that Tyrell Sutton highlight video I posted, a 27-0 victory two years back, and when people ask you "oh, Northwestern, that's in Boston, right?"

September 27: Towson, 31, Columbia, 24. Little known fact: back when PS2 was still popular, I tried to make Columbia national champions on NCAA Football. They had a perfect conference slate and road wins at USC, Texas, Ohio State, and Florida, but, if I remember correctly, they ended the season ranked, like, 23rd in the country. It was a waste of two days of my video game playing life.)

October 4: Eastern Michigan, 24, Bowling Green, 21. And with a squeaker on the road against Bowling Green, NU's 2009 out-of-conference opponents scored their first victory against a FBS opponent. Previously, they had been 0-12. 

October 11: Towson, 37, Rhode Island, 32. The Fighting Cuttino Mobleys provided Towson with their only conference victory of the season, and, sadly, their last victory of the season. 

October 18: Miami (OH) 27, Bowling Green, 20. Miami's second and final victory on the year came on the road against BGSU, and it's good to see NU's future opponents taking out vengeance on the Falcons for the 2003 Motor City Bowl. Surprisingly, Bowling Green wasn't too bad, finishing 6-6 on the season. I'd guess they'd like one of these two games back and a trip to a sub-par bowl. 

November 1: Syracuse, 28, Louisville, 21. Hey, respectable. Sure, Louisville was 1-7 in conference, but you take what you can get.

November 22: Syracuse, 24, Notre Dame, 23. The Orange beat some school in Indiana by scoring two fourth-quarter touchdowns, on the road. In 1963, this would have been on some sort of predecessor to ESPN Classic.

November 29: Eastern Michigan, 56, Central Michigan, 52: A directional school shootout to end the season ended up with EMU taking home their third W of the year. 

• So let's sort out the carnage: the teams we will play were 11-37 last year. Unfortunately, six of those wins were against Division I-AA, so against I-A opponents, they were 5-29. (The flipside of this reveals a 6-9 record against I-AA opponents, but all nine losses came from Towson.) Against Division I-A teams that aren't Bowling Green, they were 3-29. Against BCS opponents, they were 1-13, with the sole win Syracuse's victory over Louisville.
  
• The three teams we'll play at home, Towson, EMU, and Miami (OH), combined to go 2-17 on the road last season, with both victories coming against Bowling Green. To take that stat to its obvious conclusion, the three teams were a combined 0-17 at road games not in the Greater Bowling Green Metropolitan Area.
• Towson hasn't played a BCS school in so long I can't find it in ESPN's schedule database, and their loss against Navy last season was the only game against an FBS opponent I could find. Miami hasn't beaten a BCS opponent since beating Cincinnati in 2005, and EMU hasn't beaten one since beating UCF in 2003. 
• The last one of these schools to boast a winning record was Towson, who went 7-4 in 2006. 
• Northwestern is good at football, and these schools aren't.

So look: we all know we're Northwestern, the school with the terrible football history, and who really shouldn't be taking any game for granted. That being said, these are four games which we have every right to believe we should win. We'll even be favored by the oddsmakers, most likely. Now: if we lose one of these games, don't hit the panic button. I hate panic buttons, and, what's more, I hate sports fans who hit them. (I also hate jinxing things, so, I'm not saying WE'RE DEFINITELY GOING TO WIN.) We could still salvage the season and make a bowl.

But here's my point: we shouldn't have to. We're too good. We should win all four games, and anything other than that would be, well, surprising.

BRRRR!

My blog is called "The Purple Drank" cuz of my affinity for hip-hop. I gotta write about it sometimes. If you like reading about Northwestern sports, but don't like when I occasionally tangentially link NU sports to hip-hop, even when they do collide as they do in here, I wouldn't blame you if you skip this post.

My excuse for writing about it this time is that I got a theory: sports success is nearly entirely due to music. I'll be explaining this theory more fully in a few weeks, in what will be the best post in the history of this site. But I saw something today that caught my attention.

The lesser part of my theory states that how well you do in part is attributable to the music you listen to. You know how great closers always have great entrance music? You know how that one middle reliever who enters to Creed always has a 5.70 E.R.A.? 

This theory is, as of yet, infallible. For example, I've been informed by insider sources I have that Indiana has been blasting the soundtrack to the upcoming Hannah Montana movie in their preseason drills, and I've recently discovered that the reason for NU's 34-game winless streak was in part because several walk-on offensive linemen that were engineering students developed a working time machine, went to the year 2004, and stole a mixtape off an angsty 13-year old's desk containing, but not limited to, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy, and, for some reason, the song "Doo Doo Head" by Soulja Boi, which is sort of an outlier if you ask me. 

Long story short, I've developed an algorithm that allows me to calculate how good a college football team will be based on their practice listening music. And the reason I bring this up is simple: this video, posted by palestra.net. 

WE'RE LISTENING TO GUCCI MANE IN PRACTICE? 

Yes! At the 51 second mark, Gucci Mane, my favorite current rapper is blaring in the background. (I'm pretty sure those are two separate songs, too.) I wouldn't make a post just based on a 3 second snippet of Gucci though, what prompted this post is the reaction of my new favorite player on the team, senior DT Marshall Thomas, whose urge to yell "I KNOW I LOVE HER" is so strong that he removes his helmet, and then he spends like three seconds Mutombo-wagging at the camera and shaking his head.  (Also, for a couple seconds, I thought the dude playing at :12 and :24 was Gucci as well, but, no, that's these jokers, who I've never heard of and after a few listens have decided I never want to hear again.) (Re: the jokers who made that other song who sounded like Gucci Mane a little: Was the "pause" era so short that you can say "swag super cool blowing like a fan" and nobody cares?)

Gucci, for those of you who don't know - most of you, right? - is pretty much the best rapper out there right now, and one of his lyrics provided the inspiration for this sites URL. The song in question is "I Think I Love Her", which, all told, is pretty bad, mainly because it features some girl with a really annoying voice prominently, but Gucci still shines. 

Anyway, my point is, I got a theory that states that the music you listen to can determine how well your team will play. Point being: WE'RE GOING TO WIN SEVENTEEN GAMES THIS SEASON.  Count em. The algorithm never lies, folks. 

The OOC

Remember sunday, when I said I'd post every single day until football season? I meant it, but I probably should've put a caveat saying "except days when I inexplicably don't have internet access." Anyway, crisis resolved, there'll be two today and one every day from here on out. 

So I was on a Jetblue plane today, watching a mixture of a four month old Barca-Madrid game that I already knew the final outcome to and Animal Planet. (What happened to the Big Ten Network! I DEMAND TO WATCH INDIANA WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL DURING MY FLIGHTS) There was a horrible, horrible point during the flight where both these events managed to be on commercial, and I had to watch SportsCenter, where I saw that Greg Paulus will be Syracuse's starter this season. Which got me thinking about how winnable the Syracuse game is. Which got me realizing that of our four out-of-conference games this year, quite possibly our most difficult one could be against a team we handily beat last season with a new head coach, a quarterback who met his receivers three months ago for the first time and is more used to running away from dunkers than running an offense. 

Last year, NU won swept its out-of-conference schedule for the first time since 1962, and this year, we face four opponents who we should beat handily. None had winning records last season, and all four have brand new head coaches who have never been D-I head coaches before. For the first time in a long time, even dropping a single out-of-conference game will be a major disappointment for the Wildcats. 

This isn't necessarily the best way this year's schedule could've turned out. First of all, there's the fact that no matter how well we do this year, people will point to our 4-0 out-of-conference schedule and say that we didn't beat any real competition. Next, there's the fact that this year, we don't really need the cupcakes - we have a plus defensive unit with players with NFL talent and a lightning-rod quarterback who can make legit D-I teams look silly. Next year, our squad might be a drop-off from this year, and we'll have to play an SEC troublemaker in Vanderbilt and an improving Rice squad. Without a clear heir to Kafka's job and with guys like Wooton, McManis, Phillips, and Smith leaving Evanston, we might need four out-of-conference wins to be bowl eligible, and we might not be able to get them. 

This year, our bowl eligibility shouldn't be an issue. We should get four wins out of Towson at home, EMU at home, 'Cuse on the road, and Miami (OH) at home, leaving us to only need two (realistically three) to go someplace warm for the winter. And to be honest, if we don't get four wins out of those four games, we probably don't deserve the vacation. 

1LDTFS, Post 13: The Punter.

I bring you: the most boring post you will ever read. First off, it's a preview post about a position which will not undergo any changes, most likely. If you're not bored yet, it's about punting, which is the most inherently boring position in any sport, besides maybe first-base coaches. 

But, look: there's college football in 20 days. When I first started doing these posts, there were 72 days left. If you're not excited, even if it's to read about punters, you're not a friend of mine.

Days Til Football: 20. (Can you read, son? Look, like, two lines above here.)

Sad Demos face.

Who did it last year?: Wildcat #1, Stefan Demos. As far as I can tell, everybody's favorite rugby-style punter made three mistakes last year: twice, he punted the ball into the end zone, and one time, he punted a low-lying ball directly down the middle of the field to a guy who was probably the best kick returner not being paid large sums of money to return kicks. Like Amado Villarreal, he made a big boo-boo at the worst time possible, and like Villarreal, his blunder ended up being one of the contributing factors in our Alamo Bowl loss, ruining what was a pretty good season for Demos.

Demos downed 26 punts - 40 percent of his total punts - inside the 20 with only 2 touchbacks, and averaged 39 yards a punt. That's pretty good. The year before, he was arguably better, with 40.1 yards per punt with 42.5 percent of them landing inside the 20. This, folks, is a good punter.

Who's got next?: Same bat punter, same bat channel. Stefan will probably be punting again, in addition to his field goal and kickoff duties. A pretty steep load, but he'll have to handle it: although Jeff Budzien could be competing with Demos for the role of placekicker, nobody else on the NU roster is listed as a punter, although Brandon Williams has punting experience. 

Song this unit reminds me of: "Frontin'" - Pharrell.

Never mind that I'm show-owin off, I was just puntin? A bit of a stretch, but I was out of ideas.

I hope this makes up for the fact that I didn't last long enough to show up at Pharrell's performance on Dillo Day. 

Is that an improvement: This segment of these posts... kinda pointless in this one, right? Demos will return, so, no improvement or dropoff, here. 

Welp. There it is. I've covered every position on the football field, from the QB to the holder. That being said, we still have 20 days till kickoff vs. Towson, and I plan on posting every one of them, twice or more some days, so keep checking back every day. I've got some surprises in store for you, so, seriously, keep coming back.  

THIS MEANS WAR MCCORMICK

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT

WAIT

I go on vacation for a few days - A FEW DAYS - and I turn around, and next thing you know, I go online to Deadspin, and find out that MY VERY OWN CLASSMATES ARE SPENDING THEIR SUMMERS BEHIND MY BACK FINDING WAYS TO PUT ME OUT OF WORK FOREVER. 

Yes. McCormick students - and some backstabbing Medill people - have developed a system to take box scores from sporting events and make a rudimentary game story. As someone who is trying to become a sportswriter, the fact that my fellow students are developing sportswriting machines is worrisome. 

I might've expected this from those UChicago punks, but I dunno, I guess I was lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that I hadn't met any NU students named Judas yet. 

I probably could have sensed something was up when I noticed that most engineering students were considerably smarter than me, could do basic math such as multiplication and division with little trouble, and talked about how engineering was a higher-paying field than journalism. But I didn't expect anything them to go ahead and invent some evil sportswriting cyborg that understands basic grammar and doesn't make spelling mistakes and can use inverted pyramid paragraphs and describe the crisp, cool smell of the freshly cut infield grass on a warm summer night when the sun is just setting over the grandstand and can probably Stump the Schwab if it had to. But you know what, engineering students? THIS MEANS WAR.

Yeah, this isn't over. Two can play at this "putting other students out of their future professions" game. Expect articles to be published in sports sections around the world with headlines like "Engineering: Necessary, or a Huge Waste of Time?" or "Engineers Suspected in Every Killing Ever". We'll see who has the last laugh then. 

In other news, later today, there will be a post on the difficulty of being an NU fan despite being unable to display or comprehend emotions by my new bloggin co-partner, the PurpleBot3000. He will also have a post on the Top Ten historical Wildcats sporting events that most remind him of the struggle to resist his urge to overthrow his human overlords. Should be good. 

(Of course, uh, satire. Congrats to the computer science kids who did this, but... couldn't you put, like, some other business out of work? All will be forgiven if you invent a robot that can drive up voting numbers in the poll on the right side of the screen.)

(Oh, and I just reread this, and it wasn't that funny, but I'm posting it anyway, because it's rainy in Miami and I just spent like 20 minutes hammering this out, and I'm not letting it go to waste.)

(also, it's in a different font, and I have no idea why.)

1LDTFS, Post 12: Returners

So football practice starts today. Which means I've gotten through the brunt of the newsless summer, and we're fast approaching, well, the part of the year we enjoy. Long story short, I'm excited.

Quick site note - one of the perks of being half-Cuban is that I get to go visit Miami as frequently as I want with the excuse that I need to see my family. I'm taking advantage of that this week, as I'll be down there, so don't expect posts every day, because, let's face it, there's more interesting things to do in Miami. I might put up one or two, but don't hold your breath. 

Days Left Til Football: 25.

Who did it last year?: Stephen Simmons returned kicks last year, and was nothing to write home about, but wasn't too bad either. He busted out some 30+-yard returns, but his reputation as a return man rightfully rests on one play, his 99-yard return for a touchdown against Ohio State in 2007. When Simmons was injured for a few games, a platoon of Jeremy Ebert, Jordan Mabin, Jeravin Matthews and Sherrick McManis took over, and Matthews' speed made him look pretty good at it.

Punt returns were handled by Brendan Smith, with a few cameo appearances by Eric Peterman. Smith's best return was obviously his pick-six against Minnesota, but he had a 51-yard punt return against Illinois that wasn't too bad either. 

Who's got next?: Except for Peterman, we return (ughhhhhhhhhh) everybody mentioned above, meaning Smith pretty much has a lock on the punt-returning gig. 

As for kicks, I'd assume Simmons will be deep pretty much every time, but with him as a likely candidate starting running back, I assume he won't be taking every single kickoff just to give his legs some time off before taking the field, although he did return kicks in his few starts last year. Look for a big role for Jeravin Matthews here, and lesser roles for the other guys mentioned. Also, if Fitz is to break in a true freshman, the kicking game is where the least mental adjustments are needed. As evidenced by the contributions of Ebert and Matthews, last year's only two true freshman, in the return game, Fitz won't be afraid to set some freshman loose here, so don't be surprised.

Is that an improvement?: Truth be told, last year's kick returning game was pretty bland. I mean, they got the job done, no Iowa-esque catch-and-coughs, nobody ran backwards, but there wasn't anything that truly put the offense on the brink of scoring. Pretty much, I'd be satisfied with just one good play. Other than Smith, I can't remember any electrifying returns, although Matthews and Simmons each had 40-yarders. If either unit can bust out one return that either puts six on the board or puts the offense in a position to do so quickly, I'd call this unit an improvement. 

Oh, and, I added a new poll - listen to Diddy!

NU Fan's Guide To Watching: NFL Training Camps.

From time to time, there are non-Northwestern sporting events. But some of the truer NU heads - you know, the ones who wouldn't shut up about how we beat MSU while watching the championship game with friends... until halftime, at which point they started talking about how we beat FSU, who beat UNC, making us transitive property national champions once removed, the ones who made Youtube highlight reels of Super Bowl 42, except the only play featured is Barry Cofield's one unassisted tackle* - might have trouble sitting through non-Wildcat sports related events.

Well, that's what I'm here for. I'll be guiding you through seminal sporting events and providing them with a purple tint. Today, NFL training camps. 

* - these fans do not actually exist

So, NFL training camps are underway. Some view it as a more awesome version of spring training, with people getting into fights while wearing helmets. I view it a lot like, well, any other NFL event that isn't actually a game. (sorry) 

However, as a Northwestern fan, you've gotta take notice. We've got 14 guys on NFL rosters, which, compared to every school in the country, isn't half-bad. Compared to other Big Ten schools, it makes us... wait for it... tenth in the conference, ahead of Indiana. (Who didn't see that coming?) Of those 14, I'd say about nine or ten are locks to make their respective rosters, which is a pretty good ratio. John Gill and Tyrell Sutton seem to have pretty good chances of sticking, and, well, if I was Marquice Cole, Eric Peterman, or Noah Herron, I'd try not to get too attached to any of my new teammates. (As a Jets fan, I'm pullin for ya, Marquice.)

So, just like I did with the NBA draft, I'm here to provide a guide to watching your favorite team's NFL training camp, but with a purple tint. And no, I've never actually been to one (unless you consider the Wildcats open-to-media spring practices an NFL training camp) but as an NU blogger, this is how I would approach attending one of these things. 

• First off, you're going to want to go to the training camp facility of the team of your choosing. Sadly, only 12 teams have NU grads on their training camp rosters. If you're not a fan of one of these 12 teams, either a) pick a new favorite or b) sit outside your local GM's office both night and day with a sign making it clear that you won't eat or drink until he signs CJ Bachér. 
• Good. Now you're a fan of a team with an NU alum on the training camp field. For the NBA draft, I advised you buy a jersey of all 30 teams with Craig Moore's name and number on the back, just to be safe, but for this, it's easier: you only need one jersey, and you already know the name and number, unless you're a Bears fan, in which case you need to go buy three jerseys and bring two friends with you to training camp. Unfortunately, friends are not sold at the Bears team store, so you'll have to bring your own.
• As previously noted, some of our ex-Wildcats don't have great chances of making their rosters. If you're unlucky enough to go to practice on the day your Wildcat gets cut, make sure to console them. Then, go to the office of the highest ranking team official you can find, rip your jersey off - preferably Hulk-style, but any violent removing of the jersey should do - and throw it at the ground, stare the guy in the face, and say "I THOUGHT I KNEW YOU". Pause for dramatic effect, and as you're leaving, spit at his feet before turning your back on him.
• Make sure the recently cut player hasn't spent all his per diem already, because you'll need him for bail money.
• In all his years playing football, nobody has ever started an Ike Ndukwe-specific chant. And although he doesn't let on, especially with his hulking physical demeanor, sometimes, it hurts, to see all the legions of fans showing up, but never even bothering once to cheer his name. "Always the bridesmaid," he sometimes mutters under his breath as he leaves the huddle, and sullenly decides that deep inside, he really doesn't want to block for Chad Pennington if nobody's ever going to even remember who he is. What I'm saying is, be the first.
• If you're at Bears training camp, and Brett Basanez completes a pass to Eric Peterman, who then gets tackled by Nick Roach, you're morally obligated to make out with the closest person to you, regardless of gender or any other mitigating factor. They'll understand. 
• If you see John Gill or Tyrell Sutton, ask them how they did in Geography last quarter. As someone who was in that class, I genuinely want to know what grades someone can get if they're under contract with a professional football team.
• Also, try to recreate this photo I found google image searching "noah herron" with Tyrell Sutton, since Tyrell is also #23 for the Packers: 
  I imagine the difficult parts will be: a) finding a bike small enough to make the smaller Tyrell look that comically big and b) getting a Wisconsonian child to don a Brett Favre jersey.
  
  
• But most importantly, remember that you're not trying to out yourself as an NU-only fan. Engage some random guy in conversation about last season. Heckle a starting quarterback. Know everybody's uniform number. (No, #96 is not Amado Villarreal.) 
  

Welcome Tony Jones!

I don't write about recruiting much, because it's sort of creepy talking about how 16 year olds feel about colleges - I can't imagine how sucky it must have been to see websites with headlines saying "Sherman chooses to apply early" when I was doing that whole process - but since it's Friday, I'm lazy, and there's relevant news, I'm running with it.

Tony Jones, a highly-touted 3-star wide out from Grand Blanc, Michigan, will be NU's 8th class of 2010 recruit. He called a press conference today - something I wish more NU recruits would do, it's cool - to announce he'd choose the Wildcats over MSU and Stanford. (Eat it, Harbaugh!) So, I've fulfilled my posting obligations for today - this is great news for the Cats, so have a good one. 

And the winner is....

Bill Carmody! 

Carmody wins a 30-27 thriller, coming from behind in dramatic fashion.

Wet Paper Bag coughed up a seemingly secure 24-21 lead, meaning you'd rather have Bill Carmody as the head coach of NU basketball than an inanimate object. 

And, look, I know the expression is "Bill Carmody couldn't coach his way out of a wet paper bag", but I thought putting him head to head against the bag would be more interesting. First off, I think we all know Carmody could coach his way out of any sort of bag - with the amount of hilarious overdramatic arm motions he uses to signify various zone defenses, I have a funny feeling he'd penetrate the bag interior and claw his way to freedom. 

But as someone who generally truly loves NU sports, I have difficulty comprehending why Bill Carmody is still our coach. If you do anything for eight years, and in your eighth year, you are 6% successful at that thing, you have no upside. You have failed, and there's no logical way to believe that you will someday be successful. Bill Carmody did that by going 1-17 two presidential terms into his administration. I don't care if he can out-coach John Wooden while blindfolded. Change has gotta come.

The fact that Pat Fitzgerald is universally respected, and won his poll (which asked if the best coach in the nation was "Pat Fitzgerald" or "other") something like 13-2 and Carmody barely beat out Wet Paper Bag is meaningful insight into the way NU fans feel about each guy respectively even if we were overexaggerating a bit with each poll. 

There's gonna be another poll up soon - vote or die!

Since I wanna make this joint as reader-friendly as possible, I'm going to take my time to respond to things people comment every once in a while, and now's one of those times. 

First off, for those of you wondering how to use the comments section, NorthwesternHighlights has got it down. I giggled at his comment on the Craig Moore post. Giggled.

 

Two people sufficiently deaded me in my safeties post, and I feel compelled to respond.

First off, Closso, who contends that Brad Phillips didn't go helmet-to-helmet on Shonn Greene. Now, Closso, you're without a doubt the runaway leader in the "Rodger's favorite commenter" award, mainly for posting a link to this site in LTP's comment section, but, trust me, I've seen that video my fair share of times. Either that was helmet-to-helmet or Brad Phillip's chest is made out of some sort of graphite-titanium composite that they make golf clubs out of, which isn't totally out of the question, but it sure looks like he's leading with his head while Greene is already off-balance a bit and falling head-first. Then again, I thought our fight song went "hit em high" instead of "hit em hard" for about two months, and kept asking people why our fight song condoned things that would likely get 15-yard personal foul penalties, so I'm probably not the guy to trust when it comes to matters of tackling people above the waist.

There was also a guy saying that Brendan Smith isn't as good in pass coverage as I portrayed him to be, citing the OSU game. Well, you're probably right, anonymous guy. To be honest, I remember very little of the OSU game after we tied it up at seven, other than the inability to feel my lower legs and the fact that my mom kept complaining about how cold it was. I was a little hesitant to include a sentence describing Smith as good at pass coverage, but I remembered his two interceptions for touchdowns this past year and decided to throw it in, one of those was a deflection, and one of those was a terrible throw into double coverage where he was just waiting to run it back against Syracuse, both were probably more indicative that he's a good return man than he is a lockdown defender.  

I already called out run-on sentence guy, and the rest of the comments were like "hey, nice blog" or on posts too far back for me to mention here, so, basically, in summary, thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, and thanks for voting in the polls. Ask about my reader-friendliness policies, folks. 

1LDTFS, Post 11: Field Goals and the people associated with them.

Today's post is oddly titled, because it's really 1.5 posts. You see, we didn't just lose Amado Villarreal this year. We lost every possible human being associated with kicking field goals: the kicker, the backup kicker, the holder, and the long snapper. It's very similar to what the Mayans predict will happen in 2012. Since I wasn't sure where to place a post about the more marginal positions, I'm lumping them in at the end of my Amado post. Enjoy.

Days left til football: 31. (This number is guaranteed accurate: I'm no longer going off math, but off of HailtoPurple's countdown to kickoff counter and this site, which alternates playing a different song every time I go to the page, luckily, the songs it picks are pretty much the only songs I could ever want to hear: Young Jeezy's Put On, Kanye's Homecoming, Zombie Nation, Mo Greene's Go U NU bowl game remix (why haven't I ever heard this song before? He name drops EVERY SINGLE OFFENSIVE LINEMAN!), and other classics.

Who did it last year?: Surely you remember Amado Villarreal. I've been deading Villarreal since this site's very first sentence, but, truth be told, he was a pretty servicable kicker for his two-year career, even briefly earning nickname "Amado-matic." 

Don't get me wrong: Amado Villarreal was far from a great kicker. A great kicker wouldn't miss any PAT's, and would be able to hit 40+ yard field goals, which Amado essentially couldn't. But he was, without a doubt, an alright or better kicker. He gets a pretty bad rap for a few reasons: first off, kickers ALWAYS get bad raps. People remember even the great kickers for the one time they missed one that could've won a game. Just hitting a field goal or extra point doesn't seem that impressive - it's expected, so fans get mad whenever a kicker misses one. Secondly, Amado didn't have any positive defining moments - no game winning field goals or anything, his only game-winning attempt came at the end of the 2007 Michigan State game, and he missed from 36 yards. 

And third, Amado's failures couldn't have come at worse times. Villarreal missed three extra points this year, four in his two year career. The first came in the aforementioned MSU game, which ended up being a 48-41 NU victory in overtime, but could have had a final in regulation of Amado hadn't missed an extra point attempt. The second came in last year's Iowa game, when NU scored a touchdown after being down seven and had to watch Amado shank one to leave the score 17-16. (We won eventually, in case you forgot.) The next came in last year's Indiana game. The final score was 21-19, but if Amado had hit all his PAT's, NU would've had the opportunity to tie it up at 21 with a two-point conversion. The most painful, of course, was a shank job in last year's overtime Alamo Bowl lost, which prompted people to get very angry at our kicker, because another point would've won NU the game.

But until the PAT - a really, really, really outdated aspect of football - is eliminated, very good kickers will always miss them once in a while. They'll plant their foot wrong, the snap will be high, or the hold will be an inch too far to the left, and it'll get shanked, and there's nothing you can do about it. Long story short, Amado worked hard for five years, kicked relatively well for two of them, and it's sad that he'll be remembered for his propensity to shank.

(Oh, and, what a bad idea to write 500 boring words about PAT's a few days after I get linked to because I'm "witty." I think I just lost all my readers.)

Song this position reminds me of: Posting "Can I Kick It" would be too cliche, so until somebody writes a song about Amado Villarreal, this section of this post goes barren.

Who's got next?: It's a toss-up between our good friend/punter Stefan Demos and incoming recruit Jeff Budzien, who's like an All-American or something. There's two options here: we could let Budzien and his golden leg get to work right away nailing 50-yarders, or we could let Demos swing double-duty as a punter and a kicker at the risk of his leg falling off but with the reward of keeping Budzien around the program another year. Chances are Demos would be servicable as a placekicker, but to be honest, I the upcoming year is one of the more important ones in franchise history. Kicker isn't a position which requires an adjustment period. If Budzien is a better kicker, just shove him in the starting lineup. We've got more to lose this year than we do in 2013, when he'd be a senior if we redshirt him, so I say set him loose. 

It should also be noted that Brandon Williams, a freshman kicker on our roster, played quarterback and wide receiver in high school. For some reason, that reminds me of that one Bugs Bunny cartoon where he was playing baseball, although odds are Williams' method of getting in the end zone probably wasn't unfurling posters of 1930's pin-up girls to defenders about to tackle him.

We also have Steve Flaherty, a walk-on kicker who played wide receiver in high school, and Mark Ison and Tim Weak, who were listed as kickers on last year's roster but have moved to wide receiver and cornerback, respectively. Point is, our kicking corps could totally demolish any other kicking corps in the Big Ten in a footrace. Not sure why our kickers need such great hands, though. 

Is that an improvement? With Demos, maybe, with Budzien, probably. Dude's a high school All-American. What more can I say? 

THE OTHER POSITIONS

We also lose a long snapper and a holder. These are two positions that you forget about, but, which, well, you need somebody to do. I remember the first game I saw at Ryan Field, against Ohio. I had read something about how Ohio's long snapper was suspended or injured or something silly like that, and as a joke, I said to a friend that this would totally change the course of the game.

Three hours later, NU had blocked two field goals and Ohio had missed it's only other opportunity, because the backup long snapper kept bouncing it back to the holder, and Ohio couldn't get off a good punt because everything back to the punter was a two-hopper. It totally ruined what could have been a winnable game for them. 

Kyle Daley had been holding for two years and Phil Brunner had been long snapping for three. And they were pretty consistent, I guess, I don't remember them ever messing up. Replacing Brunner will be a guy named John Henry Pace, who transferred from The U (slang name used here to avoid confusion with Miami (OH), who we're more familiar with, for some reason), and replacing Daley, we don't know yet, although several wide recievers and safeties have "might be a holder this season" on their player profiles. 

If you read these last few paragraphs, you're a trooper. Sorry this post was so long.  

Craig Moore: Dutch Masta Killa

Hey, it's all the people who clicked links over from Lake The Posts! Nice to see you. I urge you to go over to the side of this post, and vote in the poll, which was a boring 10-5 Carmody lead before LTP readers started coming in, and has turned into an Alamo Bowl-esque thing with Wet Paper Bag taking leads and giving them right back to Carmody, including an 18-18 deadlock heading into last night. Now stands with a 24-21 lead for the Bag. Remember folks, the Wet Paper Bag might not be human, but he's known as a player's coach, something Carmody has never been. I'm actually going to extend the poll a little bit so we can see its thrilling conclusion. 

So, since I know there's nothing you peeps love more than news of ex-NU players playing overseas, today's a good day: Craig Moore is on the move to Holland, where he'll be playing with DeFriesland Aris Leeuwarden of the Dutch Eredivisie. (Eredivisie, of course, is Dutch for "the Rik Smits Memorial Dutch Basketball Association.") DeFriesland Aris placed seventh in the Eredivisie last year, and their Eurobasket page features this picture of their home court, which appears to be some sort of futuristic lazer tag arena where there's lines for 40,000 different sports on the court in order to make officiating impossible. (How's that for a run-on, guy who commented on my last post?) 

The team is located in Leeuwarden, which is a city in the region of Friesland, which is a part of the Netherlands which speaks Frisian, the language most similar to English of any language in the world. There was once a joke about this fact in this post, but it was so bad that I grew guilty about how unhumorous it was and retroactively removed it. Moving on. 

You probably know Holland best as one of the cooler countries in Europe and as the filming site for large amounts of Deuce Bigalow 2: European Gigolo. When it comes to sports, if you know them at all, you probably just know their soccer team which rivals the T&T in coolness. Off the top of your head, the Netherlands probably seems like some sort of basketball backwaters, but, off the top of my head, I can think of the aforementioned Smits, Francisco Elson, Dan Gadzuric, and recent NBA draftee Henk Norel hailing from the Netherlands. So there's that.

Here's wishing Craig luck abroad. Although Craig was a great player at a Big Ten level, there's really not much hope for a player of his caliber outside of college: people from across the world have great jumpers, and although he was a surprisingly tenacious defender, his lack of height and speed made that not really mean much. He turned the ball over at least twice that I can think of simply because he doesn't know how to dribble with his left hand, and other times, looked really silly because his lack of a left meant that the only way he could turn left would be by doing a 270-degree right handed spin move, which was hilarious to watch. But he was perfect for the college level, and even more for Carmody's system: he provided a player who could pretty much get off a shot whenever he wanted against college defenders, no matter how closely he was being guarded, and who could stretch the floor and keep opposing teams from packing the paint. There were times last year when I thought the best, most efficient play our offense could run at this point would just be to dribble the ball across half-court, give it to Craig Moore, wherever he is, and have him shoot it. I could see him having some success abroad, so, here's to Craig.  

The post-college whereabouts of Pat Houlihan and Marlon Day are still unknown, but I'm working on taking a higher-res picture of my guitar. 

BREAKING: 87% of all NU Graduates now professional football players in Finland

Because I'm a journalism student, and therefore, someone who is trained and specializes in finding and reporting the information which I decide you, the readers, need to know, I mentioned in the the cornerbacks post that David Oredugba is playing professionally in Finland. Just Oredugba alone made Finland the world's largest importer of ex-NU defenders. (They had previously been in a 195-way tie for last.)

This important information dinked and dunked around the internets, and eventually, somehow word who got to LTP, who brought us this post with the news that Deante Battle, who was a starting cornerback round Evanston way for 3 years, is also playing in Finland. 

Because I'm a journalism student, and therefore, adept at finding information which I discern will interest my readers, I'm here to break yet another story: Demetrius Eaton, the ex-NU linebacker, is a teammate of Battle's on the Kouvola Indians. 

Dear rest of the world: you've been scooped. Deal with it.

As you probably were able to tell by my borderline obsessive coverage of Kyle Rowley's exploits for the T and T national basketball team, I've got a bit of a thing for fledgling American sports in countries that aren't America. So here's my really long post about Finnish American football, plus, I found the evidence that all this is actually true that I was looking for in my last post. No help from all of you, though, so nobody wins the prizes I promised. Unfortunately, figuring things out with this has been a little difficult, considering Finnish is a language most closely related to Hungarian, and therefore, is like the bottom 5 least decipherable things possible. 

So: David Oredugba is, as noted, a cornerback for the Helsinki Roosters, the 14-time winners of the American Football Association of Finland. Because everything in Finland makes sense, this league is abbreviated as the SABJ. In the last post, I was dying for evidence that this is true, and here it is: an interview Oredugba did with some guy with a thick Finnish accent, just after playing his first game. 

So, yeah: good to see our ex-fourth-string cornerbacks are enjoying themselves. Also, sweet high-top fade. If I knew he was rockin that thing under his helmet at NU, I would've had a new favorite player.

Meanwhile, onto Battle and Eaton: unlike Oredugba, these guys don't seem to be living the good life. Battle and Eaton, as noted, are signed with the Kouvola Indians. Unlike Oredugba's team, the Indians aren't in the Finnish American football big leagues. They're in the I-Divisioona, which, because everything in Finland makes sense, is the second level of Finnish American football, the AAA of Finland's thriving gridiron scene. To add insult to injury, while Helsinki is a capital city and has over 500,000 inhabitants, Kouvola's wikipedia page describes it thusly: "Kouvola has a reputation of being a dull and uninteresting place." So pity Deante and Demetrius a little.

When it comes to football, the two are doing pretty well as far as I can tell. I would assume this is because these are ex-Big Ten players, and they're playing in the second-best league in Finland, a league where Stefan Demos could probably pass for a right tackle. Both are playing both ways, and have various articles written about them in Finnish newspapers.  Of course, I don't know what these articles say, because Finnish ain't my strong suit, but the inordinate amount of times each name pops up both in these newspaper articles and on team websites makes me assume they're doing well, unless the authors are sadistic and love ragging on people excessively.

Deante has even gone so far as to post a highlight reel of himself on youtube, playing in Finland, which I'm thrilled about, because it provides my much needed visual evidence that there's Finnish dudes playing football. 

I like Deante's choice of Young Dro as highlight reel music, and really like the clips of him absolutely levelling various hapless Finns who have probably never been tackled by an actual football player before, then standing up and yelling various things at their possibly lifeless bodies. 

However, judging from this thing he wrote (on a site that only appears to feature ex-NU athletes - anybody know the deal with that? Gotta be NU-grad founded or something), Deante doesn't seem to be enjoying himself too much in Finland. That's among the more depressing things I've ever read, so, Deante, cheer up. 

Because they're Americans playing American football in Finland, there are numerous photos of Deante and Demetrius doing dramatic things. Demetrius is #3, Deante is #2:

Is he looking at the kid in the grey's badonk?

My favorite part of this photo is the startled ref.

Anyway, that's that. However, I'm still hungry for more information, as this whole Finnish football thing raises more questions than answers: how well are these guys actually doing, outside of photos? Who put them in touch with random Finnish football teams? Do they ever have little NU reunions in Finland? Considering I haven't seen one image with fans in the background, how do these guys get paid? Is Finland scouting NU games, and if not, how come the ranks of Finland's football finest are populated by so many NU grads? And most importantly, why in the name of all that is holy are they playing professional football in Finland?

Anybody with answers to any of these questions: come forth. First person to get me in touch with an actual Finnish football player, NU grad or not, wins my undying love. 

It's Been Fun

I watched a few innings of the Yanks-White Sox game last night, and about four minutes after I turned it on, in the third inning, Al Leiter was talking about his college choices, how he was going to go to Stanford, and, because he was in Chicago, Michael Kay brought up NU as a good school in the area, followed by an obligatory shot of Joe Girardi, and the revelation that Leiter toured NU whiel Girardi was still a player, and that Girardi's coach came to visit for the first game of the Yanks-Sox series.

Leiter said, "Northwestern's not Fordham, but it's a good school."

Kay retorted thus: "Oh, yeah, it's outstanding. It's like an Ivy League school."

In 19 years on this earth, I've discovered two constants in life: 

1. White people with dreads are terrifying. 

2. If Michael Kay thinks it's good, it's actually bad. 

It is with this that I announce my intention to transfer from Northwestern to another institution of higher learning, and to cease blogging. Peace. It's been real. 

(Dear readers/NU administration: satire. Please, keep reading/PLEASE ALLOW ME TO CONTINUE ATTENDING YOUR UNIVERSITY IT WAS A JOKE I SWEAR)