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.