Presidents to Represent Me.

I, like every other Northwestern student, received an email from a guy named Morton O. Schapiro today. The gist of the email is that he's the new president of Northwestern University, and he's replacing Henry S. Bienen, whose last day on the job was yesterday. (For some reason, I was really picky about middle initials in this paragraph.)

I think it's safe to say that Schapiro immediately becomes the second or third most important figure in Northwestern sports, behind Pat Fitzgerald and Jim Phillips. 

To understand why, look at Northwestern sports under Bienen's administration. Bienen took over the job on January 1, 1995, and Northwestern sports was an elaborate joke at best, with a few NIT teams, and really, nothing else since the 1960's. 

Exactly a year later, the team was in the Rose Bowl. (This had nothing to do with Bienen, but, still.) Bienen quickly realized something no other Northwestern administrator ever had: sports teams seem irrelevant to the school from an academic standpoint, but they breed more than school spirit. The increased exposure from the Rose Bowl appearance led to an increase in applications, which allowed NU to be more selective of who they accepted academically and earned the school money. Yes, having good sports teams is fun, but it's also great for the school's image at large, and I'd say NU has improved overall due to our team's on-field improvements. He devoted himself to improving the school's sports teams, and the coaching hires he made show it. Although he can't take credit for the Rose Bowl win, our football teams, plus our teams in other sports such as lacrosse and softball have seen much more success under Bienen than under any previous president. And that's probably not a coincidence.

On the flipside, Bienen is supposedly Bill Carmody's biggest fan, and the main reason he's still employed. Bienen loves himself some basketball, enough so that he brought it up for no apparent reason at a speech to the parents of incoming students last year, and he's good friends with Carmody. There's a lot of speculation that the end of Bienen's administration will bring the end of Carmody's if there isn't major improvement this year. We'll see how it all actually turns out, but, remember, the athletic director and all the coaches are employed by the school, and the final decisions as to who keeps what job are made by the president. 

Schapiro comes from Williams College, which is somewhat of a sports powerhouse on the D-III level. The Ephs have won 13 of 14 Division III director's cups, which are awarded to the school that has the best all-around performances in NCAA championship events, with points awarded based on team finishes in every sport the NCAA sanctions competitions in. (On the D-I level, Stanford has won the Director's Cup 15 of the 16 years the cup has been awarded, with their only second-place finish coming in the trophy's inaugural 1994 season. This makes me a little suspect, as Stanford doesn't seem like a sports powerhouse, but I guess they're definitely a program NU can look up to, even if our football team is way, way better.) Long story short, Schapiro knows how to run an athletic department. If it's worth anything, Williams recruited the best player in my high school's basketball history, and he comes off the bench there.

So, the Schapiro era starts today, and its impact will be felt in NU sports. I think we'll be in good hands, and I think the bottom-feeder days of NU sports are fading fast. 

Bienen, oddly enough, has accepted a position as the chairman of the Board of Directors for the UFL, which is the same football league that CJ Bachér is currently quarterbacking in. So good luck with that, ex-Prez/CJ.

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. 

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. 

A Really, Really, Really, Really Naive Dude Generically Previews Major Northwestern Sports, Part 2: Basketball

The weekend of the generic previews rolls on, homies! I figure for this blogs inaugural weekend, I'd hit up both our money sports, so here goes. 

So, let's be real. I love basketball. Like, I think more about it per day than you probably do in a year. If anybody in the future days of this blog ever, ever questions how much I care about basketball, I will send them to this post. And more specifically, I will forward them to this picture of my Les Paul.

GAME OVER. I win. I ATTACHED FREAKIN STICKERS OF PAT HOULIHAN AND MARLON DAY TO MY GUITAR. EVERY TIME I PLAY IT, ANYBODY WATCHING MUST REMAIN TRANSFIXED BY THE CONSTANT SMILES OF WALK-ON BASKETBALL PLAYERS, BECAUSE THEY'RE FREAKIN ADHERED THERE. PERMANENTLY. Point being, I like Northwestern basketball. 

(Full story: senior day, they printed up stickers of every Northwestern senior. I decided to take one of each as I entered. Then, I thought to myself: hey, why don't I take three or four more of the walk-ons? Is there really going to be that high of a demand for the smiling face of Pat Houlihan? 

It turned out, there wasn't. I was satiated with the five Houlihan heads I already had, but on the way out, on a whim, my friend and I decided to see if there were any stickers left. The Sterling Williams and Craig Moore piles were gone. But there were two industrial-sized rolls containing smiling face after smiling face of Pat n' Marlon, just waiting to be picked up. So my friend and I ripped off about 15 a piece, and started applying them to any and every surface that we felt needed walk-on heads, including but not limited to the University of Iowa team bus parked invitingly outside the arena. It gave me great pleasure knowing that they would have to spend the entire ride with Marlon's eyes staring victorious bullets into their bus all the way back to Iowa City. [Full disclosure: I also slapped a magnetic schedule on the Minnesota Golden Gopher's bus. I have a bad habit.] Anyway, I still, to this day, have about five stickers of each left. And I decided my guitar would look badass with some Pat Houlihan attached. I was wrong, but the sticker remains as a testament to his silly looking jump-stop free throw motion.) 

Anyway. I have a funny feeling older NU fans probably won't consider me a true fan. I was a freshman last year, and, well, in my first year, the football team went to a bowl, and the basketball team won the first EIGHT games I attended, a record sure never to be broken. (I had journalism class during the Purdue game. Had to wait till Illinois to get my dreams smashed.) Traditionally, Northwestern fandom is all about pain and sorrow, and I've had little of it. And they look at me like I'm crazy when I say that I expect good things from our team. Now, Northwestern fans can be optimistic short-term - they go into every game thinking we can win - but when you put out big projections like "tourney", they brush you off. Nope. Not with Carmody. Not at our school. Never. Not without Craig Moore, Carmody needs shooters! No! No no no!

I'm not going to predict a tourney berth this season. I'm far too superstitious to say anything that jinxy. But I will say this: if not this year, when? 

Northwestern has never, ever been to a tourney. We all know that, we all know we're the last BCS school, we all know the sad, pathetic facts. But everybody at the school dreams of a hypothetical Selection Sunday where we're sitting around, watching the brackets pop up, and there - at like the 12th, or 13th seed, maybe - Northwestern? Northwe-NORTHF***INGWESTERN? And Evanston bursts into flame or something. We don't even need to win. Jim Phillips said it best in that Yahoo article, which I can't find right now: I can get hit by a bus that monday, I just need to see us in the tourney.

And this year is going to be our best chance for what looks like a long time. Now Craig Moore was a ridiculous shooter - he shot a lower percentage than Juice, and Juice has comparable range, but the shots Moore could get up successfully and get in were amazing, he barely needed any room - but I think that skill is replaceable. Next year, NU will be able to run out a lineup of something like Juice-Crawford?-Shurna-Coble-Mirkovic where every player has a damn good chance of hitting a threeball. (Obviously I've never seen Crawford play, and we might opt to start somebody else, and will probably start Rowley, but I'm a big Mirk fan.) We can, and will, be able to spread the floor. No one guy can replace Moore, because there just will never be a player who can camp out beyond that line all possession, waiting for his guy to give him just the right amount of room for him to catch and shoot, or come off screens like him - although rumors are that Fruendt is a lights out shooter, and that recruit Marcotullio is too - but we can have lineups where any one guy is capable of popping out behind the line for a three, and I think in a Princeton set with all sorts of guys constantly moving and setting screens and pick-and-pops, that could be as scary as it was lasat year.

So that's why I feel we lose relatively little. But as for why I feel this year is one of them now or never joints, well, it's obvious. Kevin Coble is one of the best players we've had in a while, and will be for some time. John Shurna is not Kevin Coble, and although Drew Crawford is supposedly all that, Kevin Coble is all that and a bag of chips. (Sweet Spicy Chili flavored Doritos, at that.) Coble can turn busted possessions into buckets. He can do this:

"No, please don't shoo- WHAT?"

He can do this:

Heh. Go ahead, watch it again. I know you want to. (Also note the absolute cojones performance from Juice. I mean, Christo. That one shot from the upper peninsula of the floor marker might have made me happier than anything in the history of things.)

So let's be real. For NU, Coble is a once in a long-time scoring talent. And, hey, also leads our team in rebounds. (He's not as good a rebounder as some of the other, less minuted heads like Luka, but with Coble, he's tall and he literally can't afford to take him off the floor.) Without him, our team would be, well, hideous. So, to sum up this super-long post in one, annoying sentence, here it is: NORTHWESTERN BASKETBALL: NEXT YEAR IS NOW.

Oh, yeah, and we should fire Bill Carmody, but that's 43 posts for some other time.