Four Days.

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

This countdown post sort of breaks the template of the others, but, whatever. It's got a long preface and whatnot. Just read it. 

You see, I'm a hip-hop nerd. You probably figured this out from my first post, and all the other ones, too. Anyway, I've noticed a trend: behind every successful sports team is a team-specific hip-hop song.

As a New Yorker, this was evident to me from a young age. The Knicks had a song called "Go New York Go New York Go", and they made a new edition of it every time they made the playoffs. It's pretty much the best song of all time. On Youtube, I can find the '94 version (they made the finals), the '99 version (they made the finals again) and the '04 version (the last year they made the playoffs, also the last time the team made the song. (It also should be noted that Q-Tip freestyled about the team when the Knicks made the finals.)

Also, when the Yankees had a dynasty in the late 90's, every year, local radio stations like Z100, which I unabashedly listened to when I was 8, hired random people to make songs about the team every year. I distinctly remember one rapper who had to do it completely copping out and just saying "Hideki Irabu" at the end of a verse, because nothing rhymes with it very well. I can't find any on the internet, besides this song which is less rap than two fake Italian guys talking to each other, but you get the gist.

Chicago fans also should be familiar with this concept, courtesy of the '85 Bears.But this is something that's universally true. I mean, the Lakers even had their own mixtape this past year. 

And nowhere is this truer than in Northwestern sports. To my knowledge, there are three rap songs about Northwestern football. I present to you: the complete, unabridged glossary of Northwestern football-related rap music.

1) The song from the beginning of the "Purple to Pasadena" video on Youtube.

Year made: 1995.

Wildcats Record that year: 10-2. 

They had to make some promotional video about the Wildcats making it to the Rose Bowl, and the producers of the VHS were like, "hey, what do the kids listen to nowadays?" and they ended up with this terrible song. I imagine the questionnaire they used to hire the rapper guy contained questions such as "Have you heard of music before?" and "On a scale of 1-10, how bad are you at pronouncing the word 'Wildcats?'" Anyway, the guy comes on, raps two verses and proves to me that he's vaguely familiar with the concept of words that rhyme with one another, has heard of Northwestern (he kind of rhymes it with "best") and that he's also vaguely familiar with football. Anyway, it's like a how-to of how not to rap. He ends two bars with "running back", and he says awkward things like "the Wildcats uniforms roar when they hit the field," which doesn't make any sense, and he says our offense "has more power than an Amtrak derail", which is bad, because you try not to compare your offense to a horrific tragedy, or something which is terribly misguided, both of which are ways you can describe Amtrak trains derailing. Also, there's the aforementioned fact that he pronounces the word "Wildcats" "waaaaolcats", which wouldn't be annoying, but he does it 14 times, and therefore, I feel it bears repeating that it's really annoying.

2) Mo Greene's "Go U NU" and "Go U NU Alamo Bowl Remix".

Year produced: 2008.

Wildcats record that year: 9-4.

I'm not quite sure who Mo Greene is. I know he's a rapper who went to Northwestern, and that he showed up at the Purdue game last year, was sort of just chilling outside the students entrance while everybody was entering the stadium while music is playing, and that later, he walked through the stands, and stood near me and my friends for a few seconds, and we couldn't decide what to say to him, finally someone was like "hey, Mo, what's up" and he said "Making music, you know how it is" and then answered his cell phone and walked away.

What I do know is that he made two great songs last year about Northwestern football. The songs are catchy, and good game day/stadium listening music. Greene is clever and has lyrical talent, and it shows.

Mo's namechecking skills are off the charts. He manages to mention pretty much everybody involved with NU football, and he manages to make each namedrop relevant, and stays inventive with how he incorporates the names into his flow. In the Alamo Bowl remix (hear it here) he manages to reference Jeff Yarbrough (who didn't record any catches last year) Ramon Diaz (a backup offensive lineman who never played at NU) Stefan Demos (our punter), Finnish football star David Oredugba, our entire offensive line (yeah, seriously) and, as far as I can tell, every single starter at every single position.  And none of them seem forced. (Actually, the "go far with O-mar Conteh" sounds forced, but other than that, it's pretty good.) It's actually really impressive. It's like "Fame" by GZA except it's a little bit more of a cut-and-paste job, since he had so much less material to work with. 

My only complaints about the song are the weird "CHAAAAA!" fake laughing things he does all the time that actually scare me. 

Anyway, Greene pretty much sets the bar for team-related hype songs.

You'll notice that of the three rap songs, they were written in two years, and in those years, the Wildcats combined for 19 wins, whereas in the rest of Northwestern history, in years the Wildcats don't have rap songs, the team averages well below 9.5 wins a season. Therefore, I hypothesize that the Wildcats need a rap song written about their season to be successful.

However, the season starts in four days, and we don't have a song yet. I nominate Mo Greene to write one, but, if he doesn't step up, I might just have to. And I think it's in the best interests of everybody around us that that doesn't happen, because although I'm undeniably nice with it, there's a reason I'm a rap nerd and not a rapper, because I'm better at writing about rap, than I am at rapping it, and as you can see, I'm pretty bad at writing about it. But if I have to step into the studio to save NU's season, I might have to take that chance. I'm not afraid, but you should be.

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. 

1LDTFS, Post 9: Cornerbacks.

Sorry for the four or so day posting break - me and some of the boys went camping, no internet access out in the woods. Hopefully, the new poll on the right makes up for my time away. (Seriously, folks, give Wet Paper Bag his due.)

Days Left Til Football: 38. (Please, nobody actually do the math to figure this out. I'm probably so far off at this point - I keep subtracting from the last time I did this post, but I'm probably losing like 4 days each time I do that.)

Yeah, that's pass interference. 

Who did it last year?: The purple-clad fella above is Sherrick McManis, who started every game last year and did a downright fantastic job. McManis was in his third year starting games at cornerback, his second year full-time, and he's improved every year. He was originally joined by Justan Vaughn, who jumped some people on the depth chart to earn the starting job, but after the Syracuse and Duke games, Vaughn suffered a season-ending injury, and in came Jordan Mabin, who was pretty much as good as McManis, and earned hisself a Freshman All-American honor. 

In the tradition of naming graduated players who sorta contributed in these posts, NU loses David Oredugba, who played a decent amount of corner when we needed three or four on the field, and will forever go down in NU history as the guy whose poor hands led to Brendan Smith's game-winning pick six against Minnesota. Because I'm a journalism student, and I therefore specialize in reporting to you, the reader, the most important and relevant information I can find, I am here to tell you the following information: Oredugba is now gainfully employed playing football for the Helsinki Roosters in Finland.  For all of you who were wondering about ex-NU occasional nickelback David Oredugba's post-collegiate football whereabouts,  you're welcome, and donations are accepted in the form of cash, checks, or credit cards sent to my dorm room. Here are some money quotes from an interview with David from the Roosters' website.

"I understand that during the summer Helsinki is a great place to
be, because of the nice weather, festivals, midnight sunsets. While in
Finland I hope to forge many lifelong friendships."

" I hope to do whatever it takes for the Roosters to win the Maple Title."

The Purple Drank: providing the information you need since June 2009.

Who's Got Next?: McManis and Mabin ensured their starters roles with great performances last year, and with Vaughn back from injury, we've basically got three cornerbacks who we'd be pleased with in a starting role. If needs be, Mike Bolden seems to be the most likely candidate to play in a dime set, although we'd probably end up putting in safety Bryan Peters and having Brad Phillips playing a nickelback role with Vaughn also in the game. 

Is that an improvement? Oh yeah. Essentially, the difference from last year to this year is that we know we have two lock-down corners in McManis and Mabin, plus, our third CB - a pretty necessary position - changes from Oredugba to Vaughn. Don't tell the Helsinki Roosters, but Vaughn was higher than Oredugba on the roster last year, so that's a good thing. Our secondary should be pretty sweet this year, and by now, you've probably noticed that all of the defensive posts since DT have been really complimentary, and the DT one was pretty complimentary too. Long story short, we're going to have a nice defense this year.

And, yes, consider the hunt on for any further evidence related to David Oredugba's Finnish American football career. First person to find anything wins a prize.