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. 

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. 

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.