I think we're going to disappoint Towson.

Towson is an FCS school that runs a football program, year-in, year-out, with little glamor or glitz. As noted about a billion times, they've only played one FBS school in team history, and that was in-state opponent Navy last year. 

And Towson seems excited to be playing a opponent that's on a bowl-game level, but the problem is, I think they're a little bit too excited. I think they have some image that because NU has had a decent amount of success in the past few years, we're a major, big time, Hollywood program, with tens of thousands of murderously raucous fans screaming obscenities and hurling D Batteries and soda bottles filled with blood onto the field. 

The Baltimore Sun tells us that head coach Rob Ambrose has been putting his team through practice with "music, thunder, and screaming" piped in to simulate the atmosphere of NU's 47,000 seat Terrordome.

The article includes a smattering of funny quotes:  (Editors note: I wish I could tell you why all the font on my blog goes black for a few paragraphs, but no idea.)

"First up is Northwestern - yes, that Northwestern - a bowl-savvy, lip-smacking Big Ten team whose scrubs might give Towson fits."

"Not lost on the Tigers is recent history. Three years ago, New Hampshire, another team from the unheralded Colonial Athletic Association, journeyed to Evanston, Ill., and stunned Northwestern, 34-17."

Rob Ambrose says that ""Our guys are going to find out that, as big and bad as a top 20 team is, if they play their butts off, they can play with anybody."

"Northwestern has 47 lettermen back from a team that beat Michigan before 107,000 in Ann Arbor.

On the other hand, Towson has new uniforms"

Uh, while it's cool to see NU portrayed in such a flattering light, there's some serious overexaggerations. First off, Towson might have beaten Michigan in front of 107,000 in Ann Arbor last year. Next, although we were ranked No. 19 for a little bit last year, calling us a "Big, bad top 20 team" is a bit of a stretch. Also, we've played in bowls, we're not quite bowl-savvy, I'm not sure what "yes, that Northwestern" is supposed to mean, and although we were expected to win against New Hampshire, the author is writing about it like it was Hoosiers or something.  (By the way, despite the slight tweaking of facts to make this story more dramatic than it should be, the author is not fictional Baltimore Sun reporter Scott Templeton. And to be honest, it's not a badly written story, nor is it really tweaking the facts, I just find it really funny how NU is described in the complete opposite way of how we've come to expect it. If you're reading this, author of this story, keep doing your thing.)

Also, Towson is organizing a big trip to watch the game, the only time they're doing so all year, and an author for Towson's student newspaper calls us "inarguably the school's toughest opponent in program history."

Look, like I said, it's all flattering. But I'm sorry, we have to disappoint. There will probably be somewhere in the range of 15-20,000 people at the game on Saturday, leaving the stadium about 2/3 empty, and, in terms of us being, big, bad boys, although we wish everybody thought that we were, the other ten schools in our conference laugh at us. Even when we beat them.

Basically, as I've said about a million times, this game is a whirlpool of disappointment. If we do great, we're saddening a bunch of happy-go-lucky Towsonians excited to see their Tigers compete against a Big Ten school, only to see them get ransacked in front of a half-interested crowd. If it's close, our team isn't too good. If we lose, well, I hope you enjoyed people talking about us positively.

That being said, I think we'll win by a lot. And although this means that we'll forever have to live with the guilt of bringing sadness upon the comically overenthusiastic people who wrote these articles, on the plus side, 

Two Days/I'm an Idiot

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

Props to whoever recorded this. There's nothing like a college football student section (except maybe a college basketball student section), and while the season starts in two days, the quarter system means I've got another three weeks until I get to stand on metal bleachers and go hoarse, and that's sort of depressing.

For those of you wondering about the "I'm an idiot" portion of the title, well, you'll notice that yesterday I had a post saying "four days" and today I have a post saying "three days." 

Well, last saturday, I had a post saying "Seven Days" because I looked and saw it was a week from football season. However, it took until today for me to actually look at a calendar and realize, "hey, that countdown means there's still a day left on saturday", which is stupid. I'm not counting down to sunday.

Anyway, yes, I'm an idiot. In my defense, I'm a journalism student, and therefore, haven't taken a math class since high school, haven't gotten above a C+ in a math class since tenth grade, and haven't gotten a B in math... ever. (I'm proud to be one of the few Northwestern students who says they got bad grades and means it. I assume this means I'm amongst the top five journalists of all time, but I'll leave that for you to decide.)

In other news, college football starts tonight! In even better news, Big Ten football starts tonight! Indiana plays Eastern Kentucky, and if this game took place two years ago, and was basketball, and you changed the word "Eastern" to "Western", I'd totally watch it, and it would be on the news as a matchup of potential tourney teams. Sadly, none of those things are the case.

Eastern Kentucky is sort of an FCS powerhouse - 31 consecutive winning seasons - and Indiana is sort of a FBS, well, whatever the opposite of powerhouse is (slaughterhouse? crackhouse?), so expect it to be closer than your average I-A vs. I-AA matchup. 

I'm going Indiana, 24, EKU, 17. Watch a bit and switch over toe the Oregon-Boise State matchup. You gotta pull for the Hoosiers, because you never, ever want your future opponents to drop a game (or nine) to FCS squads.

It also should be noted that Indiana added a little over 3,000 seats to Memorial Stadium in the offseason, pushing the difference in size between our stadiums from about 2100 to about 5500. I'm not sure what the purpose of this was, but suffice it to say, with a hot start to the year and good student support at Ryan Field, who knows, maybe Indiana will challenge for the 2009 edition of the prestigious Big Ten's Most Empty Seats award, which NU has won handily pretty year ever. Sadly, short of back-to-back NU Rose Bowls or a snap decision by Purdue to move all their home games to el Estadio Azteca,  I think NU will probably be the frontrunner for this trophy for a long time.

Gettin Familiar With: Towson Football.

I told y'all bout Towson, now to find out about the football team.

This is a photo of ex-Tiger Jermon Bushrod. It's not related to this at all, but it is by far the coolest picture ever taken of somebody playing for the Towson Tigers, and quite frankly, would probably be the coolest picture of someone playing for Northwestern, so I had to post it.

I mean, I'd need you to find me a person who wouldn't look awesome holding a mallet. I would look awesome holding a mallet. 

Historically vs. NU: No meetings. Towson's first game in school history against an FBS opponent was last year's season opening 41-13 loss to Navy.

Overview: Towson isn't a good football team. The team went 3-9 last year. The three wins came against Morgan State, Columbia, and Rhode Island, with the Rhode Island win being their only victory against a conference opponent in a 1-7 slate. Sean Schaefer was a pretty good quarterback, throwing for 3286 yards with a 25-16 TD-INT ratio, but remember, that's against FCS competition. 

So, that, minus...: A decent amount of people. Head Coach Gordy Combs was fired after his 17th season at the helm of the Tigers, and was replaced by Rob Ambrose, UConn's offensive coordinator and an ex-wide receiver for Towson. Schaefer, the QB, graduated, Matt Castor, the teams leaving rusher, left the team due to personal reasons, and the team leader in receiving touchdowns, Tommy Breaux, graduated. The Tigers are not very experience-heavy, in fact, they only have 8 seniors this season, which is a really, really, really low number.

Offense: Towson's offense, predictably, is a jumble. It's bad enough that they lose all those starters, only averaged Ambrose ran a very rush-heavy system at UConn, with Donald Brown leading the nation with over 2000 yards on the ground. Here, he might not have a choice: as of today, there's no starting QB. Blake Peterson, a 24-year old who spent two years as a missionary in Argentina, then went to the University of New Mexico, then transferred because he realized he'd never play, backed up and played in six games last year, and looked like the sure starter after spring ball, but true freshman Peter Athens has supposedly given him a run for his money. The Tigers also have Jeremy Jayne, a quarterback who transferred from Temple, providing ex-DI talent.

As noted, they don't have a returning running back, which is a problem for a fellow like Rob Ambrose. Jas Lee Rouson, who has a great name, was the second leading carrier last year, but he's injured, and it appears carries will go to either Trevor Walker or Tremayne Dameron, both of whom redshirted last year. (It should be noted that Tremayne lists his favorite author as Owen Meany, which is either a clever, hyper-literary inside joke or a sign that Tremayne isn't one for the books. These are the things you must know.) Damien Kinchen started a game last year due to injuries to the top two running backs and also could play.

If you're wondering about Towson's offensive line, they gave up six sacks... against their own defense in the spring game. That might sound reasonable, but you clearly don't know about their defense. (It's pretty bad too. I consider this a segue into the defense part of this post) I hypothesize the poor offensive linesmanship is because Chuck Taylor, a 345-pound offensive guard who started 25 games at New Mexico State before transferring, ate one or two of his platoonmates. Either that, or he provided them with his old-timey basketball shoes that he told them would help them play football, but instead made them hang out with annoying hipsters all the time and they smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank PBR and decided to quit the football team. 

Chuck's shoes are good for 1930's basketball but have little traction.

(In all actuality, Taylor is supposedly a pretty good OG.)

Defense: SEGUES, HOMIE! The Towson defense allowed 35.25 points per game against atrocious opponents last year. They allowed 30 points in 12 games (the exceptions being the victories against Morgan State and Columbia) 40 points in four games, and a whopping 58 against James Madison in the season closer. However, the unit was dominant in the spring game, only allowing one touchdown, recording six sacks and an interception. The impetus behind any improvements will be defensive end Brady Smith, who transferred from Boston College, where he had started 20 games in his first two seasons, recording a sack in the ACC Championship game against Virginia Tech. 

In case you're wondering what scheme the Tigers will run, the answer is... "multiple." Matt Hachmann, an ex-NU recruiting assistant and Towson's new defensive coordinator, said they simply aren't decided yet. This, friends, sounds like a team to worry about. 

I have to ask, what's up with all this transferring?: Towson, as you might have noticed, has a high proportion of players who are transfers from FBS schools. Well, quite simply, it looks like Rob Ambrose has tried to corner the markets on transfers. FCS transfers are attractive to guys at FBS programs looking to play, because unlike transferring to other FBS schools, you aren't required to sit out a year, and Ambrose has capitalized on this, luring Smith and Taylor, and attempting to lure Justin Roper, a transfer QB from Oregon, who eventually decided to play for the University of Montana. As for why they're transferring, it appears many just wanted a change of scene although for the QB's, those guys needed to go some place where they could play after finding they weren't FBS talent. Smith seems to be the only notable exception, as he was good enough to play at BC, and liked it there, but was kicked out of the school because he was a tad too rapey to remain under scholarship at BC.

Transitive property logic that leads me to believe that we'll win by a lot:

9/20, 2008: Coastal Carolina, 31, Towson, 3. 

8/30, 2008: No. 22 Penn State, 66, Coastal Carolina, 10.

11/8, 2008: Iowa, 24, No. 3 Penn State, 23

9/27, 2008: Northwestern, 22, Iowa, 17.

Transitive property score differential: 100. 

All name team: Runners-up: The alliterative Ghanaian redshirt freshman linebacker Brian Boateng-Botwe, sophomore DT Marcus Valentine, and of course, senior LB Alex Butt. I particularly like Butt's name because it's such a great contrast between a relatively serious name in "Alex" and a very not serious one in "Butt". It's sort of like Gary Pelvis, or something.

Winner: Senior wide receiver Tamba Tongu. This is a great name. It's alliterative, and it's got a nice rhythm and a nice flow to it. It just rolls off the tongue (Tongu-e?) very nicely. 

(It should be noted I'm not looking for the funniest names, just the best ones. Sometimes that means funny, but I'm looking for quality. For example if I scanned the Wildcats roster, I'd definitely pick Stone Pinckney. That's such a great name. I'd like to be named Stone Pinckney. With a name like Stone Pinckney, you could be like a congressman, senator, or golf school instructor, and on the other hand, you totally could be a fireman, news anchor, or porn star. It's a limitless name.) (What I'm trying to say is, unlike Name of the Year blog, this isn't so much an "I'm laughing at you" as it is an "I salute your wonderful name, if you'd like to come over and smoke a cigar in celebration of your wonderful name, you're free anytime. You know my number" sort of thing.)

So how does NU play em?: Just stick to our strategy. We don't need to alter our game plan. This should be like the spring game or scrimmage, just with the other team instead of our defense. Take the starters out sometime in the middle of the second quarter, and just play Northwestern football. We can save our experimenting for EMU or Miami (OH). 

Prediction: Nope. Wait till Friday.

Three Days.

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

Boy, it's sure going to be exciting to see all those guys... in action... this year for the Wildcats... oh crap.

PS: I will be revealing the results of the poll to the right directly before gametime, so I suggest you vote now. It's getting heated, as one person has manned up and voted for Towson, so, vote. It's your civic duty.

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.

Next on the Chopping Block: Towson.

Four times this year, and, well, every year, NU plays an out-of-conference opponent. The question arises: who are these guys? 

Some people only want to know who they are in a football sense, but to truly understand our opponents on the gridiron, you have to understand where they come from, so football strategy can wait. I plan on getting to know these universities a little bit better with four quick posts on each college, mainly with info gleaned from the school's wikipedia pages. 

This weeks victim: Towson University.

Where: Towson, Maryland, a place in Baltimore County the Wikipedia is very precise not to refer to as a town. There aren't many notable Towsonians, but Carmelo Anthony, the proud West Baltimore native, went to high school in Towson before transferring to the Oak Hill Academy. In a weird NU connection, the wikipedia tells me that Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character Elaine Benes is supposedly from Towson, although I don't remember it ever coming up on the show. Also in Towson is Goucher College, a former all-women's school which would probably provide a considerably worse opponent in football.

When: Towson was founded in 1866, and has been called by many names, something the Wikipedia kindly sums up in a single image:

(apparently, this image goes wayyyyyyyyy off the right of the page. There are five logos.) Surprisingly, Wikipedia doesn't have an image of the seal from the University's brief period when it was called "Towson University Ochocinco."

Enrollment: 15,374. 

Stadium Size?: Johnny Unitas Stadium seats 11,000, or about 4,000 less than there are attendees of the school. In other news, a Towson fan just heard you complaining about how difficult it is to fill a 50,000 seat stadium with only 8,000 students, and I'm pretty sure he just rolled his eyes and gave you the finger.

Public/Private?: Public. 

Alums I've heard of: Quite frankly, the list of interesting people who have actually graduated from Towson is pretty short: I'd limit it to Braves GM John Schuerholz - who actually is the main person credited with the making Towson's mascot the tiger - and the guy who played the voice of Elmo, whose name I already forget despite the fact that I'm looking at the wikipedia page now. However, Towson does have some pretty cool almost-graduates: Stacy Keibler, a wrestler/actress mainly known for being unreasonably attractive, attended Towson before leaving to capitalize on her attractiveness, and Tamir Goodman, the Jewish Jordan, an orthodox Jew who was very briefly an inspiration to basketball-loving Jews like myself everywhere in the mid 1990's.

For those of you unfamiliar with Goodman's story, he was highly touted after averaging in the high 30's in his junior and senior years of high school playing for the Talmudical Acadamy of Baltimore. He was electric on the court, dunking a lot and whatnot, and accepted a scholarship to play at the University of Maryland. His insistence on wearing a tallis and yarmulke during games, and his refusal to play basketball on the Sabbath, caught a decent amount of press, but after he found out that Maryland wanted him to play and practice Fridays and Saturday's, Goodman left the Terps for Towson. His first year at Towson went off without a hitch, as he averaged a decent 6 points and 4 assists, not great numbers, but alright for a rookie, and he attracted decently sized crowds to go watch Towson play. Unfortunately for Tamir, Mike Jaskulski, the coach who brought Goodman in, left after the Tigers' 12-17 season, and he was replaced by Michael Hunt, a coach less sensitive to Goodman's religious tendencies. (This really skippy youtube video was filmed in the halcyon days of Goodman's time at Towson.)Tamir left the team a month into the 01-02 season, and has spent the past six years bouncing back between playing pro ball in Israel and playing minor league ball in the US. He's currently a player for the Maccabi Haifa Heat in Israel, so, good for Tamir. This clip sums the whole thing up pretty well, features some clips of Goodman in his Towson days, and also shows he's pretty happy with the way it's all turned out.

Current NFL Players: Only one, Jermon Bushrod, an offensive tackle for the Saints and therefore the platoon mate of NU grad Zach Strief. By far the most notable Towson grad to play pro football was punter Sean Landeta, who spent 24 seasons playing professionally, starting with the Philadelphia Stars of the USFL in 1983, picking up two Super Bowl rings with the Giants, and playing until 2006. He was the last active player to have played in the USFL, the last to have appeared in Tecmo Bowl, and among the last to wear the single-bar punter facemask, a uniform object that appears to be officially extinct due to Scott Player's apparently finished career. 

Mascot: Doc, the Tiger. As noted, John Schuerholz is behind this baby. Before that, they were the Towson Golden Knights.

Mascot if I ran the school: Something related to either crabs or The Wire. Perhaps the Towson Cripplingly Realistic Commentaries on the Modern American City. Catchy, huh?

Difference between the amount of times this school has been to the Division I NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament and the amount of times Northwestern has: (Yes, I plan on doing this with each team we face. Just to show how silly it is.)Two. Towson may be an FCS school, but they're still D-I, and therefore, they qualify for the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers went dancing in back to back seasons in 1990-91, losing to Oklahoma and Ohio State, respectively. They actually kept it close in both games, losing by 9 to the Sooners and 11 to the Buckeyes. 

Elsewhere in Towson sports: Towson's most popular sport is lacrosse, because Maryland is a weird, weird place. The men's squad won the DII championship in 1974, made the DI finals in 1991, and the DI final four in 2001, and the women's team, of course, has won five consecutive national championships. (Oh, wait, that's Northwestern with the five straight national championships. Silly mistake.) 

Tidbits:

Might I suggest "Go U Towson-stern"?: Here's how much Towson's football program is in flux this year: in addition to the new head coach and still as-of-yet undetermined starting QB, the Tigers will be taking the field this fall to an all-new fight song. The marching band's musical director, John Miliauskas, was growing tired of the old song which was played to the tune of the University of Arizona's fight song, and commissioned a new one. The theme was written by recent music graduate John Hosier, and the lyrics... well, a contest was held, with the winner receiving $500, but the results haven't been revealed yet. They better hurry, what with the team playing a game in five days and whatnot. 

Can we play them on the road?: NU sports teams are undefeated at Towson's Johnny Unitas Stadium the past two years, with the women's lacrosse teams winning their fourth and fifth consecutive national championship at the Tigers' home football field, Johnny Unitas Stadium. I like to imagine that some of NU's championship athletes snuck through a series of grates in the Towson locker room to find Towson's top secret football game plan book to bring back to Evanston to help out their fellow athletes, dispatching security guards with fast-paced lacrosse balls to the face. But it doesn't seem likely.

Just dance. It'll be okay: The Tigers dance squad has won 11 straight Division I national championships. In case you're wondering what an 11-time national champ looks like, the answer is this:

You're probably thinking "hey, that looked a lot like every other dance team I've ever seen." But then again, if Michael Phelps was swimming laps by himself, would you know he was the best swimmer of all time? In other words, you can't understand how great the Towson dance team's rendition of the stanky leg is until you see the other school's renditions of the stanky leg. 

Johnny U U: Towson's home football stadium is called Johnny Unitas Stadium. It's a brand spankin new facility built in 2002.You'd probably assume Johnny was a large donor or alumni, like John Schuerholz (after whom the team's baseball facilities are named) but that's not the case.

Unitas, as you probably know, was the quarterback for the Baltimore Colts in the 1950's, 60's, and early 70's, back before the team moved to Indianapolis, and is considered one of the all-time greats. He wasn't a Towson grad - he went to Louisville. He retired and lived out the rest of his life in Baltimore. In 2002, Towson asked him to be the "community liason" between Towson sports and Baltimore at large, and Unitas accepted. I assume the major aspects of the job were showing up at fundraising events and making other public appearances, but one of the listed aspects of his job was helping find a corporate sponsor for the brand new stadium. Anyway, soon after Towson opened the stadium, then called "Towson Stadium", and Unitas showed up at the grand opening, threw some passes, and probably signed some autographs. A week later, Unitas died of a heart attack, and rather than continue searching for a corporate sponsor, the team named the stadium after Unitas, and started a scholarship fund in his name to raise money. You could argue that the stadium is named Unitas Stadium because of how beloved he is in the Baltimore community, but on the flip side, you could just as easily argue that it's named that because of the few months he held a puff position at the university.

Long story short, don't be surprised if Ryan Field is renamed Scottie Pippen Field in the year 2033.

So that's it for Towson. I'll have an in-depth analysis of the, you know, football aspect of the matchup tomorrow. 

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.