NORTHWESTERN ROSE BOWL. NOW.
Northwestern football has long tempered its steel in the blue hot flame of nonsense football, sharpened it on the whetstone of statistical anomalies, and plunged its dull, chipped, structurally unsound blade into the hearts of the Big Ten West in the form of 17-14 triple overtime games that end on 28-yard field goals that hit both uprights before slipping through. It then should be no surprise that as college football pushes ahead into the most ridiculous of seasons that it is the Northwestern Wildcats’ cream that has risen to the top.
Northwestern fell behind 17-0 to Iowa after handing them 14 points in the form of slapstick comedy routine fumbles on two of their first three possessions. From there, Northwestern won the game 21-3. GG EZ. The Mike Bajakian Imperial Era (may it last 10,000 years) has already found its mantra in beating the ever-living shit out of people in the run game and having Peyton Ramsey scoot around off broken pass plays just often enough to keep the chains moving. Also, the defense remains good.
For the second week in a row, the offensive stats were nothing special. Peyton Ramsey was an Aidan Smith-esque 11/18 for 130 yards and an interception. As a team, Northwestern was outgained 293 to 273. Northwestern could have, and perhaps should have, lost the game on a completely brain dead 4th quarter Ramsey interception.
But it didn’t because, just as they have off-and-on for the past decade, they did just enough. They turned Spencer Petras, another big-bodied Iowa QB with a howitzer arm, into a scared, shifty, inaccurate mess in the pocket. Iowa’s running attack never got going, averaging just 3.3 yards per carry. They “forced” enough turnovers as Petras’s wild footballs kept finding fingertips of Iowa receivers before bounding high into the air and into Blake Gallagher’s hands.
Northwestern’s win expectancy for this game, I would wager, will not be more than 50%.
Who cares?
College football this year already is more stupid, exploitative, and ugly than it has ever been. Wisconsin, the best team in the Big Ten West, now has 22 active cases of COVID-19 on its roster and coaching staff. Their game next week is firmly in doubt. Illinois just had to sit out a spring training roster worth of players due to positive tests and contact tracing.
One of the two best quarterbacks in the country on one of the two best teams in the country had to miss a game his team nearly lost and will now miss a game next week against a different top 5 team that already had its own outbreak (Notre Dame). None of this means anything.
Players have opted out left and right. Coaches keep testing positive, and then other coaches (hello, Pat Fitzgerald!) keep stalking around sidelines with masks that barely cover their bottom lip, clapping and screaming at everyone around them before giving a lightly wiped-down Turnover Cough Rag to their star safety after an interception.
All of this is disorienting, and strange, and upsetting, and sad. That is why Northwestern is going to the goddamn Rose Bowl this season.
I still don’t know how good Northwestern is. They are probably good-not-great. Maryland sucks, Iowa is clearly bad, and Northwestern is fortunate to be 1-1. Good not great, in most years, will get you within a game or two of the Big Ten West title. This year, with Wisconsin stuck in quarantine, Nebraska’s obnoxious antics penalized by having to play every good team in the conference, Purdue still looking for Rondale Moore, and the rest of the West ranging from embarrassing to suckful, good-not-great, and Covid-free makes you an overwhelming favorite.
There’s no reasonable explanation for college football being played except for the shameless money grab it provides for Bowl And Conference Executives. But if we’re stuck here, and if we are hopeless to stop football from happening, I guess the only reasonable thing to do is to become Mad Max Guys, spraying silver paint onto our mask-covered faces and beseeching Mike Bajakian to witness us.
No football program has found more consistent success in stupidity than Northwestern. As the season continues to stumble further ahead and as things make less and less sense, Northwestern will only be made stronger. When an 11 AM kickoff game wraps at 4:30 PM after 8 overtime periods, I am sure Northwestern will be the team that emerges victorious. When the Big Ten decides in three weeks that games between teams with more than 15 positive Covid tests will be settled in a single-elimination Thunderdome deathmatch, Pat Fitzgerald will emerge from the cage with a blood-splattered mouth and the severed head of his foe.
All football games are played in the Theatre of the Absurd now. The only rational thing that can happen is that the masters of Commedia Dell’Arte, the Northwestern Wildcats, will stake their flag on the summit of a mountain of corpses in Pasadena.
The Rose Bowl goes through Evanston now. The Wildcats are going to win the Big Ten. The only thing left to do now is patiently wait for the coronation.
Rose Bowl Now.
