Go Cats!

Northwestern didn’t belong in the Big Ten when I was on campus in the late 1980s, at least not in the two sports that most people pay attention to. That didn’t change how I felt about the school, but it was hard to routinely be embarrassed by all of the other schools in the Big

Win Win

It’s a beautiful fall day as I sit down to type out a few words on my smartphone. Blogging gives me a chance to spend a few minutes getting thoughts down, before the moment changes and the feelings are lost. and this is a moment that I want to preserve in some manner. The arrival

Changing college sports as we know them

Today–March 26, 2014– is the 35th anniversary of the Magic Johnson/Larry Bird title game in the NCAA tournament. I remember watching that game as a ten year-old kid in Springfield, Illinois. It was broadcast on NBC, instead of on CBS. There was no three point stripe, no shot clock, and no possession arrow. The NCAA

The downward spiral continues

After still another painful defeat for Northwestern’s football team yeserday, I wrote something about it for FiveWideSports. I thought this was going to be a special year, but not in the way that it has been so far. I’m pretty sure nobody saw this one coming, actually. But there’s just two more games, and then

Helping the cause?

Today I broke out an old coffee mug that commemorated the 1995 season for the Northwestern football team. Ironically enough, it’s probably very close to the year that most of this year’s freshman class was born. Time goes by in a hurry, that’s for certain. To this point, 1995 is the standard bearer for Northwestern’s

Laying 1989 to rest

I was saddened to learn of the death of Francis Peay, the head football coach at Northwestern when I went there back in the late 1980s. He was 69 years old, meaning he was about as old as I am now back when he was coaching the Wildcats. And so it goes. Northwestern was at

The world has turned

Mine wasn’t the first undergraduate class to experience a winless football season at Northwestern, when they went 0-11 during my senior year of 1989. The team was also winless in 1978, 1980, and 1981, and just missed it in 1977 and 1979, as well. The late 1970s and early 1980s seem to be the true

Purple Pride, win or lose

Image from Flickriver.com Last night I went to see my daughter in Romeo and Juliet. She’s an amazingly talented kid, and I marveled at her and the others in the cast. In just a few weeks, they’ve come together from all different places and brought this story to life. We give teenagers a bad rap

Purple Reign

In anticipation of this year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans, Rolling Stone put together a list of the Top Halftime shows from years gone by. The top show, at least in my opinion, was Prince’s turn at Super Bowl XLI in Miami. In case you’ve blocked it out over what happened to the Bears on

’13 seems lucky so far

Northwestern won its first bowl game of my lifetime today, in a rather convincing fashion. They beat Mississippi State 34-20 in the Gator Bowl (I’m not using the corporate sponsor’s name here) to get the new year off to a winning start. The monkey has been sent away, the streak has been broken, and any

A harbinger of success

This morning, I pulled out my old Northwestern car flag and attached it to the window of my car for the drive into work. It’s New Year’s eve, and since NU has a game tomorrow morning against Mississippi State in the Gator Bowl, I wanted to display some Wildcat pride on the streets of Chicago.

We’re Number One

As somebody who graduated from what felt like Football High, it was a dramatic change to attend Northwestern in the late 1980s. The football team was terrible, so much so that we would literally throw marshmallows at each other during home games, in order to distract ourselves from what was transpiring on the field. And

Sorry, Pappy!

As much as anything else, this post is written to get the above picture of Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald out onto the web. It was on the cover of a pocket schedule that I picked up at a game at Ryan Field earlier this season. The purple and white shading is a cool effect,

Eight wins and disappointment

The world certainly has turned for Northwestern football. I bore witness to exactly eight wins in the entire four years that I was on campus, from 1986 through 1989. There were four wins in my freshman year, and four in the following three years. We threw marshmallows at each other in the stands during football

It wasn’t even close

Yesterday was a big day for college football. Nebraska came to Evanston to play my Northwestern Wildcats, and the game was televised on ABC. None of that would have been possible in the days when I was at Northwestern, but so much has changed since then (take the internet, for starters) and those changes are

A year that stood out

On my way home from work today, I filled up the tank of my Prius at a gas station out in the suburbs. The Prius is one way to cope with the gas prices, since a fill-up runs about $25 at the most. With the minivan, it’s usually a lot more than that. A bigger

A long way from marshmallow fights

In just a few hours, the Big Ten football season will begin. As a Northwestern alum, football hasn’t always been something I looked forward to. In fact, the team in 2012 already has as many wins (four) as they did in my last three years there combined. If there’s anything more painful in sports than