Following a very exciting, very emotional, very big win at Nebraska yesterday, Northwestern Coach Pat Fitzgerald was asked about Northwestern getting its mojo back after this win.
Here’s what Pat Fitzgerald said:
“I don’t know if we lost our mojo. I hate to disappoint bloggers, but our guys don’t listen to them. It’s just the way the world is today, you win five games and everyone tells you how great you are and really you watch the tape, and I said it, we are not that good. I didn’t want it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy obviously, but for two weeks we played two really good football teams. That’s going to happen when you get into conference play and you just have to keep swinging and battling. It’s the world you live in, and you’ve got to shut the noise off and I think the kids did a good job with that and they stayed the course.
We’ve got a big month ahead of us, but to get over the hump and get postseason eligibility was huge for our program and a step in the right direction. We couldn’t do it without the great support we have at every level. Best A.D. in the country, best President in the country. Our band came out here today. That was awesome. Those kids traveling 10 hours on a bus. It was unbelievable, and I appreciate all those fans that were with us. Big, big team win today.”
The comment is a little bit reminiscent of last year, when Pat Fitzgerald made a comment about bloggers that landed him on Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World” list. (Here’s a video recapping and explaining that situation).
What Fitzgerald said last year after the Cal game was a lot worse than what he said yesterday, but again with the degrading bloggers bit; it’s pointless low hanging fruit.
I have no idea who wrote the “Northwestern lost its mojo” article/blog/op-ed/essay or whatever. If you have the link, Tweet it to me @paulmbanks. I would love to see it and then assess where Pat Fitzgerald is coming from on this one. Maybe the “mojo” piece was truly awful, and indeed worthy of being ripped on, but again shouldn’t Fitz be above firing these kind of shots at this point?
What I wrote last week after the Iowa blowout is the “Northwestern’s season is in danger of looking like 2010, possibly 2013” article/blog/op-ed/essay. Which is a piece about bottom line results, wins and losses, not abstract, goofy concepts like “mojo.”
Pat Fitzgerald makes a great point there about how his team (and every other team for that matter) is not as good nor as bad as the media make them out to be. He’s spot on there. We in the media over-sensationalize all the time. Hey, we gotta move the needle to make money.
We got kids to feed.
Of course, if I really wanted to over-sensationalize, I could have used one of these extremely misleading headlines like
“Pat Fitzgerald RIPS NU Bloggers” or “Pat Fitzgerald ATTACKS/EVISCERATES/DESTROYS NU Bloggers.”
If you really wanted to get carried away you could headline “Pat Fitzgerald DOESN’T CARE WHAT YOU BLOGGERS THINK.”
Again, he makes a lot of solid points, I try to avoid reading what others have written about the same exact event/game/presser that I just covered. I’m not all that interested in the successes and/or failures of other media members, unless they’ve really done something ground-breaking, trailblazing, historical or socially significant with their work.
So I guess I’m with Pat Fitzgerald on the “I don’t care” stance here.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and sometimes writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. The website is also featured on News Now.
Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye. He also appears regularly on numerous television and radio talk shows all across the country. Catch him Tuesdays on KOZN 1620 The Zone.
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