Northwestern Football Sends Message to Opposing Homecomings

You know the drill for the Homecoming game- schedule somebody that you’re most likely going to beat. Alumni returning to campus need to witness a victory on this holiday which celebrates their alma mater.

Thus, when you schedule someone for the homecoming game, you are implying some disrespect. Northwestern football hosts Indiana on Saturday for their homecoming. The Hoosiers are quite good this season, but you know their history, it’s not illustrious. IU is a basketball, not a football school.

Northwestern football won their last two games in convincing fashion, both on the road, and both games were the opponents’ homecoming.

“We were like, ‘Let’s make it our homecoming,” said Northwestern’s versatile defender Ifeadi Odenigbo after NU won at Michigan State 54-40, in a game that was more lopsided than it sounds.

Said Northwestern quarterback Clayton Thorson: “It’s nice to hear the silence. Silence is a lot louder to us than loudness. Silence is deafening.”

Thorson threw a TD pass to Austin Carr with bout five minutes to play, and that made the score 54-37. Michigan State fans began exiting Spartan Stadium in droves, and the Northwestern football players noticed.

Said Odenigbo: “When A.C. scored, everyone started packing. We said, ‘Yes, this is a victory. We got a taste of that at Iowa.”

Yes, NU did the exact same to the Iowa Hawkeyes homecoming the previous week. Odenigbo discussed how much he enjoys coming in to an opponent’s house and ruining their Saturday:

“There’s nothing like hearing 60, 70,000 screaming fans that want your head off. When you make a big play and the crowd goes silent, that’s the best feeling.”

Odenigbo has really, truly been on his press conference game lately, also adding this killer soundbite. The defensive end joked in practice that Michigan State killed his dog, something he used as a motivation tactic: “They didn’t actually kill my dog.”

I covered NU at MSU last week, I’ll be back in the state for Illinois at Michigan this Saturday; yet another homecoming. This seems to happen a lot.

https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/787384355853307904

Illinois, like Northwestern football, gets scheduled for homecoming a lot, and Lovie Smith did actually point that fact out in his presser on Monday.

Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.

He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.