As important as it is for Northwestern to win games this college football season, it’s maybe even more important they sell tickets this season. Attendance at Ryan Field has been a big issue in recent years, and the University’s athletic department sought to remedy that with the new “Northwestern: Chicago’s Big Ten Team” ad campaign in August.
Although they’re still not selling out, the campaign is working. Through the first three home games, Ryan Field attendance was up 51.1% over the first three in 2009. And today’s heartbreaking 35-27 loss to #7 and undefeated Michigan State drew 41,000+, the largest crowd of the year. What’s more impressive, is that they’ve drawn better despite the weather often working against them.
There’s quite a few reasons to attend a Northwestern football game: Chicago Bears tickets cost about as much money as the annual GDP of a nation within the European Economic Union, and NU is much better competing within their level of football than the Bears are in their league.
And the ‘Cats have an exciting, fun-to-watch, extremely pass-happy offense.
“It’s what we do here from day one, we’re perfectly comfortable throwing every down, the short passes are an extension of the running game. That’s pretty much all it is,” said NU starting QB Dan Persa.
Persa is among the top five in the nation in passing efficiency and completion percentage. Although he must be feeling today like Bears QB Jay Cutler has been feeling a lot lately- the Spartans sacked him 8 times. That’s right 8 times!
But as disappointing as the loss was for the Wildcats, it certainly was fun-to-watch.
“That was an exciting game, it was a couple big plays away from being the other way around and you asking them questions. Northwestern has a lot of very tough kids and they are very smart and they know football. Obviously to go to a school like Northwestern you have to be a top student,” said Spartans junior wide receiver Keith Nichol.
And yet another wild finish to an installment of the MSU-NU series. Over the recent years, the games have been extremely close, and the endings about as memorable as a football game’s final minutes can be. Take for instance 2007 and the furious second half comeback, or 2001’s insane explosion of return TDs in the final minutes.
“It’s always something with Northwestern, I can’t tell you what, but they played amazing today and hats off to them,” Nichol continued.
And State did it again with “trickeration.” You recall the fake field goal play named “Little Giants” that defeated Notre Dame in overtime? If you follow college football at all, you’ve probably seen the replay a few dozen times this season.
MSU pulled into their bag of tricks again, converting a key fourth down on a fake punt in NU territory and thereby inverting the whole story arc of the game in just one play.
“It was a mouse trap. We had to get them to take the cheese. We felt like they would drop their receiver and after 15 yards, we felt like we could sneak one in there, especially with Aaron Bates. It’s timing, it’s execution, I just named the play,” Head Coach Mark D’Antonio said.
The Spartans are off to their best start since the national title year of 1966 and today’s crowd was a third-to-slightly-less-than-half green and white, a testament to Chicago’s very large and very loud MSU alumni base.
That will be the next step for NU marketing, selling more tickets to people in purple and white instead of the opponent. Today, sounded like a neutral site game at times. But it’s a step in the right direction overall to be selling more total tickets.
And the Cats should still make bowl eligibility with ease this year, and finish with a nice 7 or 8 season in what was originally forecast as a proverbial rebuilding year. When you have the ability to take an undefeated team like this down to the wire like this, good things will eventually come your way.
“I don’t think you’re ever good enough to beat two teams, and I thought for a good handful of minutes we were playing pretty well. Some turnovers and some costly fourth down where we didn’t get off the field- I mean we had plenty of opportunities to win the game and I’ve got to give credit where credit is due, it goes to Michigan State, they played very well,” said coach Pat Fitzgerald.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net , a Midwest webzine. He’s also a regular contributor to the Tribune’s Chicago Now network, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker Network, and Fox Sports.com
You can follow him on Twitter @thesportsbank