#BecauseItsTheLOLHat
Yes, the Land of Lincoln Hat, or the Land of Lincoln Trophy is on the line when #17 Northwestern football plays Illinois at Soldier Field for what is an Illini “home game.” A season ending, rivalry trophy game with Illini bowl hopes potentially hanging in the balance. Hence the hockey style hashtag above. Expect hockey style in-game Tweets for this too.
1!!!! (one win needed to reach the postseason for Illinois, one win required for Northwestern football to tie the school record for wins)
CAINER!! (for Illinois WR Desmond Cain)
Ah, if only Honest Abe were alive to witness the age of live tweeting sporting events.
The main story line for this one is the fate of Illini interim Coach Bill Cubit. The Interim A.D. said on record that his status will be decided on Sunday, and there’s been a report that the University is exploring the idea of giving Cubit a two year extension. We conducted a poll to see how Illini Nation would feel about that.
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/669717886492110848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
SPREAD: Northwestern football -3 1/2
TV: 2:30 ESPNU Taylor Zarzour, Al Groh
Here’s my segment previewing this game, and talking Illini and Northwestern football for 1620 The Zone
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/669217891837943808
Northwestern football Preview:
Quarterback Clayton Thorson not progressing is one thing, but what we’re seeing from Thorson is actually regression. It’s the Big Ten, so “three yards” means “a cloud of dust.” It doesn’t mean your yards-per-attempt, and that’s exactly what we saw from Thorson up in Wisconsin.
Yes, there’s been drops from his receiving corps all season long, and his offensive line is not doing him any favors, a good deal of the time, but his 17.3 QBR up in Madison was Evan Watkins like.
Hey, we’re talking Northwestern football vs Illinois at a Chicago pro sports team venue, so we may as well bring up Watkins. I hate to single out Thorson as it’s not all his fault, but the offense is a mess and when you’re QB1 is just comes with the territory. Ask any Northwestern football fan, and they will tell you their biggest scapegoat is offensive coordinator Mick McCall. He’s consistently been the least popular guy in the program since mid 2013.
This is a very, very quiet 9-2 team, and that’s odd in and of itself. It’s even more strange when you consider that NU has gone 9-2 against a very solid schedule. Why do the Wildcats fly under the radar? Because getting them to throw for 300 yards in a game is like getting your cat to come to you when you yell out his/her name- it’s just never ever going to happen.
Northwestern football is really really good this year, but they seem to have embraced the 1983 Chicago White Sox slogan of “Winnin’ Ugly.” When your style of play doesn’t include much usage of the forward pass, you can often be brutal to watch. They are the college football equivalent to Manchester United, who held their opponents scoreless for 555 minutes and five games.
Unfortunately, United also when 325 minutes without scoring themselves. As I follow both teams extremely closely, I can tell you that since August I’ve found myself saying quite often “this endeavor, is the height of tedium.” (credit The Simpsons Sideshow Mel)
Still it works, as United is in the Premier League title race just as much the Wildcats are in the New Year’s Six mix. So that’s why more people aren’t talking Northwestern football right now, even though they’re excellent. That and Iowa has stolen their thunder with the “we’re not supposed to be this good, you didn’t think we were going to be this good, but here we are, so deal with it.”
With so many premier, brand name jobs open this college football coaching carousel, is this the year Pat Fitzgerald finally moves to one of those?
No.
I repeat no, but read what the ESPN College Gameday guys had to say about it when I asked them a few days ago.
On a side note, Northwestern Football fans took offense when Galloway declared NU the most overrated team in the initial college football playoff rankings. It turns out the ESPN press release attributing that quote to him was incorrect.
“Must have been someone else, must have had me confused with somebody else, said Galloway on Tuesday.
“My most overrated team since the beginning was Alabama.”
Moving on, there is both a short and a contrasting comprehensive answer to the question “who is Chicago’s college football team?”
I answered it in today’s edition of the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper.
A 2014 New York Times study claimed that Chicago “may have the most intricate set of loyalties of any city in the country. Those loyalties are split among Notre Dame, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio State and Northwestern.”
Each of those teams is the most popular in at least one Chicago-area ZIP code. This is represented at the NorthShore Evanston Hospital parking garage, where each level is named for one of those teams. The elevator lobby pictured here) even plays the school’s fight song so you won’t forget where you parked.
The RedEye link even has the number of total wins, championships and bowl appearances for every Big Ten team, and Notre Dame and Northern Illinois in there.
Illinois football preview:
It’s all about the big picture at Illinois right now. The coaching search, the A.D. search, knowing that next year there will be a basketball coaching search. These are tumultuous times for Illini fans, and really no one cares about single game minutia. Write your cliche game previews and your outdated game recaps and do your pointless, boring vanilla play-by-play Tweets all you want, but every single time you engage in that type of endeavor, you have to consider the overview of what’s going.
All the micro level analysis of every Illini sporting event must consider the macro, at all times. You really can’t just focus on the Xs and Os, and you’re missing the point if you do. This an extremely critical crossroads for the program, and it’s a very fluid situation.
It’s crisis and opportunity.
Looking at the state of the program from a big picture perspective, something exciting and rejuvenating needs to happen, and happen soon in order to reengage this base.
(related: the case for and against retaining Cubit)
ESPN Analyst Kirk Herbstreit sat down with us at The Drake Hotel this past Tuesday. The ESPN Analyst was in town to reveal the latest edition of the College Football Playoff rankings. The state of Illinois football was a topic we covered in depth, and it was great to finally get the national perspective on the program.
Herbstreit doesn’t see retaining Interim Coach Bill Cubit to really be an option. Here’s his thoughts on what they need to do with the coaching search.
In order to get there, Illinois first needs a competent, engaged A.D. Which is a topic we covered with Herbstreit yesterday.
Prediction: Illinois 27, Northwestern football 24
Weird stuff happens in rivalry games.
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.