Nope, Sorry, I’m Still Mad About It

2020 is guaranteed to be, at worst, the fifth best season in Northwestern football’s history of the past 50 years. 1995 still owns the top spot, 1996 probably has number two, 2000 must be third by virtue of earning a claim to the Big Ten title, and 2018 slots in at fourth with Northwestern dragging teams to overtime every week before accidentally winning enough games to earn the right to get turbo stomped by Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship.

Depending on how this year’s Big Ten Championship ends, this season will either end as the second best season (if Northwestern beats the seemingly impregnable Ohio State), generally even with 2018 (if Ohio State brushes aside Northwestern), or somewhere in between (if Ohio State is excluded from the Big Ten Championship due to a Covid cancellation).

That is one hell of an accomplishment. The gushy things I wrote about Northwestern after they’re delightfully disgusting win against Wisconsin are all true. This defense is incredibly fun to watch when it’s clicking, and Ramaud Chiaokhao-Bowman is the closest thing to a real wide receiver that Northwestern has seen since Austin Carr. There are moments throughout this season that will stick with Northwestern fans for a while (RCB’s growing collection of toe-tap touchdowns chief amongst them).

Northwestern will have one game in a few weeks that could win them the conference. You can count the number of games like that Northwestern’s been a part of, maybe ever, on one hand.

And yet, weeks away from that moment and mere days after Northwestern claimed its second Big Ten West Championship in 3 seasons (due to another Covid cancellation), the overwhelming emotion for me is still frustration and dejected anger.

I don’t get mad at sports that often anymore (even if my Twitter timeline may suggest something different). The best evidence I have to support that claim is that when Akron scored its go-ahead touchdown in 2018 to beat Northwestern in one of the stupidest games I have ever seen, I just laughed loudly, upsetting the people around me at Ryan Field. That’s generally the right attitude to have for Northwestern. It is a stupid program that oafs around and accidentally runs into great teams every once in a while. It’s a program defined far more by fumbled QB sneaks and speed options to slow running backs on the short side of the field than the more traditional beatifications of Teams That Lose. Treating them like a very dry, very dark comedy routine is a good way to avoid getting mentally ill.

But the Michigan State game slides into the sparse group of games that genuinely and viscerally upset me. 

(The last one of these, by the way, was Northwestern vs Ohio State in 2017, when Mick McCall’s eyes turned black and he sent in Matt Alviti for a crucial goal-line series which didn’t work and cost them the game.)

On the morning of the Michigan State game, Northwestern had to do a pretty simple task three consecutive times to put themselves on the precipice of a College Football Playoff invitation: beat a bad football team. Michigan State is a horrible football team. So is Minnesota. Illinois is the worst of the bunch. It wasn’t asking all that much of a top-ten team to hold serve and win those three games. It wouldn’t even be asking all that much for that kind of team to beat a very good Indiana team in a coin flip game if Ohio State ended up ineligible for the Big Ten Championship. It maybe wasn’t even necessary for Northwestern to win the Big Ten Championship if they played Ohio State close and some other games went their way.

All of this was pipe dreaming, yes, but Northwestern NEVER gets the chance to dream like that. Even the Rose Bowl team, as insane as that year was, wasn’t really ever a threat to win the national title. Maybe that’s an unfair read of a team that hit No. 3 in the country at one point that year, but they entered the bowl season trailing two undefeated teams and carrying a loss to Miami (OH). Hard to imagine that team jumps an undefeated team for a national title crown, even in the world of twisted and fabricated de jure claims to titles.

National titles shouldn’t ever run through Evanston, not in the timeline we’re on. The institutional obstacles are too high and the top tier of college football is far too advanced for Northwestern to ever reasonably think they can compete at that level. 

So when, in this sickly year and deranged/immoral season, that subway door lingered open long enough for Northwestern to stick its arm in, it is only right that Northwestern fans started thinking too big. Covid-19’s effect on what it feels like to watch college football is sobering and disorienting. Covid-19’s effect on Northwestern’s likelihood to win a national title was invigorating and exciting. That’s a helluva feeling to try and balance. It makes you queasy, but it also makes you realize just how twisted things have to be to give Northwestern a chance. It makes you realize how far Northwestern is from that level when college football teams aren’t roaming plague hotspots.

Then Northwestern went and vomited on their shoes against a bad team and a worse quarterback who looks like Draco Malfoy.

There are outside factors that made it all a bit tougher to take. Peyton Ramsey’s hard to stomach regression headlined by a throw that put Berkeley Holman in a hospital. The successive 3rd and long quarterback draws that seemed to catch Mike Hankwitz with his pants down. The attacks on the Very Unfair And Biased ESPN Media Who Deigned To Do The Unholiest Of Sins And Call Us Rece Davises. But that’s all just background noise behind the obvious fact:

Northwestern will never get closer to a National Championship than they were on the morning of November 28th. They never will feel farther from that than they do now.

In a few weeks, whether Northwestern has a conference championship or not, water will find its level and we will recalibrate what reasonable expectations should be. Reality will be accepted and fade into distant memory. But today, when tantalized with the summit, being stuck at base camp somehow isn’t all that exciting.

For now, it’s hard to look back at an eminently winnable game and an unfathomably horrible showing against a terrible team and not feel, above all else, upset as hell.

Maybe next pandemic year, they’ll finish the deal.