Purple passion

Sporting News, The, Nov 6, 1995 by Michael Wilbon

To beat the rush, I've already purchased my non-refundable tickets to Pasadena on December 31 to see my team in the Rose Bowl. The apocalypse surely will be upon us. I'm getting used to the sound of it Northwestern in the Rose Bowl. I can already envision walking into the stadium on New Year's Day, looking down into the great bowl and seeing the Wildcats run out in purple and white, playing Southern California. You can laugh if you want. I think the last two teams that laughed were Notre Dame and Michigan. It is designed. Cleveland was in the World Series; Northwestern will be in the Rose Bowl.

I have to plan now because I want a good seat, one where I can look out over the crowd and see all the alumni - like my good friends Ann-Margret Cindy Crawford and Shelley Long. Or my good friends Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty and McLean Stevenson. Or my other good friends Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Karen Black. Well all be there, of course, soaking up the atmosphere and reveling in the success of our wonderful student athletes.

There is this nasty little rumor going around that NU (yes, NU, not NW or N'Western; we're going to be around awhile so get it right) lowered its academic standards to recruit ath-a-letes good enough to beat Notre Dame and Michigan.

No doubt, the rumor started in South Bend and Ann Arbor and it isn't true. Back in the days when we were losing 60-0 to any and everybody, the student section would have this chant (most,easily directed at Michigan State) that went: "That's all right/that's OK/you're gonna work for us someday." Well, it's still true, and now ifs worse because Team Purple is the one kicking sand in everybody else's face.

Recruits everywhere want to come and play for our coach, Gary Barnett, including a high-school senior quarterback from the state of Washington whose last name is Bledsoe. Style of play: smashmouth. We're manhandling people. Ditka would love this team.

Am I gloating? Do you need to ask? No school in the history of college sports deserves to gloat more than Northwestern. I've been trying to think of some comparable team in any sport, pro or college, and I can't come up with one. There isn't one. Nobody's been bad like us; even the Clippers have made the playoffs once in a while. We've been to one bowl game in 112 years, the 1949 Rose Bowl.

You know the last time we won as many as five games? It was 1971. My good friends Irv Cross, Brent Musburger, Fred (The Hammer) Williamson and Mike Adamle weren't long out of school then. In my four years there the teams were 3-40-1.

Starting my freshman year, we lost either 10 or 11 games for six consecutive years. Starting my senior year, we lost 34 in a row and 45 of 46. We failed to win two consecutive games - yes, just back-to-back games - from 1975 through 1985, a span that covered three head coaches, two of whom (Dennis Green and Rick Venturi) went on to be NFL head coaches.

One year, 1978, the promotions people came up with this wonderful slogan, "Expect the Unexpected." In the opener, we tied Illinois 0-0, then lost 10 consecutive games.

This is a school that is -1 lifetime against Chicago Dental, 0-1 against Iowa Pre-Flight and 0-1 against the Denver Athletic Club. To be fair, though, I should point out we are 1-0 lifetime against Hyde Park High School.

One season, 1921, we scored 34 points the entire season, all of them coming against De-Paul in a single game; otherwise, we were shut out six times. To show you that it didn't make much of a difference who was running the show, you Saban led us to 0-8-1 in 1955, and the great Ara Parseghian went 0-9 in 1957, his Wildcats scoring 57 points the whole season. When Otto Graham was quarterback (1941-43) we did manage to go 6-2 his senior year, but he has to Eve his whole Hall of Fame life with that 1942 loss to Iowa Pre-Flight.

So you can see why we didn't exactly put a lot of stock in Barnett when he arrived from Colorado (where he had been an assistant under Bill McCartney) and said before the 1992 season, "Take the Purple to Pasadena." It sounded, at the time, like Buddy Ryan saying, "You've got a winner in town."

But even discerning kids, like the ones who play for Northwestern, have been transformed by Barnett psych-job and some incredible teaching/coaching/recruiting. We used to tear down the goalposts after every victory, so Barnett filmed this wonderful spot where he says he's had the goalposts put 16 feet deep in six tons of concrete because it doesn't make sense to lose goalposts every week. Before the game at Notre Dame, he told the players not to dump him with Gatorade after they beat the Irish.

So, Penn State comes to campus Saturday, worried about us. Dyche stadium is likely to be sold out for only the second time since 1983. I'm trying to help my good friends Tony Randall, Daphne Maxwell Reid and George McGovern get tickets to sit with the rest of us in the alumni section. I'm sure they'd like to see their good friends Cloris Leachman, Mary Frann, Kate Collins, Peter Strauss and Richard Benjamin - who probably will have to buy standing-room tickets.