A Hilarious Pump Up Video for Northwestern

Northwestern has their first Big Ten game of the season on Saturday at Iowa. We're 4-0 against some middle of the road non-conference teams, and Iowa is coming off its first loss of the season to Pittsburgh. I'm nervous about the game, especially after CJ Bacher's 4 INTs last week. Hopefully Tyrell Sutton is healthy like the coaches say he is and we'll have a more balanced and successful offensive attack this week. The defense played pretty damn well, but they've yet to face a truly equal opponent, so we'll see how that goes.

In recent weeks there's been a video circulating through the campus of a fantastic video created by an NU alum. Palestra.net does a lot of college news videos, and I know a few people that now work for the site, but one creation in particular stands head and shoulders above the rest. Mo Greene's "Go U" is a very funny piece of work as well as a pretty good pump up for football fans. A ton of my friends are in the beginning of the video, and the shout outs to key players make the song nice for this season.

A few questions though: Did we need the last minute of this video where Mo Greene basically shouts idiotically and speaks in a gravelly tone about the players? Why is he rapping in an empty stadium, we couldn't try and get some extras in there to be fans? I know there are people devoted enough to NU football to appear in a video, even one as cheesy and ridiculous as this one is. Take a look:

NU vs. Duke Redux: Escape of the Wildcats

Northwestern went 2-0 for the second straight year, barely scraping out a 24-20 win over Duke in Durham, North Carolina. Last season Duke broke their 22-game losing streak by defeating NU in Evanston 20-14, and this year's affair was no less of a nail biter.

In short, they played like crap for a lot of the game, as if they were trying to lose the game to Duke for the 2nd straight year. CJ Bacher is a pretty good quarterback, but he's very streaky. It's why he threw just as many touchdowns as he did interceptions last year. If he's on, he'll throw great passes all over the field; if he's not, like against Duke, he can't really do anything to help the team beat even a mediocre opponent.


Not that the blame should rest only on him, the NU defense let Duke move down the field almost at will, and without a lot of their best players no less.

Tomorrow, we play Southern Illinois in another non-conference game we must win. With Ohio actually challenging Ohio State, I'm concerned about our game next week against Ohio, but we can't afford to look that far ahead.


Hopefully we get another win. We need to go 4-0 before the Big Ten season begins, and then we'll have a shot at a bowl game.

Northwestern Football Mini-Preview 2008

I didn't get excited about going to home college football games until after I had arrived at school last year. I got the field over an hour before the game and sat in the front two rows of the student section with new friends, and had one of the most important experiences of my year, even in losing to Michigan 28-16. I became a die-hard Wildcat fan that afternoon, and it carried through the entire season as I watched every game in the front rows or on television, even road tripping to Champagne, Illinois to watch our season-ending rivalry game with the Illini.

Yesterday, the Northwestern University Wildcats' 2008 football campaign opened with a win over Syracuse University. Senior running back Tyrell Sutton got his season off to a great start, hopefully erasing memory of an injury-ridden 2007 season, and the defense started well, even getting a safety to open our scoring. The first quarter didn't go so well, but we went into the half in the lead and never looked back. We depend on a senior offensive trio of Quarterback CJ Bacher, wideout Ross Lane, and Sutton to light up the scoreboard. Our defense last year was incredibly leaky, bleeding yards and big plays all over the place, and hopefully will hold better this year with a new defensive coordinator.


Here's our schedule for the rest of the season (home games in bold):

at Duke University
Southern Illinois
Ohio
at Iowa
Michigan St.
Purdue (Homecoming)
at Indiana
at Minnesota
Ohio State
at Michigan
Illinois

Looking at that schedule, the Wildcats need to win their first four games. We've gotten ourselves a lucky schedule once again, avoiding Penn State and Wisconsin. If results are the same as last year, we take wins at home against Michigan St., and away at Indiana and Minnesota. If that hold true, we end at 7-5 and are bowl eligible, but that's not what could happen in the best case scenario. We should have beaten Iowa at home last year, and they haven't shown too many signs of being better this year, and we definitely should have beaten Purdue away as well. It isn't likely, but we could head into Columbus, OH with a 9-0 record. In the absolute best case, we'd steal a game from the Wolverines, take our rivalry game with Illinois, and have an 11-1 record through the Big Ten season. Will that happen? Probably not. We'll probably lose at Iowa and either Indiana or Minnesota, and home against Ohio State. Besides that, I think we've got a pretty good chance in every home game, and could steal a win from Iowa or Michigan. All in all, I'd say we go 8-4 and run off to a bowl game. I know I'd be making the road trip wherever we'd be headed, and so would a ton of my friends.