[NU Sports] Playoff time!

[Dennis W. Brandt]

> First to compare our September team with our November team is
> completely unfair.  With Bacher for all 12 games we would at least 4
> more wins.

Not unfair at all.  They were the Northwestern University Wildcat Football 
Team on both ends of the season, were they not?

It's great to improve at the season wears on, but we have to be more ready 
to play at the first kickoff, especially against teams that should not be as 
good as us.  Bad starts have become an old song with NU football - at least 
since it started to matter after the victory at Notre Dame in '95 (and then 
blew one to Miami of Ohio).  In 1996 it was fantastic to have held Michigan 
to 16 points and beat them, but we needed some of that fire in a 
season-opening loss to Wake Forest.  In 1997 we beat a very weak Oklahoma 
team, struggled to beat Duke, and then lost to Wake Forest again and then to 
Rice, whom we should have beaten to death with chopsticks.  We won the first 
game in 2003 but then blew one to Air Force and got slobberknockered by 
Miami of Ohio.  In 2004, it was great to beat Penn State, Purdue, and Ohio 
State, but what happened against Arizona State and TCU early in the season? 
Only in 2001 did we get worse as the season went on..  During the other 
seasons we were just purely bad all year.

I'm hoping for an aggressive defense next season instead of this 
back-on-our-heels, we're-afraid-to-press-them D we've been playing in recent 
years.  Now that Fitz has a season under his belt, an experienced team 
returning, and a spring practice to guide his boys, I think that will 
happen.  That's sure how he played.  Bring them back nasty and snarling and 
stomp Northeastern into submission.
>
> No playoff.  Go back to the traditional Rose Bowl and get rid of a third 
> of the bowls.
>
I dig where you're coming from on the excessive number of bowls, but wishing 
for their demise is like wanting to hear the sound of a steam whistle on the 
Chicago & Northwestern.  Never gonna happen.  Decide the championship on the 
field the way every other college sport is.