[NU Sports] Rants and bias ...

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

I dunno ... I guess you need to rant sometimes and
after yesterday seems as good as any. And I don't
really care about bias or who announces our team. I
think it still all boils down to the Duke game - we
win that, as we should have with 500+ yards in
offense, and we're 3-1 now after a tough loss at a
tough place. Instead, we're stinging and 2-2 with a
rejuvenated Michigan next.

I can understand the rant. I hope someone's lighting a
fire under the team and coaches right now as well.

As for what we can do - we will never have the
athletic budget, support or recruits of Ohio State.
I'm glad and proud that NU puts its fund-raising focus
on education instead of these obscene coaching
salaries these days. Though I'm sure if a wealthy NU
alum wanted to pony up a couple million to hire Jimmy
Johnson or Bill Belicheat, the school would gladly
take it. As an educator still paying off NU loans
myself, it won't be coming from me!:) I give NGN what
I can and buy my season tickets even though I'm in
Arizona, but that's about all I can do. And that's
fine - personally, I'd rather have a state-of-the-art
lab or media facility on campus anyway.

As for the players, we've been over this before. NU
does get marginal recruits sometime, but we really
can't go any further, nor would I want the school to.
Besides, unless we were paying kids under the table or
something, most world-class athletes are going to want
to head to OSU or LSU instead of NU.

But the point is that we have won three Big Ten titles
in recent history and none of these were factors in
those championships. Did we have a roster of five star
recruits in 1995, 1996 or 2000? Nope. Did we have a
coach making millions that we lured away from the NFL
and was branded a genius? No. Did we have full
stadiums the year before those titles or even the
first half of those years? No.

We had teams that believed in each other, played as a
team, cut down on mistakes and (95/96 defense and 00
offense) used coaching innovation to outthink our
opponents.

That's what we can focus on now. Fitz has Barnett's
optimism and our renewed focus on special teams is
refreshing (A return TD? NICE! Touchbacks? GREAT!).
But I'm not sure the players have bought in yet. That
should change once the team becomes more Fitz' in the
coming years.

What we can change immediately though are the mistakes
- penalties and turnovers have doomed us the past two
games - and coaching innovation. Our spread doesn't
even spread out the field anymore - Big Ten defenses
have adjusted and know the flat pass laterally or draw
is coming. We need to rejuvenate our play calling and
look for some areas to exploit. We have a good crop of
receivers, a good back (when healthy) and an
experienced quarterback. We should be able to move the
ball better.

We'll see what kind of improvement we get next week.
Ohio Stadium is the most intimidating environment in
the Big Ten and with us coming in moping from last
week still, we got our butts kicked early and often.
Now we get Big Bad Blue ... we need to truly run the
spread to exploit the weaknesses AppState and Oregon
did against their defense. And on D, make the kid
throw. He has great receivers, but we can't let Hart
run all over us.

Northwestern will always be different from schools
like Ohio State - not a bad thing, but it doesn't mean
we can't compete either. And yesterday we just never
believed we had a chance.

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

* * * * * * * * *
STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!!


       
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