[NU Sports] AWESOME article

[Dennis W. Brandt]

<"Saturday's Iowa win likely assured its fifth bowl trip this decade; it had 
played in three its entire previous history."

Mandel's statement is factual but essentially meaningless given that only in 
recent years have bowl games assumed lagomorphic reproductive frequency. 
Certainly the 1962 and 1970 teams would have played in the post-season had 
there been a bowl available.  Remember when the only bowls were played on 
New Year's Day, and the Big Ten champion couldn't play in the Rose Bowl in 
consecutive years?

I despise Mandel's comment that Northwestern has a "ceiling" on 
expectations.  That essentially is a belief that we can never aspire to 
excellence on the football field, a mantra we hear all the time here.  The 
attitude doesn't exist in the classroom.  Northwestern has a fine academic 
reputation not because its teachers are inherently superior to all other 
schools but because it only selects the best academic material for those 
instructors to teach.  Why should we not do fill our major sports teams with 
the best talent  available?  To suggest this turns us into a football 
factory is inane.  Penn State, for example, has a 50-50 chance of beating 
Ohio State every year (OSU leads the all-time series 13 - 11), yet their 
players have a graduation rate on par with ours.  If you're going to take 
the big bucks from the Big Ten, then you have a responsibility to pull your 
own weight.  Until we can field a consistently good-to-great team virtually 
every season, the stands will remain substantially empty at home and be 
less-than-packed on the road.  The newness of winning something - anything - 
has worn off.  Time to take the next step.