[NU Sports] NU football and the march of technology

[Tom Maycock]

The technological marvels of the 21st century have allowed me to enjoy NU football games at a distance in a variety of ways. Prior to this weekend, the most interesting was probably when I followed the last few minutes of that big double-OT win over Minny back in--2007 I think--by refreshing an ESPN web page on my old Blackberry while on a hike in the mountains of North Carolina. It was actually a fairly exciting way to keep track of the game, but was a far cry from being there, or hearing a live radio call.

For this weekend's game, we were going to be on the road early heading to a getaway in Michigan. Initially I thought this would be no problem, as we can usually get WGN radio coverage on the whole route. The Cubs-induced switch to ESPN 1000 for this game scuttled that, as reception faded below the noise threshold right about the time the pre-game show was ending. 

Fortunately, we were able to pull up wgnradio.com through an internet radio app on the (newer) Blackberry. And, aside from a couple of short drop-outs, we enjoyed the entire first half of Dave and Ted's call via the speaker on the cell phone while doing 80mph up the west coast of Michigan. 

Arrived at our destination at halftime, unpacked, plopped the cell phone on a table in the living room, and enjoyed the rest of the game, with much better sound quality than I can get from WGN over the air up there. Pretty cool stuff. 

As for the game, what a nice win that was. Colter performed as well as I expected, it sounds like our defense has a chance to be pretty good, and there were glimmers of hope for the running game. Now if we could just figure out how to stop those 3rd-and long situations.... (don't we say that every year?) 

Tom