Hail to the Wildcats. Snow too.
Two disagreeable things come out of Iowa, weather fronts and Hayden Fry, and Northwestern managed to survive them both Saturday, closing defense of successive Big Ten titles with dignity and victory, at least one of which will be written down forever.
“That didn’t look like a 5-7 team to me,” Gary Barnett said of his Wildcats, 15-14 winners over Fry’s Hawkeyes. “But I can read. That’s what we are.”
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Northwestern’s retreat from glory is not without excuses. Injuries, immaturity, the law of averages.
“I knew we had to grow up,” Barnett said. “It just took us longer than we had.”
Not that either Big Ten championship trophy came with a deposit. Each souvenir is Northwestern’s to keep.
Between snow squalls and four missed field goals by Iowa, with the game traced into Ryan Field like some giant Etch-a-Sketch, before an astonishingly large number of witnesses, most dressed for the deck of the Hesperus rather than a football game, a half-dozen of the most important players responsible for those headier days finished off their Northwestern careers winners in their final game, something not even the New Year’s bowl editions can claim.
“Walking off that field,” said Brian Musso, who scored two touchdowns on passes from Tim Hughes, “I didn’t want to leave. This place has meant a lot to me for the last five years.
“I think every player to a man would say they walked off that field with their heads up, knowing they gave their all to get a victory today.
“It felt good. We were all sloppy, wet and dirty. That’s what football is supposed to be like. You walk off at the end of the year just a mess and you’ve just won the game.
“It’s not the same as walking off knowing you’ll be in the Rose Bowl in two months, but it still feels good knowing it’s your last game and you don’t have any regrets.”
Northwestern got about what it could from its season, beating two ranked teams, losing four games by seven points or fewer. D’Wayne Bates, lost in the opener to Oklahoma, might have meant a couple of additional victories, maybe even a bowl, but what Northwestern managed to do mostly after being way up there was not plummet immediately to way back down there.
“We’re not going to look back on woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Barnett said. “What I’m proud of is that this group, with nothing really at stake to play for, just a football game, played their last game as hard as they possibly could.”
“(The departing seniors) wanted to leave us a legacy,” said sophomore linebacker Anwawn Jones, who made the tackle of the game in the fourth quarter to stop Iowa on fourth down. “They didn’t want to have a couple of years of success and then just fade off. We know how to win. We know what it takes to win.”
It will take a few more seasons to see what is truth and what is ambition. The truth of this game is that without an unfortunate center snap over the head of the Iowa punter from long snapper Ryan McCormick, the Wildcats do not win this game.
And the truth for the future is that with eight senior starters leaving, as well as both quarterbacks, there is still no way of knowing if Northwestern is rebuilding as much as maintaining, not that either won’t pass as progress.
“Our new life starts tomorrow,” Barnett said. “You never really know.”
Leave it to Barnett to aim high.
“In ’98 it isn’t just the Rose Bowl to try for,” Barnett said. “For the first time, the national championship is not out of bounds for the Big Ten. Everything is raised a level as to what you can shoot for.
“So that will be our goal. The national championship.”
Nobody laughed.