College Football Saturdays: Why Fall is Awesome

I optimistically set my alarm for 11:30 today, with high hopes of waking up bright and (relatively) early to catch an entire beautiful day of sitting inside and watching the NCAA show off its most famous product. That's right, a full day of watching NU's Wilbon on PTI!


Kidding.

Anyway, it's a pretty good slate of football today. Lucky for me, the early games weren't all that great. Michigan State took down Illinois, Penn State crushed another cupcake (Eastern Illinois? Really?), Minnesota beat Purdue, and Northwestern handled Miami (Ohio) 16-6.

I care about the NU game a lot more than the other ones, obviously, so let's talk about the Wildcats a little bit in what I hope is the first of several CFB posts today. (that's right, stay tuned, Armchair Superstar fan(s)!)

I had some seriously high hopes for Northwestern this year. Blessed with an experienced defense, especially in the secondary and defensive line, and featuring the kind of offense that has always adjusted well to losing stars (Basanez, Tyrell Sutton, Damien Anderson), it looked like Pat Fitzgerald was in good shape to make a run at a warm-weather bowl.

Mike Kafka ran for over 200 yards against Minnesota last year, Stephen Simmons played well in replacement of Sutton, and Corey Wootton looked like the Next Big Thing, maybe even following the footsteps of Napoleon Harris and Luis Castillo into the first round of the NFL draft.


I mean, it's not like NU has been terrible. They stand 4-2 (1-1) with a fluky loss at Syracuse and a not quite so close loss to Minnesota. But this is not a dark horse Big Ten title contender, by any means. The offense has been bad running the football (except Kafka), the new wideouts are just now showing that they can replace last year's lost production, and that defense has looked much softer than last season's unit.

Holding Miami(Ohio) to just six points is a good sign for the D, as is getting senior safety Brad Phillips back from injury. But let's be honest. The RedHawks are really terrible this year. And the 'Cats offense, even with Simmons back from injury, only mustered three scoring drives all game. Not a good sign heading into the meat of the Big Ten schedule.

Next week's road date is at Michigan State. Normally, this would be the time of season when Sparty starts shooting himself in the foot and crushing high bowl hopes, but this year seems to be going differently, and I'm pretty worried for Fitzgerald's Cats.

On the upside, they get Indiana at home afterwards, and IU is not very good at winning games, anywhere, against anyone.

Updates to come on the Hoosiers' tilt at Virginia (currently: Down 14-0. That sounds about right), as well as Wisconsin-Ohio State (which I'm watching now) and all the games around the country. I love college football!