Good morning! What a year this week has been. Welcome to the third issue of the Inside NUsletter. We hope you enjoy it. If you know someone who you think will like it, share it with them by clicking the button below.
Today, we’ll once again highlight some articles we published over the last week, the latest college football news as well as some random things we found on the internet and wanted to share.
If you’ve come to expect anything from Inside NU, it’s that we don’t like to take ourselves too seriously. If it’s your first time reading, the Inside NUsletter should come off as informal but informative.
What we’ve been up to
The announcement of the Big Ten’s new pandemic-adjusted conference-only football schedule gives Northwestern fans a picture of what the season could look like in the coming months.
At this moment, the schedule release really feels like an exercise to help us with content (and we’ll take it). We already simulated NU’s fake season in the imaginary Mid-American Conference the day the Big Ten announced all fall sports would go conference-only.
The ‘Cats open the season September 5 in Happy Valley against Penn State before hosting Wisconsin the following week. Other highlights from the new schedule include a midseason visit from the Illinois and a newly added season finale with Michigan at Ryan Field.
As managing editor Dan Olinger tracks, the ‘Cats’ schedule perhaps became much harder with the opener against the Nittany Lions as well as the exchanging of three likely victories over non-Power 5 opponents for a date with the Wolverines. Faced with brutal bookends, potential player opt-outs, and no Mick McCall, Dan predicts a 5-5 season and no bowl game for Pat Fitzgerald’s squad. Although, bowl games (if they happen) surely won’t have the same six-win threshold to qualify, right?
Of course, with positive COVID-19 tests recorded at several programs, including Northwestern itself, the possibility of a college football season seems uncertain, especially when players could potentially sacrifice the safety of themselves and their teammates.
Editor-in-chief Eli Karp penned an editorial calling for the postponement of the college football season until widespread rapid testing is available. Here’s a little snippet:
“You want football. I want football, too. But let’s make a short-term sacrifice and wait a little longer, because that could make all the difference. Heck, with these tests, fans could attend games if they are tested before entering the stadium or provide proof of a same-day negative result.”
Speaking of fans, it appears NU is planning on hosting them, albeit in a limited capacity. The Big Ten is leaving attendance decisions up to its institutions, and thus far state public health guidelines have determined capacities. In Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey, just to name a few, orders have forced PSU, UMD and Rutgers to play in front of no fans.
Iowa yesterday announced a planned capacity of 10,000-15,000 fans with 6-feet social distancing and masks required. Kinnick Stadium holds just under 70,000 fans, and right now under Illinois guidelines, NU can have 20 percent capacity of 47,000-seat Ryan Field. My guess would be about 8,000 to 9,000 fans allowed. Good thing NU has experience from the Malört Bowl.
Rounding out the series of the “Five Biggest Questions for Northwestern Football 2020,” Didi Jin and Andrew Katz examine arguably the two most important factors pertaining to this upcoming season: Quarterbacks and the god-forsaken pandemic in which we all happen to be living.
On Pound the Talk, Will Karmin, Claire Kuwana and Matt Albert try to make sense of all the news from the last week.
It appears Northwestern will indeed begin fall camp today, and Fitz has a presser scheduled for 12:45 pm CT. At least for the moment, it’s go time. We’ll bring you the coverage.
Things that happened this week
A lot!
The Big Ten was not the only conference to reveal a revised schedule for the forthcoming football season. The ACC (plus honorary 2020 conference member Notre Dame) released its own schedule Thursday. Beginning on September 12, each squad will play eleven games, including one against a non-conference opponent, before a conference championship game pitting the two best teams based on record rather than division.
Matt Fortuna of The Athletic took the time to predict the Big Ten season, and naturally, he sees the top teams in the Big Ten East as Ohio State (10-0), Penn State (9-1), and Michigan (8-2) while foretelling Rutgers to go 0-10. He predicted Northwestern to finish 4-6 (one less win than Dan foresees) with losses to Penn State, Iowa, Purdue, Minnesota and Michigan. Maybe NU goes 5-5 now that Rondale Moore has opted out. Fortuna’s synopsis:
“It can’t get worse than last year, right? Right? New offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian actually got in eight spring practices with his guys, even if none of them included Indiana grad transfer QB Peyton Ramsey. So that’s not nothing. The line is stable, the run game will be better with a healthy Isaiah Bowser and the defense is the defense. (I just described every Big Ten West program, didn’t I?)
The Wildcats have a brutal two-game start (at Penn State, Wisconsin) and a brutal two-game finish (at Minnesota, Michigan). Good thing they usually start slow as is and steadily improve throughout the season, because there are enough winnable games on this slate to go .500 or better. But, given the significance of this program’s offseason changes, I’d like to see everything in action first before fully buying in for Year 1.”
Speaking of Purdue, Penn State and Minnesota, some of their top players have opted out of the season ahead of the 2021 NFL Draft. As mentioned above, the Boilermakers’ electric all-American playmaker Rondale Moore, whose debut against Northwestern back in 2018 immediately earmarked him as a potential star in college football, will not play this season. After an injury-riddled sophomore campaign, the feeling around West Lafayette is Moore’s collegiate career is over before it truly had a chance to take off.
The Nittany Lions’ Micah Parsons, a potential top-10 pick in the upcoming draft, is also opting out, along with Minnesota star pass-catcher Rashod Bateman. Northwestern will face all of these squads who are now down some of their linchpins, which could certainly help the Wildcats’ chances.
In another piece from The Athletic (we’re an Athletic newsletter, if you haven’t already noticed — its content is A1), Scott Dochterman examines the new Big Ten slate. To summarize, it’s quirky. Crossover games were scheduled based on whether or not they occurred in 2019 (so Wisconsin got Rutgers instead of Ohio State). Some matchups, such as Wisconsin-Nebraska and Michigan-Michigan State, will take place in the same location for the second straight year. As much as Northwestern fans can’t stand Michigan, no traditional rivalry games will take place on the final weekend of the season.
But before the schedules dominated the headlines, the players did. Amidst approaching Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) legislation, and racial justice coming to the forefront of the national conversation, student-athletes are making it clear they will no longer be held silent by the NCAA or their schools.
There are all sorts of qualms about staging a college football season during a pandemic with no known treatments or vaccines, not to mention an uncontrolled epidemic in many portions of the US. So with all of the risks and unknowns out there, players know they are essential workers — the universities and local economies the sports support need football to happen, or else they face revenue shortfalls of hundreds of millions of dollars, all while the players aren’t given a dime or allowed to monetize their brand.
A day after a video call between SEC leaders and players council representatives leaked to the Washington Post, in which officials gave vague answers to players questions, Pac-12 players began to stage what’s kinda an uprising. They’re threatening to boycott the 2020 football season unless a list of 17 demands related to COVID safety and racial justice is met by the conference’s commissioner.
This could be a watershed moment not just in college football, but in all of college sports. The pandemic is exposing how the athletic departments are run as well as how reliant universities are on athletic revenue. Our former boss, Matt Brown, now writes a newsletter called Extra Points, which focuses on the off-field forces that shape college athletics. He dedicated one edition this week to the movement, and if you want to understand what’s likely to get resolved soon and what might be asking too much, read up.
A group of Big Ten players then took a stand in response to the new schedule and medical protocols. In an article published in The Player’s Tribune entitled #BigTenUnited, student-athletes proposed a set of demands, most of which have been addressed or can be handled by the conference. They call for safety standards specific to each sport, testing three days a week while in season, the banning of COVID liability waivers, and access to BTN for their family members. Their main grievances were aimed at the NCAA, and for what it’s worth, the Big Ten has been at least publicly more out in front of handling COVID and racial injustice than other Power Five conferences.
Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic also penned a piece concerning the new schedule and the various challenges revolving around testing, contact tracing, and preventing the spread of the virus among both teams and the general public. With news of the outbreak at Rutgers tied to a party and the emergency room visit from Indiana freshman offensive lineman Brady Feeney, the concern for the health and safety of players should be at the forefront of any discussion of whether or not football should be played this season. The Big Ten will require every athlete be tested twice a week, but questions still linger over how many positive tests may require a game to be postponed or canceled. On a Zoom call with student-athlete representatives from each Big Ten school, commissioner Kevin Warren said the following:
“This is a complicated year. No one on the planet has ever dealt with these issues because it’s never happened before. What you have to do is trust your medical advisors, and you have to trust your gut. And you have to treat the student-athletes in the same manner as you would if they were a family member.
“We’re going to make mature decisions in a methodical fashion, in a collective fashion as the Big Ten. We will always do the best we can to do what’s right on behalf of our student-athletes.”
It is worth noting Warren’s son, Powers, plays football at Mississippi State. Warren said he’d feel confident as a parent if his son played in the B1G.
People have also looked to the NCAA for guidance and are now seeing it is devoid of authority in certain spaces like Division 1 FBS football. It has taken a federal government-like approach to this pandemic, basically leaving everything up to divisions and conferences while providing little support until now, when it’s setting minimum standards to protect athletes following external pressure. Meanwhile, the NCAA is currently petitioning the Supreme Court (yes, that SCOTUS) to limit education benefits for student-athletes. It has not been a great week for Mark Emmert.
Divisions II and III have already canceled fall championships, while the NCAA board of governors on Wednesday said each division must determine the status of fall championships no later than Aug. 21. Championships will be canceled in divisions in which 50 percent or more of eligible teams in a particular sport cancel their fall seasons.
Good Tweets
SBNation Wisconsin site Bucky’s 5th Quarantine loves to rip on Minnesota, especially for the Gophers’ 2020 Outback Bowl trophy rings, which listed as them as Big Ten West co-champs. That’s technically true, but Wisconsin romped Minnesota in the de-facto West division championship game to go to Indianapolis, so it’s weird.
B5Q and The Daily Gopher really went at it today, and it was glorious (click the tweet to see the TDG meme B5Q quoted).
Give it to ‘em, Stew (Stewart went to Medill, in case you didn’t know).
The NHL is back, which is good news I guess.
Pound the Talk co-host Matt Albert dabbles in conspiracy theories.
Spare us, we’ve had a good few days on the TL.
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What will the college football landscape look like in a week? See you then.
Written by Colin Kruse with help from Eli Karp.