Inside NUsletter Issue 8
Pressure mounts on the Big Ten as decision makers could vote on a return to play model as early as this weekend.
Good morning. Welcome to the eighth issue of the Inside NUsletter. We hope you enjoy it. If you like what you’re reading, feel free to share or subscribe!
Today, like always, we’ll highlight some of our articles from the past week, some of the craziness that took place in the college sports realm as well as some random enjoyable stuff we found on the internet.
If you’ve come to expect anything from Inside NU, it’s that we don’t like to take ourselves too seriously. If this is your first time reading, the Inside NUsletter should come off as informal but informative. Let’s get into it.
What we’ve been up to
Despite no impending Northwestern athletics, this week still provided a good amount of content.
Managing Editor Colin Kruse talked to the owners and managers of some Evanston game day favorites like Bat 17 and D&D’s to discuss the effect of a football-less fall on their businesses. The bottom line: while the economy of Evanston does not rely on the cash-cow of college football to sustain it (unlike several Big Ten college towns), the dearth of 40,000 fans spending money at local eateries, bars and vendors will surely deal a blow in what’s already been a tough year.
In a normal world, last Saturday would have been Northwestern’s season opener against the Spartans of Michigan State in East Lansing. Of course, the pandemic first forced the Big Ten to adjust its initial schedule, meaning the ‘Cats would have faced-off against Penn State in Happy Valley. The chaos of the last few weeks has seen that matchup wiped off the slate as well, but at least there exist some enduring memories of Wildcat football.
Let the good times roll.
On a much more significant note, some former Northwestern athletes have come to the forefront as activists in professional sports’ reckoning with race and inequality. Nia Coffey, Justin Jackson and Tyler Lancaster have all used their respective platforms to address some of these enduring issues over the past few months. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Coffey penned an open letter urging readers to register to vote:
“We all are aware of the protests and what sparked this movement and we know what we are asking for. It’s beyond equality and equity, it’s a cry out for JUSTICE. I don’t have a quick fix solution, but one simple long term solution we can all focus on is the responsibility of voting. WE NEED TO VOTE, so we can have intelligent leadership in decision making positions to effect social change, social justice, and eradicate systemic racism.”
Lancaster, a native of Chicago’s western suburbs, translated his desire to fight against inequality by teaming up with former Bears linebacker Sam Acho and purchasing a liquor store in Austin, a predominantly black neighborhood that is a food desert. It will to be turned into a grocery store which will provide a place for local youth to work.
Jackson, well-known for his willingness to share his political beliefs within the public sphere, addressed the media after the Chargers canceled practice in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI. Here’s what he had to say:
“We want a [Universal Basic Income]. We want the police to stop killing unarmed black men. We want racial profiling to stop. We want community policing to be better. These are all things that we want, and we’re crying out for them, we’re protesting, and we’re not seeing those changes.”
The postponement of Northwestern’s football season has left ‘Cats fans bereft of a team to support. For how long, we don’t know. But 38 percent of readers opted to temporarily adopt the Kansas State Wildcats, perhaps for an identical mascot and color set, as the squad to back this fall. Vanderbilt, Kentucky and Iowa State each received about 12 percent of the vote, and we’re happy to report Rutgers earned eight votes.
While college football goes through a spin cycle of uncertainty, the pros got started last night. Amid a rushed training camp cycle, nine former Wildcats failed to make the final cuts of NFL rosters. Austin Carr, Trevor Siemian, Nate Hall and Joe Gaziano will both begin the season on the Saints, Titans, Texans and Chargers practice squads, respectively. Ibraheim Campbell and Clayton Thorson were among those cut. As reported in the article, Gaz was originally cut by LA before the team signed him to its final practice squad spot. In this most unpredictable season, the dream stays alive.
Finally, President Donald Trump’s supposed intervention, along with another ten politicians from six states, to preserve a Big Ten football season, has continued the debate and dissension toward the decision to postpone the season. The presidents of the Big Ten’s fourteen institutions are subject to the lawsuit put forward by eight Nebraska football players and were ordered by a judge to release more information on its vote to postpone it by tomorrow. According to reports, the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors may vote on a return to play option this weekend or early next week.
What happened this week
There’s a lot of pressure for the Big Ten to play some football this fall, as we’ve previously covered. Bill Landis and Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic covered the various tensions surrounding the continued chaos of the Big Ten's decision. The big related news from the West Coast has been the Pac 12’s agreement with Quidel Corporation to develop rapid testing on campuses, speeding up each school’s access to daily testing. Ryan Day continued to wage war on the B1G, undoubtedly with support from his athletic director and university president, as the communication between conference higher-ups and those on the field continues to lack.
Sam McKewon of the Omaha World-Herald reported yesterday Nebraska partnered with Quidel and has already received 1,200 rapid test kits. The necessary machine will arrive by the end of this week, and the athletic department expects to incorporate the antigen testing into existing testing protocols by the end of next week. If every B1G school would spring for these (this technology has actually been available since May, which begs some other questions, but we can save that for another day), then we’re talking about the prospect of a fall season that returns in the not too distant future.
However, it’s worth noting the virus situation on every campus is different, both inside and outside of athletic departments. While other teams are raring to start next month, Wisconsin just shut down non-essential, in-person activities, including football practice, for two weeks after a spike in COVID cases.
Despite the Big Ten and Pac-12 not starting their potential seasons at the same time as other major conferences, Stewart Mandel of The Athletic proposed a solution, however unlikely, to enable teams from the two idle conferences to compete for college football’s biggest prize. Here’s a snippet of his “Hail Mary”:
“But perhaps they [the Pac-12] could begin a two-week “acclimation” period under the current protocols beginning Sept. 18, followed by four weeks of practices (with daily testing) shortly after Oct. 1. That would allow for the season to begin Oct. 31. They would play eight games with one idle week, culminating in a Jan. 2 title game.”
Mandel’s plan would see the College Football Playoff delayed, culminating in a national title game played on January 23 in Miami.
Meanwhile in the Big 12, TCU’s test results ahead of their clash with SMU yielded a number high enough to warrant a postponement of the ballgame. Such an occurrence is perhaps a foreboding of more positive tests and postponements as conferences attempt to launch their seasons off the ground. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby has been candid in saying he expects games to be postponed and doesn’t expect smooth sailing, per se. Just how rocky things get is the question, and if/how teams will finish the season. I guess we need only four teams standing in late December? It would surely be the easiest selection job for the College Football Playoff committee.
With the token nugget of college basketball news, where the NCAA will do everything in its power to play in the face of the pandemic. According to The Athletic, the start of the season will most likely be pushed back from November 10 to November 25 (the day before Thanksgiving), with the notion of several NBA-like bubbles looking ever so likely, especially for early-season and NCAA tournament games.
The ACC, led by Coach K, came out this week supporting a most radical proposal calling for all 353 eligible Division I teams to make the Big Dance. However, NCAA SVP of Basketball Dan Gavitt quickly shot down the possibility of expanding the tournament field. But reports say the league, the strongest in all of college basketball, is all-in on this proposal, and the league’s coaches are taking a position of unity in an attempt to make this idea reality. First it was players saying “we are united" and now it’s coaches.
In other more general disconcerting news, the University of Minnesota athletic department, set to lose about $75 million this fiscal year, will cut four varsity teams. As has been covered by others, this move may recoup a couple million dollars, and things should recover enough in the future to fund these programs, but the situation provides an excuse for administrators to cut sports they’ve long wanted to.
To cap off this section of the newsletter, if you didn’t watch the season’s first College GameDay —and we don’t blame you if you didn’t — watch this moving segment from lead commentator Kirk Herbstreit. One of the most prominent names in college football media made an impassioned plea against racial injustice this week, reflecting on the simple need to have conversations on race and equality over the supposed politicization of sports.
“Instead of having a reasonable conversation, you just immediately get placed way over there. Why can’t you just have a conversation? Why can’t we just listen? Maybe you can shed some light on some stuff that I don’t understand. That’s why I am talking about empathy and compassion and trying to listen and understand. You and I and others, we don’t understand about wearing a hoodie at night and getting pulled over. The stories that our friends share with us just blows me away. Shedding light on that and talking about that and saying I want to be an ally, I want to be an advocate to help, completely outweighs anything that I would get or people being upset with me.”
Good Tweets
Whoever tweeted this is a real jerk.
If the NCAA adopted a 353-team field, you know we’d all be feeling like this.
Likewise, if everyone made the tournament, Northwestern fans should be concerned if Chris Collins’s job security is awful in 2022. But anything can happen.
Is Mick McCall a time-traveler? A wizard? A legend amongst men?
And I’m sure the Chicagoans will appreciate this.
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See you next week.
Written by Colin Kruse with help from Eli Karp.