First of all, I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this whole "no one respects NU" thing. I was able to fend it off for this long, but suddenly I'm finding myself more and more annoyed by the national perception of this team. I hate myself at the moment.
What mainly annoys me is that while everyone seems to take away the value of thoroughly beating the team that is currently ranked #7 and has an outside chance of getting in the playoff, it seems like the only two games anyone cares about are the two games this season where we just didn't show up. THOSE two games are the anomalies in our season. Yes, they came against two of the best four teams we played, but why is it that "Stanford didn't show up to play Northwestern", but "the true Northwestern team is the one we saw over an eight day stretch in October"? What about the Stanford win? What about a nice road win over a Duke team that was playing way better football early in the season? What about the win over Penn State, or the road win at Madison where we held Wisconsin (a team that has lost three games to teams that have a combined three losses) to -26 rushing yards?
Yes, we aren't an explosive team that lights up the scoreboard or blows out our opponents. But you know what, we play better defense that about 95% of teams in the country, and we play an extremely conservative offensive game plan with the goal of WINNING GAMES. Not winning games by 50 - just WINNING GAMES. Period. This isn't rocket science.
The moral is that people will mold and shape the narrative to fit whatever their opinion is- even if it doesn't make any sense. I guess some of us do it too. I just am a little sick of this Cats team, which is very good, getting so little respect.
What mainly annoys me is that while everyone seems to take away the value of thoroughly beating the team that is currently ranked #7 and has an outside chance of getting in the playoff, it seems like the only two games anyone cares about are the two games this season where we just didn't show up. THOSE two games are the anomalies in our season. Yes, they came against two of the best four teams we played, but why is it that "Stanford didn't show up to play Northwestern", but "the true Northwestern team is the one we saw over an eight day stretch in October"? What about the Stanford win? What about a nice road win over a Duke team that was playing way better football early in the season? What about the win over Penn State, or the road win at Madison where we held Wisconsin (a team that has lost three games to teams that have a combined three losses) to -26 rushing yards?
Yes, we aren't an explosive team that lights up the scoreboard or blows out our opponents. But you know what, we play better defense that about 95% of teams in the country, and we play an extremely conservative offensive game plan with the goal of WINNING GAMES. Not winning games by 50 - just WINNING GAMES. Period. This isn't rocket science.
The moral is that people will mold and shape the narrative to fit whatever their opinion is- even if it doesn't make any sense. I guess some of us do it too. I just am a little sick of this Cats team, which is very good, getting so little respect.