Wildcats and Wolverines

I have watched a lot of football in my life. Recently I tried to go back and figure out how much total time I have spent watching football. For the past six or seven years I’ve kept up a solid pace of watching about twenty-four hours of football a week when college and the NFL overlap. Add in playoffs and bowl games, and I feel comfortable saying I watch at least fifteen days of football a year. Expand that back six or seven years and that covers approximately one hundred days of football. Include the time I spent watching football from age six through sixteen, and I think half a year is a reasonably conservative estimate.

Whatever the number, it’s clear that I’m not exaggerating when I say that I have watched a lot of football in my life. I’ve seen a lot of different things in that time, but this past Saturday brought something new in the form of the game between Michigan and Northwestern. I have watched a lot of bad football teams play bad football, but never have I seen two teams coordinate their wretchedness in such an elegant dance.

This is my fourth and final year at Northwestern. In the time I’ve been here I have taken full advantage of my free entry to games at Ryan Field. I was present for Jeff Budzien’s missed game winning field goal against Nebraska in 2012, his only miss of the season. I was there for Michigan’s last second field goal and overtime victory in 2013. I cheered among the masses during the devastating loss against Ohio State last year. Earlier this season I even got to witness something positive, an upset victory over Wisconsin that ended with me rushing onto the field amidst a mob of frenzied students. This game against Michigan would be my last chance to visit Ryan Field. As much as I wanted to stay home and watch quality football between quality teams, I knew that I had to be in attendance.

I didn’t expect much from this game. No one with any knowledge of college football could have. Northwestern is rolling through its second straight disappointing season, a quagmire of embarrassing losses to California, Northern Illinois, and Iowa scattered around surprising victories over Penn State and Wisconsin. The ineptitude of their offense is matched only by the utter lack of atmosphere at Ryan Field, a stadium normally dominated by visiting fans. That wasn’t the case this Saturday however, as even Chicago area Michigan fans saw no reason to trek up to Evanston to watch their brutally terrible team.

As this was the last home game of my college career, I considered getting shitfaced. This wouldn’t be unusual for most college students, but I have actually never watched a football game while drunk. I enjoy the intricacies of the game too much to muddle my mind with alcohol, and I’m usually too busy watching other football games to participate in the tailgates anyway. But I had a strong feeling going into this one that there weren’t going to be any intricacies for me to appreciate. With Northwestern and Michigan on the field, it’s probably best to watch with a blurry gaze and a hazy mind.

I didn’t decide against it until I woke up Saturday morning with my stomach a little off. Deciding I didn’t want to throw alcohol on top of that, I entered this game clean and sober. It was a decision I would end up being grateful for. You see, I was wrong about there not being any intricacies to appreciate. Northwestern and Michigan are terrible football teams, but on Saturday they reached a new peak of wretchedness, playing football in such a laughable manner that it could only be appreciated as fine art.

My only regret is that I didn’t realize what I was in for until midway through the second quarter. There was plenty that went awry before that, but I took more pain in it than pleasure. Michigan and Northwestern bounced back and forth from one end of the field to the other, trading failed possessions with little of note occurring. Northwestern’s quarterback Trevor Siemian hit a Michigan defender with the easiest interception of his life, but the closest either team came to scoring was a Michigan drive that ended when they failed to convert a fourth down on Northwestern’s ten yardline. For the first quarter and a half I was mostly bored and cold.

The first strands of the majestic web being woven became visible with eight minutes remaining before the half. After Northwestern picked up a couple first downs to make it to within ten yards of midfield, Siemian dropped back to take a shot downfield. If you follow Northwestern football I don’t need to tell you that this is a bad idea. We’ve all watched Siemian over the past three years, and we all know what he is and is not capable of. Throwing the ball more than ten yards past the line of scrimmage happens to be in the latter category. In this case, however, we didn’t have the opportunity to watch the pass sail five yards over his receiver’s head.

I had a perfect view of the play as it developed. Siemian dropping back into the pocket, receiver Kyle Prater streaking down the left sideline in single coverage, both in nearly a direct line with where I was seated in the stands. Siemian locked on to Prater from the moment he took the snap, and it almost felt as if he was staring into my eyes across the hundred yards that separated us. I saw the play develop, and I knew he had two options. Prater is a massive receiver, 6’5” with solid athleticism and hands. With only a single defender on him it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to try to throw him a jump ball. But if Siemian wasn’t comfortable with that, he had several other receivers out on routes to turn to, one of which might have been more open.

These were the two options I saw, but Siemian managed to find another. He did not throw Prater the ball, and he did not turn his eyes away either. Instead he stood in the pocket, stared straight at the covered receiver for five seconds, and crumpled as he was struck from behind. Loss of nine, second down. In the stands I could only laugh at the utter incompetence of that play, while around me other fans jokingly speculated that Siemian had suffered an injury to his neck that made him incapable of turning his head to another receiver.

On the next play Siemian tried to throw a slant route. I’m still not sure what happened to the ball. It was probably deflected by a defensive lineman, but from where I sat it looked as if the ball simply fluttered up from Siemian’s hand and landed five feet in front of him. For third down Northwestern brought in their backup quarterback, a highly touted redshirt freshman who had languished on the bench until this point. He sat in the pocket until it collapsed around him, and for the third time in three plays I found myself bent over laughing in the stands. Little did I know, this was just the beginning. Because on fourth down, Northwestern brought in their backup punter. And this happened.

Just to make things clear, Northwestern’s punter is not left footed. And I don’t want to be too hard on the guy. It was his first punt, in unpleasant conditions, and he did a good job just getting the ball off. But still…

Michigan and Northwestern exchanged three and outs before Michigan’s superior punting finally got them into position to score. But because Devin Gardner is Devin Gardner, he threw an interception to keep the score knotted at 0-0. With less than two minutes remaining it looked like Northwestern would make it into the half miraculously tied, but Siemian was too clever for that. After three completions, he threw a pass straight into a defensive lineman’s facemask. It bounced up and was intercepted, setting Michigan up with a short field.

They completed one pass to get into field goal range and, realizing these points would likely be enough, were content throwing three incompletions and setting up a field goal. After two consecutive timeouts from Pat Fitzgerald to ice the kicker (one of my favorite stupid college rules) Michigan set up for a relatively easy field goal, only to see it blocked. The score at halftime: 0-0.

I spent the half worried that the break would give the teams time to get their shit together, but I should have known better. These teams have had weeks to fix their flaws, and they have only gotten worse with each progressing game. The second half was the culmination of weeks of incompetence, a performance they will both be hard pressed to top this coming Saturday.

Michigan’s first drive of the second half ended with a fumble. But it wasn’t just any fumble. No one in the stands really knew what happened, but to us it looked like the center decided that he wasn’t going to give the ball to Gardner (not a terrible decision) and simply threw it sideways down the line. It wasn’t until after the game that I saw what actually transpired on this play, and reality happened to be even more absurd than my wildest fantasies.

Do you know how many times I’ve seen that particular motion run? Do you know how many times Michigan has run that motion, both in games and in practice? To time it so perfectly requires a special combination of incompetence and bad luck. It was at this point that I realized that no power on Earth could save the football being played this day.

The second half blurred by in a series of ludicrous plays. Northwestern followed the fumble by missing a 36 yard field goal wide left, which was followed by a Michigan offensive series that included Gardner falling flat on his face while trying to run a bootleg. Northwestern muffed a punt to set Michigan up for a touchdown, the first points of the game.

This set the stage for another majestic series of catastrophes. Following a Gardner interception on a pass that was essentially a punt, Northwestern was set up with the ball at the Michigan 15 yardline. In any other game with any other teams, finally getting some points on the board would have seemed inevitable. In this game, no one was surprised by the three plays that followed. On first down Northwestern attempted to run a reverse, ending in a loss of five yards. On second down Siemian took a two yard sack, one of Northwestern’s most successful offensive plays of the day. All they needed to do was not screw up too badly on third down, and they would at least have a shot at a field goal. But Siemian had other plans, running twenty yards straight backwards before committing intentional grounding. After starting the drive on the 15, Northwestern punted from the 43. Of course, even the punt coverage was a work of art.

Northwestern started a drive on the 15. That drive ended in a punt, and Michigan started the next drive at the 20. This game had transcended reality, bending the logic of football and math.

I had given up in the game midway through the second quarter, but it wasn’t until this sequence of plays that the rest of the fans in the student section got on board. There was no anger to be found anywhere with Northwestern’s performance. When a pair of fans held up signs calling for Pat Fitzgerald to be fired, people seemed more amused than supportive. To most people there, the highlight of the game was likely a pair of drunk students who climbed to the empty bleachers at the top of the student section and pretended to swim from one end to the other. Anything to give us an excuse to turn our eyes away from what was happening on the field.

But all things—both good and bad—must eventually come to an end. As the game progressed, these two offenses started to pull things together. A 95 yard drive gave Northwestern its first points of the game, a chipshot field goal followed by a fireworks display that earned sarcastic cheers from the bleachers. Michigan followed this with a long field goal drive to give themselves a seven point lead with just over three minutes remaining.

The game was on the shoulders of Trevor Siemian. After managing only three points through the first 59 minutes, Northwestern needed a touchdown at the end to send the game to overtime. As they made their way down the field, we in the stands could only speculate at how this game would end. Most assumed Northwestern’s offense would fail, as it always seems to. Some were of the opinion that this game would never end, that overtime periods would roll by until the end of eternity. The only outcome I could see was a touchdown to apparently tie the game, only for Northwestern to somehow screw up the extra point.

With three seconds remaining, Siemian connected with Tony Jones in the endzone. We held our breaths, waiting to see whether this awful game would finally draw to a close or if these teams would be forced back onto the field to continue their affront to the sport. But even those on the sidelines had had enough. Pat Fitzgerald sent out his offense to go for two, a single play to end the game one way or the other. Of course, there was only one way this could go.

10-9, the final score. With a great sigh of relief, the crowd filtered out of the stadium. Northwestern and Michigan fans mingled as we made our way through the parking lot. There was no joy in the victory, no anguish in the defeat. A few bemoaned Fitzgerald’s decision to go for two, but it was the right call on both a football and an ethical level.

Like a majestic butterfly, this game was too beautiful to endure in this world. It had its life and it said goodbye, all in proper time. But no one who witnessed it will ever forget what they saw. On Saturday, during my final visit to Ryan Field, Northwestern and Michigan played the worst football game I have ever seen or will ever see. After four years at this school, I shouldn’t have expected anything else.