The 2026 Northwestern Essay, #8--Talkin' About My Dad

This week, Northwestern (5-1) plays Rutgers (2-4) at The Library in Evanston at noon.  The game is once again on Peacock.  This is a big game, because Northwestern goes into the real meat of the schedule starting next week--at Oregon, Iowa, at Ohio State, at Minnesota, and The Hat game against Illinois.  Some of these teams have been struggling, but all of them have been ranked at some point this year and are potentially difficult games.  If we can go into that stretch 6-1 with a win against a, frankly, weaker Rutgers team, the season is basically a success and everything that comes after is gravy. 

Last week was pretty rough, with the Wildcats surviving a 24-21 game against Michigan State.  But honestly, finding a way to win that game is really encouraging.  In a weekend where five of the Top 10 teams lost (and Miami coming within two questionable calls of being #6), you are going to have weeks where you play poorly.  If you look at every team that has a really great season, they have at least one game where they played bad and found a way to get a win.  Last year, Indiana played a Penn State team that had just fired their coach and lost their starting quarterback and managed to pull a rabbit out of their hat on the way to an undefeated year.  I'm not saying we are 2025 Indiana, but my point is when you win the game that you played poorly you have basically stolen a win.

If you are reading this when it comes out, I will be in the Philadelphia area visiting my Dad.  If it weren't for my Dad, I would not be writing this post, as my Dad was the person that introduced me to college football.  He grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania and began following Penn State in the 60s when Joe Paterno made them a nationally-relevant program.  I got to watch the second golden age of Penn State football in the early/mid 80s alongside my Dad.  I definitely considered myself a Penn State fan until I started at Northwestern, and I still have them as basically my #2 college football team entirely because of Dad.

My first live college football experience was associated with Penn State.  In 1983, when I was 5, my Dad got tickets to the first ever "Kickoff Classic"--the opening game of the season which was held at the Meadowlands in the New York/New Jersey area.  Penn State, the defending National Champion, played the #1 ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers in a night game in late August.  Dad took me to the game, and I could not have been more excited.  I remember we had seats in one of the end zones, maybe twenty rows up.  It was awesome--and then the game started.  This was the Mike Rozier/Turner Gill Nebraska team that steamrolled everyone until they faced Miami in the Orange Bowl, and they definitely steamrolled Penn State to the tune of 44-6.  I have memories of Nebraska kicking several extra points into the net in front of our end zone seats.  So, not the best sports watching experience, but a great memory with my Dad.

In January of 1987, Penn State played in the Fiesta Bowl against Miami for the National Championship.  It was a night game, but I got to stay up to watch the game, which I think was the latest I had stayed up through that point.  Penn State was a massive underdog--this was a Miami team with Michael Irvin and a host of future NFL talent and a Penn State team that had some dudes.  But Miami quarterback Vinnie Testaverde threw five interceptions and Penn State won 14-10.  I don't think I have ever been as excited and compelled watching a game as I was for that game, then or since.  And a big part of those memories involve sitting on the floor of the upstairs room in the New Jersey house with my Dad.

In January, my wife and I welcomed a foster daughter, and we are on our way (assuming no unforeseen problems) to adopting her.  I am in the somewhat unusual situation of going from not being a dad to a father of an eleven year old in a moment.  As a result, I have been thinking a lot of late of what it means to be father in a conceptual sense.  And since I really have seen only one father up close, it makes me think of Dad.  As you might gather, I think my Dad was/is a pretty excellent dad.  

We are definitely not the same, or even all that similar.  I think overall I take after Mom more than Dad in many ways, with the exception of temperament which is very much like Dad.  We don't agree on everything, especially about politics.  But my Dad is a good person and is a great father and was a great husband to my Mom.  I definitely default to my Dad's model for most everything dealing with being a husband and a father.

There is a story of my Dad that I think will be the story that sticks with me.  It was around October of my second grade year, and it started on a Saturday.  I was home with my Dad while my Mom doing a shift at the hospital as a nurse.  During the course of the day, I started to get sick.  By the evening, I was throwing up pretty consistently; by the next day, I was having severe, persistent diarrhea.  By Sunday evening, I was admitted to the hospital with severe food poisoning (salmonella).  When I was admitted, I was so dehydrated that it took the doctors over forty-five minutes and many, many attempts to get an IV into my arm (leaving me with a fear of needles which persists to this day).

I stayed in the hospital until the next Friday, which isn't really that long but in my mind was an eternity.  During the day, I was visited by my mother and my grandmother.  But at night, my Dad was there.  It is important, I think, to set the scene.  My Dad commuted over an hour-and-a-half one way from central New Jersey to New York City.  So, he would get up at six am, spend basically two hours getting to work, work a full day, take two more hours to get back to New Jersey, and then come into my hospital room to sleep in a chair right in front of my bed.  Worse, I was getting up every hour with a diarrhea episode, so he too would get up once an hour and get the bed pan from under the bed to let me go.  And then, once the night was over, he would go home, change, and do it again, for five straight days.  It is difficult to imagine a worse way to spend five days.

But the truth is that when I think of my Dad and I have to limit it to a single image, the image I have is him sitting in that chair.  I needed him to help me during those evenings, and I needed someone to be there with the scared seven year old me, and he made it unambiguously clear that he was going to do both of those things for me.  He was there, and that's what I needed.  I can never thank him enough for that.

The lesson here, or at least the lesson I have taken from this, is that there is a natural tendency to focus on the substantive things that you want to teach your children and think that that's the job.  But I think more than anything else your job is to be there.  Particularly because of my daughter's specific story, my number one job is to just be present for her, especially when she needs me but also just in general.  In a world that is confusing and scary and unpredictable, you need to have someone that you know is going to be there even if no one else can or will be.  Most of the time is it pretty easy to simply be there for someone, but sometimes it is hard but even when it is hard you need to make sure they know you are going to be there.  From the day I was seven years old and was waking up in a hospital room to poo I knew that my Dad was going to be there if I needed him.  

That's the job.  My Dad has always done the job.  I hope I can do the job somewhat as well as he has.