A Sound of Sheer Silence

On Saturday, Northwestern (3-1) plays Ball State (1-4) at the new Ryan Field in Evanston at 12:30 pm on the BigTen Network.  Ball State is located in Muncie, Indiana, which I happened to visit a couple of weeks ago with my wife and daughter.  Ball State is a member of the Mid-American Conference (the "MAC"), which is considered to be at least a level down from the BigTen conference.  For this reason, Northwestern has scheduled Homecoming for this game.   I want to talk about Homecoming for the majority of this post, but before we get to that we need to discuss last week's game against Penn State.  If you didn't see, Northwestern won 34-13, and it was not nearly that close.  The eye-catching number here is 413 yards rushing for NU, versus 48 for Penn State.  Part of that is that Penn State was behind the whole game and had to pass, but 413 yards rushing is still a crazy number. Northwestern has won a number of games in my time watching the team, in...

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. --"Ozymandias", by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1876) Tonight, Northwestern (2-1) opens its new football stadium against Penn State (3-1).  For the second week in a row, it is the Friday night FOX game that starts at 8 pm Eastern.  Last week, Northwestern gave defending champion Indiana a big time scare, losing 29-23.  This is especially noteworthy given that t...

Northwestern is 2-0 having comprehensively defeated Colorado 41-7 last Saturday.  Truthfully, it wasn't that close---a 75 yard touchdown run for NU was called back on a holding penalty, and another sure TD was dropped.   This week, Northwestern plays the defending National Champion and #5 ranked Indiana Hoosiers (3-0) in Bloomington on Friday night.  The most likely outcome is Northwestern will lose badly.  In spite of this, and in a way because of this, I think it is time to actually talk about the team and what we have seen so far this year. Offense:  The big news in the offseason was that Northwestern hired Chip Kelly as offensive coordinator. For those not familiar, Chip Kelly came into prominence in the late aughts when he made Oregon a consistent national powerhouse, winning three straight Pac 12 championships from 2009 to 2011 and playing in the National Championship game in 2011 (losing to the unstoppable force that was Cam Newton at Auburn, for my ...

Northwestern (1-0) plays Colorado (2-0) tomorrow at 7:30 pm Eastern.  The game will be the final game at NU's lakeside stadium, and will be broadcast on FOX.  Colorado is best known for its head coach, Deion Sanders.  If you have watched any college football so far this season, you likely have a seen a commercial featuring Deion Sanders promoting a proposed piece of Congressional legislation called the Protect College Sports Act.  ESPN also spent a significant portion of its (now unwatchable IMO) pre-game show College Gameday  promoting the Protect College Sports Act via giving its primary author Senator Ted Cruz a ton of screen time.  Given this, I thought it would make sense to talk through the legislation, its purpose, and the history of the NCAA's legal misadventures. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, codified beginning at 15 U.S. Code section 1, states that "[e]very contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade...

Northwestern has a bye week this week, after their 34-18 victory over South Dakota State . Instead of an essay, I am going to include an interview I conducted over email with my friend Frank Strong.  Frank is an educator in Austin, Texas.  I "met" Frank a number of years back when our respective writing covered very similar grounds, and this summer I got a chance to travel to Austin for the first time and actual meet him in person.  When he is not teaching, Frank is a tireless advocate for free and honest education in the state of Texas, which is not an easy job in this day and age.  He his one of the co-founders of the Texas Freedom to Read Project, which you can read about here .  You can find his written work at Anger and Clarity . Frank is also a proud graduate of the University of Texas.  Texas has a big game Saturday against Ohio State in Austin, so it made sense to me to bring him on to discuss college football.  There are some small edits to hi...

Tomorrow, Northwestern with open its 2026 football campaign against the South Dakota State Jackrabbits.  The game will be played at Northwestern's exceptionally cool and beautiful temporary stadium on Lake Michigan.  The game starts at 8 pm Eastern/7 pm Central and can be seen on the BigTen Network, which is available on many cable and satellite packages as well as through the FoxOne app/stream service.  Which is how I will be watching the game.  Sigh.  Remember kids, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Having gotten this out of the way, I would like to kick off this season by discussing how to be a responsible sports fan.  Being a sports fan is, or at least can be, a perfectly reasonable and productive lifestyle choice.  But there are also some ways in which it can become very toxic, both to yourself and those around you.  Fortunately, these toxic dimensions can be avoided by keeping a few simple principles in mind. 1.  This is...

Good evening.  My name is Michael Boyle, and I am a fan of Northwestern University football.  In a bit I will explain how  I came to be a fan of this somewhat niche team in the Big Ten Conference of what is now referred to at "FBS" college football.  But first, I want to share my vision for this project so that you, the reader, can have your expectations properly set for what I plan to provide over the course of the fall. Beginning on September 5, 2026, Northwestern will play a series of 12 games on a generally weekly basis.  Before each game, on Friday, I will post an essay in connection with the game.  I say "in connection with the game" because I anticipate these essays will have a varied degree of connection to the actual game that will be actually played on the field.  Perhaps some essays will provide some sort of substantive analysis of the game, but I suspect many of them will be inspired by the game in a much looser fashion, on a more thematic ...